Fonseca Nutrition, a café offering healthy food and beverage options, opened recently in Harvey next to an auto shop and a vacant lot on Halsted Street.
Owner Lizbeth Guzman-Fonseca said opening the Harvey location was no easy task. After six months navigating the approval process, including receiving her business license just days earlier, she held a soft opening Dec. 8 for her café at 15734 Halsted St.
Guzman-Fonseca said opening the café in her hometown was full-circle moment, as she began her business by selling nutrition drinks about 17 years ago out of her Harvey home. Now, she’s thrilled to bring healthy food options back to the community that started it all.
“There’s nothing healthy here. There’s not a place where kids could come and do their homework,” she said. “It’s a spot for the community. (Parents) drop off the kids at school, and they’ll come here and everybody just comes here and talks to each other.”
While the café focuses on wellness food offerings, Guzman-Fonseca said she hopes to expand. Once she receives city approval to renovate a back room, she plans to convert the space into a studio for Zumba classes, yoga, meditation and therapy sessions.
Guzman-Fonseca said one of her goals is to help the neighborhood by offering residents opportunities to improve their mental and physical health.
“We want to set up our first meditation session for the community and we’ll do it for free, because a lot of people from around here, are not even open to (it),” she said. “We also work with a lot of therapists. We have therapists come out and do a very inexpensive group therapy, where they’ll charge like five bucks just to introduce it.”
Guzman-Fonseca sells a variety of protein waffles, protein crepes, fruit bowls, teas, energy drinks with Vitamin B12 and meal replacement shakes all made with a nutrition supplement that helps with weight loss, she said. One of the most popular drinks is the crunch cup, a meal replacement shake that tastes like ice cream and can be topped with a variety of sugar-free options.
People can also have enhancers added to their orders, such as fiber, collagen, Vitamin C and fat burners.
Fonseca Nutrition in Harvey is open daily from 6:30 a.m. until 6:30 p.m., though hours may change, Guzman-Fonseca said.
She said the location on Halsted Street was ideal, especially because it was formerly home to a Michoacana ice cream shop, which made the remodel more affordable as much of the equipment needed for a café was already in place.
Her passion for wellness and nutrition began at 24, when she started her own weight loss journey. She credits the supplements with helping her lose over 60 pounds and manage her panic attacks, which motivated her to change her lifestyle.
After people noticed her weight loss, Guzman-Fonseca said they began asking how she achieved it, which led her to start offering the products from her home with her mom.
“We started with our shop from home, and people will come and they’ll sit in the living room, and they would drink their nutrition, because they had seen how much weight we have lost,” Guzman-Fonseca said.
When Guzman-Fonseca and her mother decided to open their first café in Dolton in 2010, she said they “took a leap of faith.” Since then, the Dolton store has closed, but Guzman-Fonseca expanded her business to four locations, including one in Gage Park on Chicago’s Southwest Side, as well as stores in Midlothian and Lansing.
Luz Lopez, who lives in South Holland, visited the café Thursday with her daughter before a doctor’s appointment. She’s been buying the nutrition drinks from Guzman-Fonseca since she first started selling them from her home.
“I drink it over there and it’s fun, because when I go over there, I’m talking somebody. And I lost maybe 4 or 5 pounds,” she said.
Lopez said she was excited for the Harvey location to open, as it’s just a short distance from her house. While she is busy taking care of her children, Lopez said she plans to visit whenever she can.
Guzman-Fonseca said she strives to give back to the community by hiring only local residents at all of her nutrition shops. She also partners with SGA Youth and Family Services, a social service organization serving the Chicago area, to hire teens and teach them valuable life skills they can carry into the workforce and adulthood.
That requires patience, she said, but is rewarding as she mentors underserved teens, teaching them customer service skills and the ins and outs of running a business.
Guzman-Fonseca said she plans to host an official grand opening in January once she finishes decorating the café and remodeling the back room into a studio.
smoilanen@chicagotribune.com
Fonseca Nutrition brings healthy eats and wellness to Harvey
