Best friends Fortify St. Boniface

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This article was published 14/12/2019 (2281 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Customers can grab vitamins, hygiene products and a fresh sandwich after meeting with a health practitioner at a new business on the corner of Tache Avenue and Marion Street.

Fortify Natural Wellness has a health-focused clinic, store and restaurant under the same roof. The company’s owners want to bridge the gap between alternative and conventional medicine in Winnipeg, one of its founders says.

Fortify is split into two sections. One hosts the seven-practitioner clinic that includes a naturopathic doctor, licensed marriage and family therapist, acupuncturist, reflexology therapist, massage therapist, homeopath and culinary nutrition expert.

Fortify Foods is located in the other section, closest to where the streets intersect. Tables are set up near the floor-to-ceiling windows that face Tache Avenue, where people can eat plant-based foods that have been prepared in-store. Curry bowls and cashew-and-blackberry toast are among the menu choices that include smoothies, soup and sandwiches.

Joining with the restaurant is Fortify Shop, a retail store stocked with health products: vitamins, women’s hygiene products, scent diffusers, bamboo toothbrushes and toothpaste tablets, among others.

Katrina Vanderveen, who started the business with her best friend, Stephanie Rempel, said they wanted to put different aspects of healthy living under one roof.

“This is exactly what we wanted when we walked through our own wellness journeys,” she said. “The fact that you can see your (naturopathic) doctor, go over and immediately pick up the supplements that she recommends, and then grab a healthy lunch on the way out — it seemed so perfect, in our minds.”

Vanderveen and Rempel found the location, which had been a Rexall drugstore, about a year ago.

Fortify began not as a brick-and-mortar business, but a blog between the two friends who studied nutrition and decided they didn’t want to become traditional nutritionists.

“We both realized, ‘OK, what do we do now?’ And so we started together,” Vanderveen said.

The blog was called Fortify Natural Wellness. After getting that running, Vanderveen wanted to make a physical product. So, she and Rempel created a sugar-free granola under Fortify’s brand. The granola sold in retail stores around Winnipeg and at pop-up markets such as Third + Bird.

Vanderveen and Rempel then decided to tackle their next goal: opening an alternative-medicine clinic.

“We live in a society where we have sick care, not health care,” Vanderveen said. “Though we believe in conventional medicine and the importance of it, and we want to work alongside your general practitioners or your conventional doctors, we understand that the way of healing is also finding the root cause, and that’s what alternative medicine does.”

Vanderveen cites the close proximity to St. Boniface Hospital and the natural light as reasons the location was perfect for them.

People can book appointments with Fortify’s health practitioners online or by calling or emailing the business. The practitioners collaborate and can refer patients to other professionals on-site, Vanderveen said. She said the group also references instructions from their clients’ general practitioners.

Vanderveen and Rempel rent Fortify’s space to other businesses in the evening, and they host events of their own.

Every Friday evening, the tables are cleared from the shop and restaurant to make space for a yoga class. There is space for 20 yoga mats, Vanderveen said, and the $15 class is open to anyone.

Vanderveen and Rempel also organize a free running club that meets Saturdays at 7:45 a.m. The group runs five kilometres through St. Boniface before ending at Fortify. Vanderveen said the club is a way for the community to come together.

Fortify opened its doors in October. Vanderveen said the past two months have been hectic, but she’s happy with how Winnipeggers have responded.

“We are so exhausted, still overwhelmed, but we are just absolutely full of joy to say that this dream has come true,” she said.

gabrielle.piche@freepress.mb.ca