Yet another new business has opened its doors in Uptown Martinsville, improving health and wellness with non-traditional medicine. The Wellness Bar Uptown, located in a former bank building at 20 East Main Street in Martinsville, is owned by the husband-and-wife team Mandi and Travis Hundley. It is the area’s first IV hydration and vitamin bar.
The business is the brainchild of Mandi, a transplant to the city, with support from Travis, a Martinsville native who returned to the area several years ago.
Travis graduated from Martinsville High School in 1999 and joined the Air Force, serving for just over 5 years. After leaving the service, he moved to the Charlotte, NC area then to Greensboro to be closer to his mother when she became ill. He finally returned to Martinsville as her health continued to decline, and currently works in planning and logistics for Howmet Aerospace.
Mandi moved to the area in 2013 to work as a hospitalist, sent by a company that contracted with SOVAH for such services.
“It was supposed to be a 3-year assignment,” she said. “But I loved the hospital, I loved the community, I loved my patients. After the three years were up, I was given the opportunity to transition into the cancer center. Cancer (work) is my background and my passion, so I decided to stay.” She is now the nurse practitioner in SOVAH’s oncology clinic.
The pair met when Travis’ mother was Mandi’s patient in the cancer center and married less than a year ago. Together, the two have found a way to combine their strengths (hers in medicine and his in business) to open the new space which, though it was a new concept in an untested market, already has been a hit with the community.
The business is focused on health through non-traditional means, Mandi said. Currently, they offer IV drips, shots, and have installed a salt cave on the upper floor.
“It’s all about alleviating chronic symptoms or complaints,” said Mandi, who said she personally holds a consultation with each new client (who wants an IV drip) to learn their health history, discover what issues they want to address with their drip, and find out if there are any pre-existing health conditions (such as congestive heart failure, uncontrolled high blood pressure, and kidney or liver disease) that might preclude them from getting a drip.
The drips, she said, also address the issue of dehydration, a common problem in the United States. “Eighty to ninety percent of the (U.S.) population is chronically dehydrated and does not know it,” she said. “Dehydration is horrible, and a lot of Americans are vitamin deficient because we don’t absorb a lot through our diet, so dehydration and vitamin deficiency lead to so many chronic complaints and chronic health conditions. People let it go for years and then they end up in a doctor’s office or hospital,” often leaving with multiple medications to manage their conditions.
“We want to catch it on the front end and make people healthier and try to maximize their wellness as much as we can without them having to be chronically ill,” Mandi said.
There is a menu of pre-set cocktails to address issues like brain fog, energy, weight loss, migraines, stress, and even hangovers. Pre-set options from the shot bar (a one-time injection for those who do not have the time for an IV drip) include B12, vitamin D, and others.
All of the drips, Mandi said, are mixed by hand.
“I mix every bag myself,” she said. During one-on-one consultations with new clients, “we sit down and talk about what is bothering them physically or what their specific goals are, and we can mix individual cocktails specific to them. I’ve probably made more individual cocktails than I’ve sold off our standard menu. We make it as individualized as we can.”
The salt cave (a room filled with Himalayan salt) has benefits of its own, and not just for those who prefer an experience that doesn’t involve needles.
“It helps with respiratory conditions,” Mandi said. “The salt’s diffused into the air, so you’re actually breathing it in. It helps with anything from allergies, sinus congestion, asthma, cystic fibrosis, skin conditions. It’s good for mental health—stress, anxiety, depression.”
Travis added that the pair will soon begin partnering with local masseuses to offer massages in the salt cave.
The business also plans to add an oxygen bar upstairs, which will be up and running as soon as supplies arrive. The space will use medical-grade oxygen with a machine that blends it with essential oils to address various complaints, Mandi explained.
For those who do not have the time or willingness to travel to the Uptown location, the pair say they are planning to offer a mobile shot bar “so if a business wants to have one of our nurses come in, for example, on their lunch break” to give shots to employees who want them, they will be available that way, Mandi said. They are also planning to begin hosting cocktail parties, offering drips at bachelorette parties, sporting events, or for other groups who may want the service.
Mandi said she has long dreamed of opening her own business.
“I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted to do something that was in non-traditional medicine, focusing on wellness and preventative health.” In the course of her research into nurse practitioner-led businesses, she took a course specifically on IV vitamin replacement. “I thought it was so interesting, and this is so popular in other places with so many good results and great feedback, I saw an opportunity in Martinsville to do something that is new and different but, I think, very needed.”
Travis admitted that, as excited as his wife was, he was initially skeptical of the concept, as even the idea of an IV drip bar was totally foreign to him.
That all changed earlier this year when, in April, the pair travelled to Florida to attend a wedding. The reception featured an open bar. Mandi had a plan and encouraged him to indulge. The next morning, “I felt horrible,” Travis laughed.
“I told him I made us appointments for hangover drips” prior to their flight home, Mandi said. “We went to an IV lounge. Travis hates needles, but he felt so bad he was willing to try.”
After receiving his drip, “it was like he woke up from the dead,” Mandi said, laughing. “We’re on the plane home and he says, ‘alright, I’m in.’”
“That was the first weekend in April,” Travis recalled. The next month, they conducted a trial run of the concept, setting up as a vendor at Rooster Walk.
“The first two days, I had my doubts,” Travis admitted, “but Saturday and Sunday, it was nonstop.”
The Wellness Bar celebrated its grand opening on June 18, less than a month later.
“We moved so fast,” Mandi said.
The pair brought skillsets from their very different professional backgrounds to the venture.
“Travis knows nothing about medicine,” said Mandi.
“And Mandi knows nothing about business,” Travis replied.
“I was telling him the idea and he said, ‘it sounds great, but who’s going to do the bookkeeping and the supply management and the inventory control?’” Mandi recalled. “I was dumbfounded, because I hadn’t thought of any of that.”
Together, with Travis’ 15-years in business and Mandi’s medical background (in addition to working her full-time job and managing a new business, she is also pursuing her doctorate in nursing) the two have found a formula for success.
Mandi said that, since opening, the community response has been “overwhelming. We’re open six days a week and every day that we’ve been open, we’ve had people scheduled for drips and every day we’ve had twice as many just walking in without an appointment and probably ten times as many shots. The salt room is booked. We’ve been so busy. Sometimes it’s standing room only.”
The crowds are handled by a team of four rotating registered nurses who administer the drips and shots.
“People have been incredibly supportive, and its people I’ve never met. It’s not our friends supporting us, its people supporting the business,” said Mandi.
“We get a lot of feedback that people are glad that something like this came to Martinsville,” Travis said. “We’re the only place (like this) around within an hour and a half or a two-hour radius.”
The business receives support from the local medical community as well, said Mandi.
“We’ve had physicians come in, we’ve had pharmacists come in, we’ve had nurse practitioners, we’ve had physicians sending their patients here,” she said. “To me, that shows that it’s something that, even though it’s a foreign concept for the area, it’s still something that’s respected within the medical community.”
Despite Martinsville being an untested market, the two said they never considered opening their new business anywhere else. For them, it was always going to be in Martinsville.
“It’s home,” Mandi said simply.
“That’s it,” Travis agreed. “What better place to start and grow something than in your backyard?”
“You want to invest in your own community, invest in your own people,” Mandi added.
For more information about The Wellness Bar Uptown, visit the business’s Facebook page.
