When it comes to weekly services in the name of beauty and wellness, we are far beyond manicures and blowouts. Clean Market, a new wellness destination in New York City, encapsulates many of the of-the-moment offerings, from cryotherapy and infrared saunas to IV drips and adaptogenic lattes for everything from glowing skin to enhanced brain function.
The space is the brainchild of Lily Kunin, who is known for her Instagram account @cleanfooddirtycity, which features stark and gorgeous smoothie bowls and masses of zucchini noodles with vegetables partitioned in strict vertical lines. She began experimenting with what she calls functional food-things—like chia seed pudding, overnight oats, and those famous smoothie bowls—after being diagnosed with celiac disease and eliminating gluten from her diet. The results were pretty, delicious, and wildly photographable.
Lily Kunin in Clean Market.
The success of the account (with 118,000 followers and counting), and a subsequent book (Good Clean Food: Super Simple Plant-Based Recipes for Every Day), led to business opportunities to open a café, but Kunin had bigger aspirations. “That was never the right thing for me,” she says, adding that she envisioned Clean Market as a catch-all for feeling good. “This type of space marries food and functional medicine [with] the stress and lifestyle component for feeling well. I really wanted to have that all in one space.”
The menu is vast but the space is open and airy, beginning with a modern-day apothecary that sells everything from aluminum-free deodorant to True Botanicals skincare to supplements and pantry items like grain-free vanilla extract from Sweet Laurel Bakery. “If you go to my apartment and open up the cabinet, it’s our retail section,” says Kunin. Brands include Goop, the Beauty Chef, Ursa Major, and Anima Mundi Herbals. The Lord Jones CBD gummies are already out of stock.
Grab-and-go food offerings (some of which include wild salmon and pasture-raised chicken) are right next to the café, which serves organic Counter Culture coffee, smoothies, and hot or cold drinks made with Moon Juice dusts, pearl, CBD, and grass-fed collagen. For next-level wellness seekers, there are ingestible shots of digestive bitters, oil of oregano for immunity, and several different B vitamins.
Many of the staff are trained health coaches, so if someone comes in and is feeling stressed or overstuffed or unbalanced, they can recommend services, which range from IVs provided by NutriDrip (and administered by nurses on-site) to a session in a full-spectrum infrared sauna (with towels and slippers provided by Parachute Home) to a quick-and-chilly two or three minutes in a cryotherapy chamber. Monthly memberships for unlimited infrared saunas or cryotherapy (or both) are available and offer discounts for other items in the store. Pricing will be released in the coming weeks.
Kunin hopes to open five more locations in the next year or two, eyeing a few more in Manhattan and along the East Coast. The current spot, on East 54th Street, is on a block that also houses Equinox, SoulCycle, Blink Fitness, and Skin Laundry, making it a mecca for Midtowners who don’t always have the same beauty options as downtown residents.
