In the fall and winter, New York City is crawling with bar crawls. “We wanted to create our own that is a bit more our speed,” says Lily Kunin, founder of wellness destination Clean Market.
On Sept. 23, Clean Market and upscale wellness service provider Ora teamed up on a wellness crawl that brought together the service offerings of the two businesses along with goods from other local food, fitness and retail companies, including Solidcore, Matchaful and The Alchemist’s Kitchen. There was acupuncture from Ora and IV drips from Clean Market on hand—and plenty of swag.
It made sense to Ora founder Kim Ross to join forces with Clean Market for an event because Ora and Clean Market’s customer bases overlap. “We were discussing ways to collaborate beyond a discount partnership, something more creative to ultimately immerse attendees and potential new customers in our brands and ethos,” she says. “Given we are also both community-driven brands, we wanted to tap into the local, lively neighborhood of NoHo and do something special that celebrates our roots on a localized level.”
Tickets to the wellness crawl were priced at $110 and $350, depending on the package of goods and services. Participants paying for the $350 ticket, valued at $450 for the services and merchandise it covered, received a Clean Market IV Drip, Ora Chi’ll acupuncture session, Matchaful breakfast bowl or pastry and matcha latte, and The Alchemist’s Kitchen elixir. Participants paying for the $110 ticket, valued at around $140, received a Clean Market IM Booster Shot, Ora ear seeding and Matchaful latte. All participates received a 50-minute Express Solidcore class, swag tote with product samples and retail discounts for NoHo businesses.
Clean Market and Ora’s wellness crawl is at the epicenter of several business and consumer trends. There’s a growing number of sober-curious people in the United States. According to a survey by consumer data resource NCSolutions, about a third of Americans aim to drink less this year. From a business perspective, IRL initiatives, always important, have become even more so as digital customer acquisition costs have risen.
The crawl also taps into a popular “social wellness” trend in which activities like cold plunges and saunas are experienced in group settings rather than alone. Service destinations such as Remedy Place and Othership have promoted the group-centered approach to wellness—and appear to have legs. Remedy Place, which started in Los Angeles and expanded to New York City in 2022, has plans to open a second Manhattan location. Toronto-based Othership landed in the Big Apple in June with a 6,000-plus square foot bathhouse in the Brooklyn neighborhood Williamsburg.
“We love the social wellness movement, and the Ora x Clean Market wellness crawl is part of that—bringing people together for a day that both supports your health and is good for your social life,” says Kunin. “We believe wellness should be fun and done with friends.” Ross chimes in, “We see so many people looking for new experiences, services and ways to feel better, which is part of the founding ethos of Ora.”
Ross says the plan for the initial wellness crawl was to “keep it intimate,” and 15 wellness enthusiasts took part. Clean Market and Ora will look to expand the crawl’s footprint in the coming years by recruiting additional partners and participants. Ross says, “We’re eager to see consumers’ responses and ultimately how this could be a strategic market tactic to acquire new customers on an ongoing basis.”
Clean Market started in Uptown Manhattan in 2018 with a 3,800-square-foot location and later opened its 2,600-square-foot NoHo and 2,800-square-foot Brookfield Place outposts. Ora opened its NoHo location in 2020 and expanded with an Upper East Side branch in 2021.
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