Store spotlight: Remedy Kenilworth
Matt Chittock discovers how ambitious new owners are breathing fresh life into a historic and much-loved local health store.
Remedy Kenilworth co-owner Lydia Lawrence credits Margaret Hills with having changed her life. “I first came to the store as a patient in my twenties looking for help with an autoimmune condition,” she says. “The advice I got changed my perspective, and I eventually became a manager here before I took it over with my husband Royle this April.”
Margaret Hills (the person and the original store) is something of a natural health legend. A local nurse, in her 50s she struggled with chronic arthritis and had huge success with complementary approaches, including apple cider vinegar and magnesium. The shop she opened, Margaret Hills Health and Lifestyle, was passed on through her family until it changed hands this year.
To mark the sale, Julia Davies, Hills’ granddaughter, told customers that the commitment of the new owners ‘is to honour everything that has made this shop special, while bringing fresh energy and ideas for the future’.
“It all felt a bit daunting at first,” admits Lydia. “We’d had a very busy time; we got married last October and I kept thinking ‘well, maybe this just isn’t our route’. But things really fell into place.”
The couple is serious about their commitment to updating the store while retaining its roots in the local community. “We wanted to not be like your standard health store, but create a funkier, more relaxed atmosphere for customers,” says Royle. “So, we’ve created more space in the store and painted the walls burnt orange. We put a bit of music on too, like funk and soul and old hip hop, to create a welcoming atmosphere.”
“I first came to the store as a patient in my twenties looking for help with an autoimmune condition. The advice I got changed my perspective.”
Natural health is at the core of the store, which has a wide range of supplements, household items, bodycare and organic food, complemented by a refill service. Plus, it also stocks modern versions of the salts and apple cider vinegar that proved so effective for its original owner.
And as the shop has evolved, so have the customers. Lydia talks fondly of attracting a younger, gym-going crowd ‘in sports gear, with their giant water bottles and white trainers’ who are looking for functional products to boost their fitness.
This translates to plenty of till ring around sports favourites like electrolytes and creatine, as well as mushroom tinctures. In particular, Lydia says London Nootropics coffee is ‘flying off the shelves’.
“Collagen is a big one for us – and we really like to offer bone broth,” she says. “We do collagen the traditional way with a really good bone broth concentrate that you can put into water, offering it in the purest food form.”
It’s important for the couple to provide direct support for customers too. The shop runs regular free drop-in sessions with qualified nutritional therapists offering advice on health, lifestyle and wellbeing, with stress being a particular issue. “People find that life is just so fast these days,” says Lydia. “Stress is absolutely heightened and people want advice on how to tackle it.”
Together, the couple have plenty of plans for other ways to connect with the local community, including talks and events. The name above the door might have changed – but it sounds like the kind of approach that Hills would have embraced.
By Matt Chittock, acting editor