After 14 years of going great guns and even surviving COVID, our Solihull-based health club Bardello, run and owned by Emma and Nick, closed in September 2023. The closure was simply due to the landlord for the business park not wanting leisure operators on their estate as they claimed they lowered its portfolio value.

In the two-year interim we seriously deliberated upon the purchase of several businesses that included gyms & health clubs, and hotels, of all things. But in the end, none of them were for us.

During our deliberations, however, we weren't just kicking our heels on street corners... often.

• We bought a commercial coffee roaster and started roasting our own coffee.
• We bought a large alcoholic still and started making our own gin and rum.
• We created a company called The Tasting Ground.
• We created our own polyphenol alcoholic drink: PolyPhen™ Herbal Liqueur.
• We created our own polyphenol food supplement: PolyPhen™.
• The above are available at thetastingground.co.uk
• Through the above, we became aware of cryotherapy, HBOT and red light etc.
• Oh, and I wrote a best-seller: A Cardinal Sin? You're not Catholic, are you?

Here's how it all happened.

Having become incredibly disheartened at the likelihood of getting back into the health club industry any time soon, Emma and I said to ourselves, "Why don't we start a business doing something else that we like... maybe something to do with coffee, perhaps? After all, it's an up-and-coming industry, and people will always want coffee."

So, that's what we did; we bought a commercial coffee roaster and set to work.

During our investigations into the coffee that we were roasting, we became aware of its incredible therapeutic properties. Digging deeper, we found that these properties to a large extent come from a substance called chlorogenic acid (CGA). Sounds horrible, but for those in the know, it is known as a powerful antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and also highly regarded for its beneficial metabolic effects.

That sounded great and a good angle for marketing; what with our health and fitness background and all that. But the thing is, CGA degrades rapidly upon heating. So, when coffee is roasted, the CGA is largely lost - the darker the roast, the more of it is lost. We experimented on ways that we might make raw coffee beans palatable, but without success. We, therefore, looked at how lightly we could roast our own blend of Brazilian and Ethiopian arabica coffee beans thereby retaining as much CGA as possible whilst keeping the resulting coffee pleasant.

We were very surprised that the light roast was more than just pleasant, it was absolutely delicious. We began to question why people go for dark roasts at all? Masochistic tendencies or leanings, perhaps? Incurable brown sugar dependency?

That then took us on the next part of our journey. CGA is what's known as a polyphenol. Again, they sound bad. But again, quite the contrary, they are brilliant natural antioxidants that we simply don't get enough of in our modern diets. Polyphenols (such as resveratrol and quercetin) are the stuff that gives fruits and seeds their dark colour - the darker the colour, generally the higher the polyphenol content.

But... Yes, there's always a but; polyphenols are not water soluble and as a result they have what's known as 'low bioavailability'. You can guzzle them, or most standard polyphenol supplements, all day and very little will enter the blood stream.

Then, a bit of serendipity, we came across Chartreuse - a herbal liqueur from France that is made from, guess what?... at least 130 polyphenol-laden ingredients. It works because Chartreuse is up to 69% alcohol. Alcohol, being something within which polyphenols are extremely soluble, makes polyphenols eminently bioavailable. So, we developed our own version - 55% pure alcohol to boot!

But, for some strange reason, the World Health Organization (WHO) takes a very dim view on the consumption of alcohol - any amount of alcohol at all.

So, the question was, is there anything that we can use as a substitute for alcohol. It turned out that there was; standard, natural glycerine! Hence, Polyphen-224 was created.

Polyphenols and their benefits to health are only now just reaching mainstream media. At least once a week, a friend or family member contacts us to say that they have watched or listened to an article on TV or the radio extolling the virtues of polyphenols. This is great, and long may it continue. But it's taken an awfully long time to get any media attention and polyphenols still face many hurdles as nothing can be patented or licensed and therefore there's no money to be made for the big players.

This got us thinking, "What else are people missing that for some reason are not mainstream but can, nevertheless, be of great benefit to people's health and wellbeing?"

We soon found, 'wellness'. I have to be clear that what I mean by wellness is a full gamut of therapies that comprise full body cryotherapy, hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT), red light therapy etc., and not fringe stuff like gong, bell and bowl therapy or wind therapy or moxibustion!

When we took a deep dive into these therapies we could not believe what we were reading. We could not believe the enormous benefit that red light therapy and HBOT can have on a huge number of chronic and autoimmune conditions and what the correct combination of whole body cryotherapy and infrared sauna (contrast therapy) can do for acute injury rehabilitation.

So, we set about seeing what business setups in this wellness space are working in the rest of the world, particularly in US and Australia as we tend to lag a year or two behind them. We found that since these therapies are not usually taken singularly, but as a course or more likely as an on-going requirement, most wellness businesses operate as clubs, much the same as a regular health club, with monthly memberships.

Having a club also means that we have a much deeper engagement with members who then have a much greater chance of reaching and, most importantly, maintaining their goals.

We then set about identifying equipment suppliers and finding a suitable premises.

Identifying the equipment suppliers was not difficult - we just chose the best-of-breed based purely on technological/physiological efficacy and ease of use; no go faster stripes; no gimmicks. This also sets the tone for the business as a whole: best of everything throughout.

The equipment we identified is:

• Two person whole body cryotherapy chamber - Mecotech cryo:one+
• Two-person hyperbaric oxygen chamber - Henshaw Duoplace
• Whole body red light therapy canopy and bed - Ideal Therapy RLPRO2000L-B
• Five-person infrared sauna - Sunlighten mPulse Empower
• Pressotherapy - Normatec Premier Compression Boots

Finding a suitable premises, on the other hand, was not as easy. Due to the costs of these treatments and thus the cost of memberships, we were forced into looking at the most affluent areas in the UK - sorry Blackpool; much as we love you for ballroom dancing. Since London is rapidly being catered for and so is South Manchester, we found ourselves looking to the Midlands and specifically at Edgbaston or our native Solihull.

Edgbaston was interesting and we nearly took a lovely premise in Edgbaston Village, but parking was a major issue and driving on a regular basis into Birmingham can be a nightmare. We, therefore, in late 2025 leapt at the opportunity to lease a modern unit Hampton-in-Arden which had just become available.

You are now right up to date. Please see the news section for... the latest news!

Nick