GOOD KARMA: At Bushwick’s Cobra CLub, you can drink after your downward dog. (Zandy Mangold)
Julia Huffman and Nikki Koch (right) founded the studio. (Zandy Mangold)
The chalkboard sign outside Cobra Club is just like any other propped up outside your typical Bushwick watering hole, advertising happy-hour drink specials in big letters.
But at the bottom — in smaller print — reads a surprising announcement: “Yoga @ 6pm” and “Pilates @ 7:45pm.”
Inside, baskets of bright orange cheese balls rest on the dark wooden bar top. A young customer taps away on her MacBook as Johnny Cash plays in the background. The walls are decorated with what at first glance looks like a floral pattern; only upon closer inspection does the design’s skull centerpiece reveal itself. The yoga studio itself is located behind a discreet door in the back of the bar — but once inside, you won’t find your typical vinyasa class: There’s no chanting, no Sanskrit and, most importantly, no holier-than-thou attitude.
Indeed, nothing is exactly as it seems at Cobra Club, the country’s first yoga studio/bar hybrid that opened in mid-June.
After separate careers in the hospitality business, owners Nikki Koch, Julia Huffman and Dana Bushman opened Cobra Club for who they call “yoga misfits”: Unlike most studios — whose clientele skews toward fit, Lululemon-clad ladies — Cobra Club attracts a 50-50 mix of men and women, plus a smattering of newbies and born-again yogis.
“The primary customer is someone who doesn’t practice yoga, or practiced it, but was deterred — I’m not fit enough, flexible enough, I like to eat meat on the weekend. I was one of those people for years,” says Bushman, 36, who recently moved to Sonoma, Calif.
Koch, a former skin-care company executive, and Huffman, a former general manager at downtown bar the Delancey, became fast friends during a bartending gig when they were both new to the city 10 years ago.
“[Nikki] had been thinking of opening a yoga studio. I had been thinking of opening a bar,” says Huffman, 33, who lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. “We would take yoga together, and then we would go out and complain about our jobs. We’d always have a glass of wine or a beer after. We thought, ‘We’re not the only people who do this.’ ”
“You take a yoga class, you feel great. You’re there with a friend. You want to keep talking,” adds Koch, 36. “Why not provide a place for people to sit and hang out and have a conversation?”
They decided on Bushwick, where Koch and her husband live, due to its dearth of nearby exercise studios — and its need for more bars to serve residents of the rapidly expanding Brooklyn nabe.
But not everybody was so open to the concept at first.
When the trio started floating the idea of a bar/yoga studio — which, because it offers cocktails, is technically registered as a bar under the State Liquor Authority — many were perplexed. Hard-core yogis got offended. One online commenter quipped Cobra Club should just sell heroin to customers; others decried it as the amusement park-ification of yoga.
Some styles of yoga are ascetic and promote avoiding meat, alcohol and dairy — but Koch doesn’t think drinking and yoga are necessarily opposed. “There’s a yoga philosophy that’s all about abstinence,” she says. “And then there’s a yoga philosophy about living your life and being happy. We’re obviously more that style.”
To that end, Cobra Club offers its popular Hangover Yoga class, a one-hour session on Saturdays and Sundays, with the price of a Bloody Mary or mimosa at the bar built into the $15 price tag. Customers from as far away as Harlem and Bay Ridge have trekked to Bushwick to try the slow-moving, hatha-style practice.
To raise capital for the business, the three owners pitched in their own cash and devised a profit-sharing model where they sold shares of the company to friends, family and investors, according to Bushman. A certain amount buys a share, and the more shares you buy, the bigger your percentage of the potential profit you’ll get. But unlike other profit-sharing plans, it’s not permanent — payouts stop after three years. “We were able to turn some people away,” says Bushman. “We wanted to retain a certain amount of control.”
The 750-square-foot studio space is spare, with a warm, dark wood floor, flowing sheer curtains and a lone candle burning. Koch, one of the studio’s teachers, focuses on breathing techniques to aid relaxation and provides gentle, hands-on adjustments to make poses easier. Unlike more athletic, vinyasa yoga styles, you don’t feel exhausted after class — just looser and mellower.
The owners plan to introduce other classes, such as martial arts and dance, in the evenings when the bar is bumping. Starting Sept. 29, Cobra Club will offer burlesque classes the last Saturday of every month. For $20, the price includes the class, plus a glass of post-workout Prosecco.
“We’re not going to make [customers] feel bad if they’re a little hung over, or they were out late the night before, or they were working really hard, long hours,” Koch says. “We’re not saints, and we’re not sitting on a mountaintop meditating. We live in New York.”
WAYS TO STRETCH YOUR BUSINESS
Pick partners carefully: Koch, Huffman and Bushman all had previous business ventures with pals — and are no longer best buds with their former partners. So when they started Cobra Club, the three tried to avoid a similar fate by having frank discussions about everyone’s strengths and expectations, and by coming up with an exit strategy if one partner isn’t happy or situations change. “You have to get the ugly stuff out of the way first,” Bushman says. “It’s like writing a will. No one wants to think about it. Set yourself up legally, financially from the get-go, and you stay friends.” Hint: If you still want to hang out with your partner after hashing out the dreary business details, that’s a good sign.
Look for alternate funding: To raise $10,000 for a special low-impact wooden floor (to prevent injuries in the studio), the Cobra Club owners uploaded a video to the online fund-raising tool Indiegogo. For each level of donation, they offered perks like a bar tab or unlimited yoga classes for a month. By doing this, they managed to exceed their fund-raising goal by $200.
Do it yourself: The owners enlisted family, friends and significant others to help with renovations. Bushman taught Huffman and Koch how to tile. And they installed the yoga studio floor themselves. (The owners each wrote their names on a piece of wood.)
Stick to your guns . . . : “One of our construction guys said to us one day, ‘You want everything perfect,’ ” Huffman says. “Yeah, we do. Don’t let people bully you into doing not exactly what you want. You only have one shot at creating it.”
. . . But also be flexible: When Cobra Club first opened, the bar only served local, handcrafted whiskey and tequila — but customers asked for brands like Jack Daniels and Stoli. “Be super-bullish on whatever your idea is, and then take a step back,” says Koch. “A lot of people open businesses, and they get caught up in what the idea was behind it.”
In other words, once your business is open, be adaptable.
“The minute the business is open, it tells you what it needs, and you need to be flexible and respond to the needs of the business — not just your ideas,” Koch adds.