At Fresh Healthy Cafe, our restaurant owners are much more than just franchise owners; they’re family!
We are so happy to have a new addition to the Fresh family. Meet Nicole and her husband Jason from Daphne who have just opened the first Fresh Healthy Cafe in the State, located in Spanish Fort, Alabama.
The couple first met in college in what some may call the quintessential American date, at a college football game. Although it wasn’t actually their date that Nicole was on. While on a “friend date” Nicole remembered the moment she first saw Jason in the crowd.
“Somehow two different fraternities ended up in the same section in the stands. The rivalry between the two fraternities had brought on tension and things were getting a bit heated. Just a few rows ahead of me out of nowhere this guy stood up, calmed the crowd and totally took control of the situation. I was interested right away and nudged a friend to ask who’s that guy? We spent the rest of the game together and have been together ever since.”
After the couple married four years later, Nicole went on to teach Kindergarten while Jason moved forward in his career in Chemical Engineering. Three years into her teaching career, Nicole became pregnant with their first child and eating healthy would become more important than ever. As the family grew, so did Nicole’s passion for fitness and healthy lifestyle. She is a certified AFFA personal trainer as well as Orange Theory Coach, Les Mills Body Pump, Les Mills Body Combat, Fit Tour Group Fitness, POUND and ZUMBA.
Today, Jason and Nicole have two beautiful daughters and a son. They absolutely love the community they’ve planted roots in to raise their family. As many stay at home parents can relate to, Nicole had dreams to one day open her own business.
With her work experience in restaurants and passion for fitness, the health food industry seemed like the perfect fit.
“Over the next year or so, we started looking into businesses that I could start and enjoy doing, but nothing really seemed to fit. That was until one day while driving with the family, I was so hungry and all that was available was the typical fast food chains. Feeling a bit hangry by now, I said to Jason, why isn’t there any healthy, fresh food anywhere? He shouted “That’s it! You should do it yourself, open a franchise that offers healthier food than what’s readily available.
We started looking into a franchise which offered the healthy food that we would want to eat ourselves and not the typical fast, fried food which is common in Alabama. I spent the next several months researching franchises online and Fresh Healthy Cafe started jumping out at me. It just happened that Jason was on a business trip at the same time I was checking out other Fresh franchise locations and saw that there was a location at the Atlanta airport. The same airport Jason was travelling from. I called him to see if he was still at the airport and he was! I asked him to go and try the food. I suppose you could call it our own investigative research. About 20 minutes later the phone rang and it was him. I answered the phone and the first thing he said was,
“This place is awesome! This is it Nicole – Fresh Healthy Cafe is the perfect fit for your new business!”
The past few months leading up to our grand opening, the people in our community have been so incredibly supportive. Spanish Fort is such a great place to raise a family, own a small business and give back. Being able to give back to the same community which is now supporting us, is a driving force for me. While we do already help out where we can with local charities and fundraisers, it would be such an amazing feeling to be able to do more. Although we are just into our first Fresh Healthy Cafe franchise, we definitely want to be able to bring the healthy and delicious food we offer to more communities in our home state of Alabama. To be able to offer the community healthier food choices, a brighter future for our children and give back to our community is what I’ve always dreamed of and now, those dreams are coming true!”
Welcome to the Fresh family Nicole and Jason!
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If you’re looking to start a new business which offers Fresh Healthy choices to your community, read more about how you can become a Fresh Healthy Cafe owner!
Photo Credit: Travon Gibbs Photography
