Wellness Cafe: Where delicacies are sprinkled with wellbeing
Wellness Cafe is a brand endeavour by Wellness Venture, founded by Parisha Shamim in 2020. During the Covid-19 pandemic, she started toying with the idea of launching a cafe to provide healthy and quality food for the people visiting Labaid.
Sometime in January 2023, I walked past a very cosy cafe in Gulshan. What caught my attention was the name – Wellness Cafe. What a curious name! I was with a friend. Since she is a coffee enthusiast, we went inside to check out the cafe.
The smell of freshly brewed coffee washed over us when we entered the cafe. It was small; the lighting was warm and welcoming, and a few books were stacked on a tiny little bookshelf near one corner of the cafe.
We ordered chicken sausage delight, blueberry cheesecake, and Latte. The sausage delight and the cake arrived on paper plates.
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The sausage delight was true to its name – an absolute delight from the first to the last bite. The bread was soft, which went perfectly with the delicious sausage bits. The blueberry cheesecake was also yummy.
The latte we ordered also came in small cups made of paper and had a relatively modest look. I took a sip and was surprised by the caramelised sugar sweetness of the drink. It was smooth and creamy and instantly warmed me up. We left the cafe, thinking of returning for more food and drinks soon.
The Wellness Cafe does not use plastic unless it is absolutely necessary. They sell more than a thousand cups of coffee and thousands of plates of food daily, all served in paper cups and plates, aiming to serve the customers the best quality food and beverages in the greenest possible way.
The next time I noticed another outlet of Wellness Cafe was on Mirpur Road, on my way to New Market. I ordered fresh pineapple juice this time. The juice was excellent. It was 37 degree-celsius outside. And a sip from the cold, freshly squeezed pineapple momentarily made me forget about the scorching heat.
And then I saw another outlet in Mohammadpur. It felt like the cafe brand was catching fire in Dhaka. I did a little bit of digging and came to know that, as of now, they have a total of 17 outlets, including the ones in Gulshan, Mohammadpur, Malibagh, and Uttara.
Wellness Cafe is a brand endeavour by Wellness Venture, founded by Parisha Shamim in 2020. During the Covid-19 pandemic, she started toying with the idea of launching a cafe to provide healthy and quality food for the people visiting Labaid.
It started its journey with seven outlets in Dhanmondi serving coffee, fresh juice, savoury, and dessert items. Once the cafes started receiving positive feedback, Wellness Caafe expanded the outlets, beginning with the Gulshan one.
Wellness Cafe outlets usually follow three operation models – express, cafe, and bistro. The express model cafe outlets typically deal with customers who are in a rush and need a quick bite. The cafe model outlets offer a cosy environment where customers can sit and enjoy coffee and other food alone or while hanging out with friends.
The cafe outlets, however, have different capacities to accommodate customers. For example, the Dhanmondi outlet, a tiny cafe beside Mirpur Road, has four seats for customers. The Malibagh one, on the other hand, can accommodate more than 20 customers at a time.
The bistro models will have even larger space with an expanded menu. It will cater mainly for families and other larger groups of people. However, the bistro model outlets are still in the planning stage.
The most distinguishing factor about Wellness Cafe is it is built around its own agro. They produce all the ingredients, especially chicken, beef, eggs and such, that they use for their food items, on this farm.
Another thing that sets Wellness Cafe apart is its attempt to be known as a Bangladeshi homegrown coffee brand. "We want to give people the pleasure of drinking coffee that is branded Bangladeshi," Sabbir Azim Khan, Coordinator of Wellness Venture, excitedly.
Wellness Cafe outlets are close to ideal coffee shops, with comfortable chairs, small tables and sometimes bookshelves in the corner. Recently, I had the chance to visit the Dhanmondi and Malibagh outlets of Wellness Cafe.
"Sometimes we have customers visiting from outside Dhaka. Once they have a taste of our food and beverages, they ask why we don't open outlets outside Dhaka as well," said Sabbir. This increased customer demand paved the way for the opening of the Narayanganj outlet at the end of May 2023.
The Narayanganj outlet is just the beginning. Parisha Shamim, the Managing Director of Wellness Ventures, dreams of opening at least one outlet of Wellness Cafe in every district of Bangladesh. Sylhet and Mymensingh outlets will be launched soon, as the projects are already underway.
