This is the story of a husband and wife who focus on the basics instead of chasing trends when it comes to improving peoples’ wellness.
Jordan and Anna Park’s journey started in their native Texas, progressed to Colorado and returned to their roots, with the September opening of Wellmind Coffee and Botanicals in Highland Village. The new business combines their experience in holistic health products with their appreciation for specialty craft coffee.
“If you’re wanting an amazing cup of coffee, we truly believe we have the best coffee,” said Jordan Park. “We serve specialty roast from Colorado Springs and hand-make all syrups with organic herbs and low sugar. If you’re interested in more function, that’s our top priority. We understand how to naturally promote better focus, energy, mood and creativity.”
The Parks’ do this by stacking coffee with certain herbs and nutrients that balance brainwave activity, stress response, immune function and inflammation. They don’t add herbs directly to the coffee, because they don’t want to mess up the taste. Instead, they offer shots of herbs and nutrients that you take before drinking coffee to create the synergy.
“This is basic stuff that can deliver some amazing benefits,” Park said. “This concept is fairly new for most people, but is gaining a lot of attention for improved productivity and overall wellness.”
The business also features a product wall stocked with plant-based skin care, herbal extracts and teas unlike found anywhere else. They say their herbal extracts are done with no heat over 45 days, which is not easy to find on the shelves anywhere else.
“The response around the concept has been very impressive,” said Park, who comes from the Houston area. “I’m excited by how much people already know about this concept.”
They first met in 2013 at Texas A&M University, where he was her physics tutor. They started dating and graduated the next year and married in 2017. They have two children, daughter Viola and son Charley.
After Jordan earned a degree in petroleum engineering and Anna in food science, they started in their respective careers. But, it didn’t take long to decide they were called to something different. They had been researching trends in chronic stress, fatigue and inflammation and found a need for products that strengthen the fundamentals of improved skin health, stress, inflammation and overall wellbeing.
They left their jobs in December 2015 and moved to Colorado Springs, from where they traveled the country to learn as much as they could. They soon determined the best products were those derived from plants and later in 2016 launched Roots Apothecary that made organic skin care and herbal extracts.
The Parks’ started from their home, but soon after were convinced to open a retail location in a Colorado Springs mall. They made everything from scratch in the store, focusing on products that help address skin issues like eczema, psoriasis, dermatitis and acne. It was all about keeping it simple and strengthening the basics of skin health; and, they had a lot of success with this approach.
Later they started developing herbal extracts to help balance immune response, inflammation, stress and sleep. Understanding how to read the research and simplify the biology and the root cause, plus how plants deliver therapy, they began developing and selling those products. Their holistic approach then pointed them to CBD (cannabidiol) and, fortunately for them, got into it at its infancy, though not without some challenges.
“Our functional approach has gained us respect in the naturopathic community,” Park said.
By the end of 2018, the Colorado Springs store kept growing– both financially and in the eyes of the community. But they were also outgrowing their space and wanted to expand. Looking back to Texas, they moved to Anna’s hometown of Flower Mound, thinking the community would appreciate their ideas. They looked north and came upon their current location in the former home of the Seven Loaves Catering event venue at 2300 Highland Village Rd.
“This is perfect,” he said. “This is not in a typical strip of stores. This location spoke to us at that level. It’s different … It’s tucked back here. We don’t like to chase trends and push flashy marketing, so the location represents our approach.
“And we wanted to be that very niche, very unique and authentic place in all areas, not just with the product and menu but the experience, the environment, the location.”
Park said their most popular product line is CBD.
“We have worked with CBD since before it was cool,” he said. “With backgrounds in engineering, herbalism and holistic health, we have a unique understanding of the plant that allowed us to build a truly therapeutic product from seed to bottle.
“We take a very simple and professional approach to CBD. Like all products we develop, we’re interested in formulas that deliver the best holistic results without the extra pizzazz. Our CBD is sourced from certified organic hemp grown and harvested by a family farm in Vermont that is dedicated to organic, chemical-free cultivation.”
Wellmind makes all products by hand from scratch in the certified kitchen of the former event venue. They believe the specialty coffee and holistic health combination will continue to grow in popularity. And so far, business has been booming.
Visit Wellmind at 2300 Highland Village Rd. Bld. 9, Highland Village, TX 75077. Learn more at www.wholebodyapothecary.com.
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