Wellness Clubs Are The New Status Symbol

Wellness Clubs Are The New Status Symbol

In New York City, private members’ clubs are as storied as the Big Apple itself. But wellness clubs have quickly taken over, with patrons indulging in health-oriented treatments and (near) sober socializing, upending what it means to be a New York-elite.

Since New York City emerged out of the Covid-19 pandemic, several wellness clubs have popped up. Remedy Place, The Well, Othership, Bathhouse, Majesty’s Pleasure, Sage + Sound, Remedy Place and Continuum Club are just a few. Each place hosts a variety of beauty and wellness services from ice baths and cold plunges, to hair and manicure appointments. As social clubs they’re not strictly for members, and anyone can come in and pay for its services. But what they all share is a focus on creating a new kind of socializing and billing themselves as democratic yet still-exclusive community hubs.

Covid-19’s Long Tail

“Humans need humans for mental health … what happened through the [Covid-19]

pandemic was we started correlating isolation with physical health, and there’s a huge problem right now that people are more isolated and feel lonelier than ever before,” said Dr. Jonathan Leary, founder and CEO of Remedy Place.

The U.S. is indeed in the middle of what’s been dubbed “the loneliness epidemic,” due in part to spending less time with friends, more time on our digital devices, and generally, more time at home. And other countries are facing the same issue. The United Kingdom and Japan have “loneliness ministers” and in 2023, the World Health Organization declared loneliness a growing public-health concern.

Leary calls wellness clubs “social substitutions” because they can stand-in for a date, friendly get-together, happy hour or bachelor/bachelorette party, etc. At Remedy Place, guests can indulge in vitamin IV drips, acupuncture, hyperbaric oxygen chamber, breath work ice baths and host of other services focused predominantly on recovery.

The idea for Remedy Place pre-dates Covid-19. Leary devised the idea for Remedy Place while working with patients in his concierge private practice who felt their social lives were limited—no alcohol, no staying out late, only eating healthy—as they worked to improve their health. It officially opened its first location in West Hollywood in 2019. Every club location is capped at 200 members, with all other customers purchasing services a la cart.

“Why is it that everything we do when we socialize has to work against our health?” said Leary. “I created [Remedy Place] to give people a place that enhanced their health and their social life at the same time.”

But don’t expect large group gatherings with strangers at Remedy Place. The concept is to interact and socialize with friends rather than meet new people. Remedy Place suites can accommodate up to six people. If you want to throw a wellness-focused bash, you can privately rent the space after business hours. Meanwhile, if you want to have wide-scale socializing, Othership or Bathhouse offer communal opportunities to mingle with new people.

“Wellness clubs are driven by a really deep and profound problem in society, [like] isolation or not spending time with real people. With communities dying, such as churches and other forms of community, these clubs are a new genre of [that],” said Beth McGroarty, vp of research at The Wellness Institute which tracks wellness trends across industries and geographies.

“I think these businesses want the social to come before the wellness, and that is what is different about the social wellness clubs. But the hardest thing to engineer is a natural community,” she said.

The Equinox and Soho House Effect

When Equinox and Soho House first opened, in 1991 and 1995, respectively, they started what would eventually become a blueprint for highly-curated and aesthetic environments catering to the bright young millennials and parvenus of today.

“Soho House is a business that we use as a benchmark for how they build community and membership and all the community-based planning and amenity connections that they make through their membership base,” said Jeff Armstrong, co-founder of Majesty’s Pleasure, a beauty services-oriented wellness space founded in Toronto, Canada and which recently opened in New York City’s Flatiron district.

Armstrong and his co-founder (and wife) Sara Kardan wanted to create a design-driven beauty hospitality experience inspired by hotel lobbies, lounges and private social clubs. As Armstrong puts it, they wanted to create a space where customers want to stay, not a space that wants customers to leave. For a city like New York, where restaurants turn tables every 90 minutes and everyone is shuffling to the next errand, event, or activity, the idea of a place of repose like Majesty’s Pleasure feels like a daylong time capsule of stillness. Services includes manicures, pedicures, hair cuts, coloring and styling, and LED facials.

“My wife and I sought healthy pleasure in life as a way of taking care of ourselves, and feeding our relationship and allowing it to flourish. We’re health-focused in a way where pleasure is the vehicle to bring health,” he said.

But what transforms Majesty’s Pleasure from a one-stop salon to a wellness club is its social engineering for interactions. A manicure area with blush seats and stone tables also serves as a social lounge, whether with a customer’s friends or to engage with other people. A bar area serves up mocktails and offers seating, pedicure recipients sit side by side in a luxurious cream-colored area, while people getting their hair done all sit around a large table facing one another. Armstrong said the usual appointment size is three people. Additionally, members can participate in monthly Majesty’s Pleasure hosted events, which can be on-location or offsite, like wine tastings, health and wellness seminars, or yoga excursions. Memberships have been available since Fall 2023, and there are approximately 500 members between the Toronto and New York City locations. Memberships range from $80 to $195 per month.

“People are looking for so many more things to do outside of going to a bar, a restaurant, or a club,” said Armstrong.

While Majesty’s Pleasure is bright and vaguely feminine,, Remedy Place has a dark and moodier design. ​​A neutral, zen color palette provides evokes serenity and nature alongside plenty of wood, leather and greenery that creates a brutalism-style minimalism with maximum texture. The environment is also subtly manipulated so that the club’s interior design is “a healing process,” said Leary. One such example is a custom scent used by Remedy Place featuring notes of rosewood, sandalwood, jasmine and vetiver to supposedly calm the nervous system and put the mind at ease. You would not be mistaken for thinking it the cousin to Equinox, which was formerly an inspiration for Leary.

Among many long-term ambitions for Remedy Place, one is to not only have 15-20 locations across major cities but also to translate its ethos and services into residential apartment buildings and hotels. Currently, Remedy Place is also partnering with manufacturers like Kohler to create a Remedy Place-branded commercial ice baths.

Remedy Place is not the first to want to bring its idea to residential apartments and hospitality. Equinox opened its first hotel in New York’s Hudson Yards in 2019, and The Well worked with real estate developer Terra Group in Miami to create The Well Bay Harbour Islands Residences, which finished building in Dec. 2024. But for Leary, he wants to go further where “every design touchpoint is designed to heal.”

“What Equinox did for luxury fitness and what Soho House did for private members clubs, I always wanted to be that for social wellness clubs. But I think I was dreaming too small,” he said. “With how big I think the [wellness] industry could be, and with our new business verticals, I want to help reach more people than any company in the health and wellness industry.”

link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *