Nourish Wellness Cafe owners Casey Flaherty (right) and Kyle Steinberg (left) stand at the front door of their new Eastworks location, below a sign that was in part created by Flaherty’s father and Steinberg.
Photo credit: Casey Flaherty, Nourish Wellness
EASTHAMPTON — Nourish Wellness Organic Cafe has expanded operations from its home base in Northampton to the Eastworks building in Easthampton, with the official opening of a second location last month.
Nourish Wellness Cafe is owned and operated by Casey Flaherty and Kyle Steinberg, partners who took over the business in 2022 and have since been motivated to reorganize and set the business on a new path forward as the demand of organic foods and product continue to rise.
The new Easthampton location is Suite #137 inside the Eastworks building, 116 Pleasant St.
Flaherty spoke with Reminder Publishing to speak about this next chapter for Nourish Wellness Cafe and said this new journey for Nourish Wellness made sense as more people continue to learn about the offerings and benefits of the healthy and nutritional food the cafe offers.
“We’ve been getting more and more people learning about us and wanting to eat healthier and organic food. And so, we’ve slowly been getting busier and busier, and the Northampton location is more of a smaller operation and kitchen, so we were kind of outgrowing a little bit to be honest,” said Flaherty.
The new space in the Eastworks building contains a similarly sized cafe area for diners to enjoy their meals, but what is new for Flaherty on the day-to-day end is the large and new kitchen space included. She explained the kitchen at the Easthampton location offers more refrigeration options for food storage as well as more space for food preparation.
“It’s nice that we are able to expand more, produce more and there are more things we want to start doing and adding to the menu,” said Flaherty, who added they are brainstorming new item ideas and offerings that are possible with the newfound space.
Flaherty was a Nourish Wellness employee for a couple years prior to becoming the owner and said since taking over, she has always wanted to expand, but first had to become more familiar with ownership duties.
Expansion came somewhat naturally for Flaherty and Steinberg as after a couple years of getting experience as owners under their belts, they began trying to more seriously pursue a space for expansion. One reason the two took the chance on expanding was seeing the way their services have grown as a need for the public. With the rise in popularity for people seeking organic and fresh foods, they felt there was more room to expand their offerings and their mission of providing healthy and fresh foods to the public.
Along with the growth in popularity and demand of the organic products Nourish Wellness offers, also came the want for spaces like Eastworks to feature a business like them as complementary to the other businesses and services that have found their homes in the multipurpose building. Flaherty said eventually while seeking a potential home for expansion, she was approached by Eastworks for a potential partnership that is now a living reality.
Flaherty shared that the team at Eastworks was aligned in vision with Nourish Wellness and offered the business an investment to help them remodel their new space and create a bigger, more capable kitchen space once they committed to expanding to the building. After fundraising on their end, Eastworks matched the money raised and the renovation of the new Nourish Wellness Cafe space in the Easthampton building was under way.
“We were able to divide and conquer, which has been really amazing, and our team is just so great in both locations, so it took us a couple weeks longer to open, but it was best for it in the end,” said Flaherty, on the process of securing the new expanded space. “It’s been a journey. All the days and weeks are kind of blending together at this point, but it feels so good to be open.”
She noted that the new space complements great with the other health and wellness services available inside Eastworks, and she hopes Nourish can be another great addition to the wellness hub that is within the building.
Located right by the Registry of Motor Vehicles, Flaherty also added she hopes they can figure out some sort of service where those in line can scan a QR code and make an order through Nourish that can be dropped off to them while they wait. This is just one of the handful of ideas Flaherty and Steinberg are continuing to brainstorm as they become acclimated to their new space.
Eastworks’ interest in bringing Nourish Wellness into the building made the decision to move to the city that much easier, Flaherty said.
The Northampton location will continue operations as is and Flaherty hopes this is just the beginning of Nourish Wellness Cafe deepening its roots in the Hampshire County community.
“Without that we probably would have realized we would have to downsize everything about the space. We actually took over the government post office room — that was part of the space knocked out and opened up to create bigger kitchen space. That was all them [Eastworks] being like, ‘we can do this if you need it. We have this opportunity,’” said Flaherty. “It makes it so we can fit everything perfectly. It all came together really nicely. I’m so grateful for their support and that they just know the building, and Easthampton in general just kind of needs something like this. Something healthier, and that caters to the other spots of the building.”
Currently, the new Easthampton location is open daily from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Hours may be slightly adjusted as new ownership becomes more familiar with the day-to-day flow of business. Flaherty said the menu will also be tinkered with as they continue to adjust to the new space.
Now with the new space opened, Flaherty said it has been a great experience to go though that process and has made her and Steinberg more comfortable about any future plans to expand further, if they one day decide to.
The expansion of a local favorite like Nourish Wellness also gave Flaherty a moment of reflection as someone who has been a part of the business since 2019. Through the last six plus years, Flaherty said she has remained passionate about sharing organic offerings in the community and creating a better system for the business.
“We were our busiest we ever were in 2019 and then the pandemic cut us in half. We completely slowed down. Staffing wise, we worked with smaller teams. I would work by myself a lot of days for most of the days until other people could check in. It was a lot. We’ve been putting in crazy hours honestly for years now, just to kind of get things more on its feet and create a better system for things,” said Flaherty.
Now having expanded her business into her hometown of Easthampton, Flaherty said it has been a great feeling to accomplish the expansion and to further her career around her passions for promoting and offering healthy eating and lifestyles.
“I grew up in Easthampton, so to be able to open something up in my hometown is pretty amazing and I never really thought I would do that either. I actually always wanted a bakery and café. Growing up, I did culinary arts in school. But then working at the Northampton location, I just realized there’s so many people who feel so good when they get a delicious healthy meal and it makes a huge difference,” she said.
She continued, “Not to mention the fact that we’re 100% organic. I always like to throw that out because our food system these days just has lots of chemicals in it. It’s getting sprayed by all kinds of bad stuff, and the more we can support our local farmers, to us that’s kind of our ultimate mission here. We put the blood sweat and tears into this for a long time now. I took over this when I was 25 and it’s been nearly all of my 20s just dedicated to making the system and restaurant better. So, I am definitely proud of that, but always trying to brainstorm new ways that we can give people more opportunity to have more healthy food.”
