Bearded Bros are getting a new HQ, and Surefit Personal Training are launching their second location in a partnership that caters to the many fitness-conscious patrons.
Nik Pfarrer, Bearded Bros owner and best mate Mitch Waters, owner and certified personal trainer at Surefit Personal Training came together after a year of collaborating on a small scale.
Now SureFit’s Mitch is Pairing up with Nik to bring the Bearded Bros Headquarters to life, incorporating the freshest and best house-made healthy lifestyle produce in the same space of SureFit’s new gym facility, expanding on their current buzzing gym in Breakwater.
Here, the first smell that will hit you when you walk into the gym is, surprisingly, not the familiar mixture of a training gym, but the heady aromas of freshly ground coffee. This will come from Bearded Bros HQ, situated in the back half of the gyms space.
The collaboration makes sense, as exercise and diet are the pillars of health.
“We started stocking Nik’s [Bearded Bros] stuff about twelve months ago at the Breakwater Gym, and started getting friendly through that, and then we were just sitting down having a coffee one day, and I said I was keen to open a second gym,” Mitch says. “We thought it would always be cool to pair the two together because they go hand in hand – the healthy snacks that people were loving out at the gym, and I said well how about we put something together – literally together.”
“This was just the next step for me business-wise,” Nik adds. “We currently have a kitchen where I produce everything from, but no one really comes there, it’s not a shop front so this will be like a takeaway cafe with minimal prepared items – paninis and healthy goodies for people after their workout session.”
Three weeks into renovations, the guys have been spending their days and nights on sketchy ladders, with paintbrushes taped to sticks, to get the space ready for opening day on Saturday August 5.
The gym will feature a full set out with brand new equipment, new classes, new sessions such as yoga, kettle-bells and the well-known personal training, boot camps and an on-site physio. With four years at Breakwater, the new gym already has keen members signed up.
“We’ve just been running foundations members at the moment and we already have over 30 people who are signed up and ready to go so it’s looking good,” Mitch says. “We’ll then run a six week challenge at the end of August for here which will be good. We got lucky with this space – it’s perfect for what we want to do.
“You obviously want to exercise, eat well, drink well, and so it’s all of those things put into a one stop shop, and hopefully with us doing the physio as well, it will be a place to go for those needs as well.”
While Mitch will be running between his two gyms, Nik will be at the Bearded Bros HQ everyday, serving the committed gym goers through the hole in the wall, with delicious wholesome nutrition options. The aim is to build a one-stop, healthy lifestyle centre.
“We’re thinking we’ll open at 6am with bootcamps that start then so we’ll be here to get them sorted,” Nik says. “It’s going to be good to have everything in one place, and be open to the public as well. People can now put orders in and come pick them up, we can have our wholesalers that are close by as well coming in to grab their stuff,” Nik says.
“But you also have the large amount of people who aren’t necessarily businesses who still do bulk orders, like they’ll buy up to 30 packs of Granola bars just for themselves, so now they can also just swing by whenever. You’ve got it all in one spot,” Mitch adds, proving these guys are more than just a business collaboration, but two very supportive mates who believe in this venture.
Bearded Bros will stock a variety of his own products, FitFast food and Downtown Juices, among other local collaborations of healthy food – there’s even a donut collabaration in the works with Uncle Donut.
“We’ll have some healthy and sometime food,” Nik says.
“That’s what we’ve always been about,” Mitch adds. We have some athletes who push it quite far but the majority of our people are focussed on a bit of weight-loss, toning and maintaining a balanced lifestyle so that’s why Nik’s stuff really fits, it ties in well.”
Healthy eating aside, the space also provides a space for people to mingle, now offering a place for post-work out catch ups, to help build a community with Nik adding in bench seating and tables which can be accessed through the rear entry of the gym/cafe space.
If there’s a word to sum up the collaboration it would be ‘atmosphere’ – the friendly, social atmosphere that a coffee shop adds to the whole gym. The fact that so many people need that daily caffeine fix means that access to coffee at the gym can enhance the overall customer experience.
“The good thing about this is Bearded Bros products promotes our lifestyle, and that’s the type of thing we are trying to get across to people. We’re not trying to make instagram fame or anything like that, we’re more about have your exercise and your wine too, but also snack healthy, eat healthy and enjoy a healthy fun lifestyle,” Mitch says. “If this all goes well, we’re already thinking about going coastal, replicate this and bring it to the coast. But one thing at a time, we have to get this one happening first.”
“This will be the teething baby and we will work it out from there,” Nik adds.
With a possibility of a liquor license in future and a basketball ring, a Friday night work out and beer could be just what we need.
When & Where: Opening day will be held at the new space, at 63 West Fyans, Geelong – August 5. Surefit Personal Training will host their grand opening from 8am – 11am with free workouts, while Bearded Bros HQ opens to the public Monday August 7.
Written by Talia Rinaldo