Grab a waffle or a shake at Fit Nutrition; Menu built for healthy lifestyles | Restaurant Spotlight
STAFFORD — For three years, Fit Nutrition at 139 W Main St. has offered a menagerie of flavors of shakes and teas. There are 50 shakes and 16 “loaded” teas on the menu, as well as boosters for a nutritional bonus.
The owner, Audrey Owens, said she opened Fit Nutrition as an expansion of her work with Herbalife Nutrition, with whom she has been working for 10 years, using Herbalife products in all their shakes and teas.
“I decided to do a brick and mortar because I already had a client following,” she said.
The clientele, she said, came from workout classes she used to teach before the pandemic every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in various locations in Stafford, including Hyde Park and the high school.
“I’m a single mom and have two kids and needed to figure out another source of income,” she said. “When my daughter was 4 and able to go to preschool, it was time for me to figure out if I was going to get a regular job and work 9 to 5 or do this, because this is what I had been doing from home for quite a while.
“I was married,” she said. “I got divorced around the same time I opened up here. It was kind of a blessing that I could do this. It gave me the freedom and flexibility to work around my kids, bring my kids to work during the summer, and if they were sick, they could stay in the back room. I made a space for them. Even with COVID, my kids come here, and they go on their computers right from here. Having the ability to bring my kids to work, I couldn’t do that anywhere else.”
Owens said that the shakes and teas — as well as other items such as parfaits and waffles — give people options to support a healthy lifestyle.
“The nutrition can help people, who want to be on a healthy lifestyle,” she said. “It can help people gain muscle; it can help people with digestive issues. It can help people lose weight, that’s a big one. A lot of people want to lose weight. We have a lot of athletic clients. We carry pre-workout, post-workout, we carry pretty much something for everybody. We have children’s shakes, but they’re not meal replacement shakes. It’s something good that they can have between what they’re eating. We have children’s drinks that are hydration drinks, kind of like Gatorade, there’s no added sugar. People who are diabetic come here. We have keto shakes. We try to accommodate everybody’s diet.”
And it’s not just shakes and teas. Waffles are on the menu, Owens said, as a healthy first meal of the day.
“A lot of people like waffles because it’s more of a breakfast food. We create the shake into a waffle. We mix it up in to a batter and instead of blending it in a blender, we mix it with a hand mixer and put it in the waffle maker. They eat waffles and feel like they’re cheating, but they’re really not,” Owens said.
Customer Danielle Postemski of Willington said she has been coming to Fit Nutrition for 2½ years.
“I’ve lost 53 pounds and I don’t go to the gym,” she said. “It’s from this. It’s healthy for you. I have my own stuff at home, but I come here to support her and local business.”
She said her favorite shake depends on the month, but during the winter she tends to order the apple pie.
“It tastes literally like an apple pie,” she said.
Owens said a popular drink is the Freckled Lollipop, which is a tea recipe she designed that is available only at Fit Nutrition and its sister store in Vernon, Dragonfly Nutrition and Energy.
It’s a loaded tea, the standard tea that can be purchased at Fit Nutrition with aloe, and a strawberry lemonade flavored collagen beauty booster, she said.
You can upgrade a loaded tea to a lift tea by adding a ginseng tablet to boost mental clarity and focus, and natural raw guarana, she said.
There is also a variety of fruit flavors to infuse with the tea, Owens said, such as blueberry, pomegranate, orange, and pineapple.
The shakes — 50 flavors such as butter pecan, French vanilla, mint chocolate chip, and Snickers — Owens said, are often bought as a meal substitute for people looking to lose weight.
“The shake is a total meal replacement,” she said. “It has over 21 vitamins and minerals. It’s a protein shake as well … to keep the metabolism burning. A lot of people replace two meals a day if they’re trying to lose weight.”
She said the waffles and parfaits are made with the same ingredients and can be used as a meal substitute as well.
Fit Nutrition has a limited seating capacity due to the pandemic. It has two seats at the counter and two chairs where there used to be a coffee table and a sofa, Owens said.
To accommodate, they have curbside pick-up, and customers can call in ahead of time to place their orders.
