A couple of years ago, ophthalmologist Dr Kamal Nagpal started Café Soul Square as a wellness café offering healthy foods in a relaxing green ambience in Ahmedabad. Her café has now developed into a place that offers a variety of food and beverages, fitness solutions and therapies.
Being doctors, the Nagpal couple felt that some chronic or lifestyle disorders could be prevented or controlled with a healthy and improved lifestyle. Consuming nutritious foods and regular exercises too play important roles in controlling the diseases. And, that’s how they came out with the idea of a cafe. “I decided to start a lifestyle café which would draw patrons to eat and then become part of such activities as fitness workouts, yoga, alternative therapies, that we would keep introducing at the centre and elsewhere,” Kamal explains.
Their dreams finally came true in 2012, when Kamal took a bungalow on rent in Ahmedabad to start a health food café. “At first, I was idealistic and came up with a completely diet food-oriented menu with the help of qualified dieticians, when the café opened in 2013. However, I found that to be commercially viable, the café cannot restrict itself to diet food,” Kamal says.
That’s when she decided to change the menu a little, taking help from the chefs, cooks and service staff. “Since most of the young crowd came in groups and not everyone was watching their diet, we came up with a menu that has a healthy balance of low calorie, high protein and other nutrition rich foods,” she explains. The idea was simple—to encourage the youngsters to eat healthy foods. The cafe came up with conventional dishes containing processed cheese and butter but they were clubbed with veggies or white meat.
And, this move worked well. “My husband and I finally decided to buy this bungalow. I began to convert it into a zone for rejuvenation, based on my dream of a place that would offer solutions for the various physical, social or psychological wellness,” she says.
While there were many gyms in the area at that time, Kamal wanted to start courses that would facilitate individuals for self-healing and self-growth, by nurturing the mind, body, and spirit.
The brick-walled bungalow, converted into Soul Square Café, has glass doors and plenty of windows that allow light to flow in through the interiors. “We have shelves full of books on philosophy, self-help, motivation and health. There are books on fiction, humour and general interest topics too,” says she.
The dining tables are set like stations with low curving brick partitions and screens that offer some privacy for those looking to converse, and spend some time to read
or relax. A profusion of potted plants add to the ambience and some of the tables are set against green walls with wellness related messages on them.
At the end of the café, a staircase leads to the fitness studio. “Here, we have yoga, zumba, aerobics and other lessons going throughout the day. We have special sessions for pre-natal and post-natal therapies as those are vital,” the proud owner of the cafe goes on explaining. “We have a gallery upstairs with both indoor and alfresco areas, where we hold lectures on emotional and spiritual wellbeing.’’
All this actually synergise well with the café, commercially too. Many coming for fitness sessions also chill out sipping into a cucumber-coconut detoxifying drink, or a smoothie. With a wide range of food items, varying from green tea to skimmed milk shakes, there is a lot to choose from.
And not just quickies, a large number of dishes like hand-tossed khulchas with rajma beans, eggs, chicken or channa cooked with minimal or no oil, whole wheat pizzas with or without cheese, whole wheat sandwiches have already become sought after menus. Offering nutritious foods at an affordable price, the Cafe is already a hit in Ahmedabad. “There are people who join the fitness courses after seeing all the facilities,” she says.
Buoyed by the success of the café, Nagpal now plans to transform Soul Square into a wellness organisation. “We just don’t want to restrict ourselves to the cafe. I have invested in setting up a unit in the café for making low-calorie gelatos, which should be operational in a couple of months from now,” she informs. And, if everything falls into place, they will soon come out with a bakery that will offer healthy options in breads and other confectionaries.