More than one year after opening its New Canaan store on Forest Street, Embody Fitness Gourmet is launching a second “satellite” location inside a hugely popular boutique wellness and fitness facility across town.
At the new location at Oxygen Fitness on Pine Street, Embody will sell its signature protein shakes and juices, as well as a “good selection” of gourmet salads and snacks, according to founder and owner Gillen Bryan.
“We know Oxygen has a great reputation and certainly a lot of the members and instructors had already come to us, so when we talked to [Oxygen Fitness owners] David and Sara [Koch] about taking over to provide a great offering at Oxygen, it wasn’t really a tough decision,” Bryan said.
The public will be able to access the Oxygen Fitness store directly inside the Pine Street facility’s main doors, with a soft opening this week and a Grand Opening later in the month, he said.
Sara Koch said the introduction of Embody at Oxygen’s expanding “fitness campus” was designed to bring more options to members and others. Oxygen had been running its own juice bar since opening but the business couldn’t offer food, which Embody can, she said.
“And they are an existing, known brand in town so it was a really good partnership,” Koch said.
“It was easy. We had tried other prepared food in the past and it didn’t really work, so the idea was for them to bring their whole business into ours and have us work together.”
The addition comes as Oxygen eyes a summer launch for its new yoga studio in the street-level floor of a new mixed-use building steps away on Park Street.
“In this business, you have to constantly be evolving and one way is change things up for everybody food-wise, and now we are able to bring more” and soon offer more with the yoga studio, she said.
Bryan said that since launching in New Canaan in the summer of 2016—Embody also has locations in Westport and Darien—he’s found locals to be “hugely supportive of what we are doing.”
“Healthy eating is really popular,” he said, adding that New Canaanites “are really conscious eaters and have been great customers.”
“I think it’s great when we have this opportunity to do a kind of ‘Embody light’ over at Oxygen and touch two very different points in the town.”