Are ‘social wellness clubs’ the future of spas?

When Dr Jonathan Leary opened a group of social wellness clubs, Remedy Place, in Los Angeles in 2019, many doubted it would succeed.

Instead of beauty, aesthetics and spa treatments, the 34-year-old chiropractor and concierge doctor would offer treatments with ‘a quick physiological challenge that brings out the most amplified version of ourselves and can build lasting connections’, he explains. Think: ice baths, saunas, hyperbaric chambers and more. Despite the naysayers, it worked. And five years on, Remedy Place has two more locations, one in New York’s Flatiron and another, newly opened club in SoHo. (Joining its roster later in the year is a 10,000 sq ft space in Boston.)

Are ‘social wellness clubs’ the future of spas? Founder of Remedy Place Dr Jonathan Leary weighs in

‘We are more connected than ever, but we are lonelier than ever and sicker than ever,’ says Leary, who notes that a sharp decrease in social interaction, which began at the turn of the millennium, comes with a drastic impact on health. ‘Remedy Place is a self-care club that allows us to have fun while enhancing relationships,’ explains Leary. The clientele is typically 30- and 40-somethings who come together after work to socialise healthily in the club’s design-driven spaces. Sleek, state-of-the-art ice baths and saunas provide a hot and cold fix, and movement screenings, body scans and blood work are gathered to create custom vitamin blends and personalised care plans.

Remedy Place is also an alcohol-free environment and draws a new generation of the ‘sober curious’. ‘Since the pandemic, there has been a gigantic shift to people who don’t drink, or don’t want to drink, or want to minimise their alcohol intake,’ says Leary, who counts himself among them. (To maintain his wellbeing, he also has a sauna three times a week and an ice bath every day, which he believes is ‘the most impactful thing we can do in the shortest time’.)

Visitors to Remedy Place are encouraged to track key biomarkers, as part of a personalised health programme called Meridian. ‘Understanding your health data, uploading it, storing it over a long period is so important, because the more biomarkers you have, the better AI can treat you in the future.’

So how will AI affect our medical futures? ‘It can make things more affordable and accessible; for example, taking a deep-dive into someone’s blood work currently costs thousands of dollars and takes up to ten hours. It’s a gigantic puzzle. AI can read that in seconds and if it draws on data taken from people using wearables in holistic, nature-based therapies, it can make these things more mainstream,’ says Leary.

With this in mind, Leary is encouraging guests at Remedy Place to share their health data with health practitioners in the name of science, offering up heart-rate and oxygen-level readings, for example, so that ‘these treatments can get the credibility they deserve’. Starting with his own biometric data, Leary has since developed The Framework – a manual of science-backed remedies and routines that help him feel better. ‘Alternative therapies that actually fix things have been around for a very long time, but the lack of studies into their health benefits is crazy,’ he says. ‘And it’s because no one is going to invest in research that they can’t immediately profit from.’

Leary was among the industry pioneers who gathered at last year’s Global Wellness Summit, which took place in November (2024). (Remedy Place also partnered with Kohler to launch an ice bath for the home, in October, which was debuted during Miami Design Week 2024.)

At the summit, he witnessed two major trends; on one hand, the desire to push human potential through optimising, enhancing and augmenting ourselves with the aid of tech. But on the other, a need to tap into primal responses, to preserve and protect the fundamental things that make us human. With its offer of alternative therapies and customisable tech, analogue and digital, Remedy Place caters to both. ‘It’s a movement,’ says Leary. ‘And the focus on self-care rather than fitness is only going to grow.’

remedyplace.com