On a stretch of East Williamsburg near the Graham Avenue L subway stop, the low-key Earth Wellness Cafe is easy to miss.
But step inside, and you’ll find a warm spa-restaurant hybrid, with funky mismatched wooden furniture and ’80s music (think: Sade’s “Smooth Operator”) playing as the faint scent of lavender wafts through the air.
In the backyard is a small outdoor garden, and a downstairs yoga studio turns into a venue for comedy nights, dance parties, swing dancing classes and poetry slams at night and on weekends.
The laid-back vegetarian cafe and spa opened in August and is the brainchild of Nestor Cora.
After starting other businesses in the city, including a spa in the East Village, a cafe in Chelsea and a massage and nail salon in Williamsburg, Earth Wellness Cafe brings all of Cora’s healthy hobbies under one roof.
“This is the most different of all the places I’ve opened,” he says. “It’s bringing all the things I like to do full circle.”
It’s also not exactly a business one might expect from a former pro basketball player and Olympian.
Cora, 57, was born and raised in The Bronx, and at 16 was recruited to play professional basketball in Puerto Rico.
He spent summers competing on the island and the rest of the time back in the city attending school.
He made the Puerto Rican Olympic basketball roster in 1980 — although the commonwealth did not participate due to the US’ boycott of the games that year — and in 1984.
From a young age, Cora was interested in healthy eating and nutrition.
When he was on the road for games, he always brought along healthy food, which he would eat at restaurants on top of a salad while his teammates chowed down on steaks.
After he retired from professional ball in 1990, Cora opened a cafe in Chelsea.
After that closed, he taught children’s sports on the Upper East Side for two years in the late ’90s.
But a slip and fall and subsequent back injury shifted his career focus from sports to healing. He studied massage at the Swedish Institute in the city and also trained in Bali, which inspired him to offer Earth Wellness Cafe’s signature massage-and-hot tub-soak combination.
“Massage helped me learn about my body and bones and helped me heal myself,” he says. “It was my calling.”
While he was in school for massage, Cora opened an intimate spa in the East Village in 1999.
“I’ve been able to start businesses by the seat of my pants,” he says. “I’ve always done things without a lot of capital. I scrape and I scratch.”
People stopped coming to the spa after the economic downturn following 9/11, and the business shuttered.
Cora then worked as a massage therapist at spas around the city — but was always thinking about his next venture.
One day, as he was riding his bike in the neighborhood, he saw a space for rent that he would eventually turn into Earth Wellness Cafe.
It wasn’t easy securing the space, however.
Cora was turned down three times by the landlord and doing renovations with only a month and a half until the grand opening. To save money, Cora ripped the floors out of his apartment and put them into the cafe, and he laid the tile in the kitchen and hot tub room himself.
Besides instilling a sense of discipline and a drive for perfection, Cora’s training as an athlete has informed his business in other ways.
“I traveled all over the world, and I’m good at relating to all types of people,” he says. “I love sharing the things I know.”
With only one treatment room for facials and massages and one private room for the hot tub soak, spa-goers get personalized, one-on-one attention.
If you want to open a place where people are going to eat vegetarian food, you should be vegetarian. You gotta be true to what you’re doing.
- Nestor Cora
And after their treatment, patrons can nibble on vegetarian fare like the “BLT,” made with barbecue tempeh instead of bacon.
Even with a multitude of offerings, from food to fitness to spa, Cora, who performs reflexology in Flushing by day, is constantly adding new experiences for customers. Every Saturday, there’s a different cultural happening downstairs, with regular blues dance parties and poetry readings in the rotation.
Eventually, Cora — who’s learning how to play the piano — would like to perform his own works at Earth Wellness Cafe’s performance space.
“I like to keep things interesting,” he says.
Cora says getting a business off the ground boils down to staying true to your passions.
“You have to be open-minded about finding ways to get your business going, whether that’s selling your car or selling your music equipment,” he says.
“You can’t open a pizza shop if you don’t like pizza. If you want to open a place where people are going to eat vegetarian food, you should be vegetarian. You gotta be true to what you’re doing.”