In an example of healthy food and beauty colliding, The Detox Market and Love Serve Remember LLC have joined forces on retail installations inside the organic plant-based restaurant company’s Gratitude and Café Gratitude locations.
Changing seasonally, the installations spotlight key products from 10 to 15 brands picked by green beauty specialist The Detox Market at eatery entrances in Newport Beach, Venice and Los Angeles on Larchmont Boulevard and Santa Fe Avenue to entice customers as they arrive, wait to be seated and leave. Early on, the brands include Odacité, The Beauty Chef, W3ll People, Sun Potion, Davids, H. Gillerman Organics, Coola, Osmia Organics, Josh Rosebrook, Soapwalla and Bkr.
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“We have been a very, very strong advocate of treating beauty as holistically as possible. That’s where beauty is going, and clients understand it more and more,” said Romain Gaillard, founder of The Detox Market. “If you want to be beautiful, what you eat is as important as what you put on your skin. If you look at Café Gratitude, what they are doing in food is what we are doing in beauty.”
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Love Serve Remember chief executive officer Lisa Bonbright has been a fan of The Detox Market since it opened a temporary pop-up on Venice’s Abbot Kinney in 2010, and sought Gaillard out in an effort to improve retail at Gratitude and Café Gratitude. Her objective was to create retail experiences matching her restaurants’ elevated approach to sustainable and organic cuisine.
“We don’t have retail division because we are really in the restaurant business. We were finding it challenging to keep up with the newest, latest and greatest in retail. We decided, why don’t we partner up with someone to do all the vetting, and have them come in and guide us, so we know we are giving our customers the best possible products,” said Bonbright. “We went around trying to figure out the perfect partner, and I’ve been in love with The Detox Market for a while. You walk in there, and you want to put your cellphone down, read the labels and not miss anything. It’s really compelling.”
Gaillard conceived of a tight assortment for the eateries with one to five products from each brand that would resonate with wellness-conscious customers and stoke impulse purchases. Out of the gate, he pointed to The Beauty Chef, Odacité and Bkr, a water bottle specialist satisfying impulse shopping, as bestselling brands. Bonbright’s daughter Paris, a makeup artist who acts as the liaison between Love Serve Remember and The Detox Market, also noted Soapwalla’s deodorant and Davids’ natural toothpaste are strong performers.
“I used to wear Chanel foundation and lipsticks from stores like Nordstrom, but I have completely switched over to organic, and The Detox Market is one of the only places in L.A. that sells organic beauty and personal-care products, and we want to make them accessible,” said Paris Bonbright. “The Detox Market has done the all the homework, so you trust everything 100 percent. In the selection, we wanted a little bit of everything. People can come in, and they don’t have to worry about going to 10 different stores. While they are getting a juice, they can get a deodorant.”
In the last month, Lisa Bonbright reported sales at the retail components with The Detox Market tie-ins have increased 45 percent. “Honestly, it is not to make money. It’s really to introduce our customers to alternatives to what they are currently using,” she said. “Our expectation is just that we make people aware, and to know that whatever is on our shelves is vetted and we can stand behind it.”
Exploring The Detox Market retail installation at Café Gratitude in Venice during a recent trip to L.A., Leonie Faddy, marketing and sales director for Sydney-based The Beauty Chef, was bullish on the concept. “It really opens up the brand exposure to a like-minded market,” she said. “People are inherently always looking to shop and self-please. Right or wrong, I think it is part of our Western culture that we are often looking to shop. So, if you come to lunch, you could shop a little here.”
Going forward, Gaillard and the Bonbrights envision other initiatives bringing The Detox Market and Love Serve Remember together. Paris Bonbright mentioned the possibility of special holiday products or promotions, and Gaillard noted the two companies collaborate on social media and web content. “It’s both an online and offline partnership,” said Gaillard. “It’s going very well on many different levels.”