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A new sandwich spot in Thibodaux is bringing a bevy of healthy eating options to the Bayou Region.
Healthe Café is located on North Acadia Road near Thibodaux Regional Medical Center. The café’s name is a nod to its location in the same lot as the campus of eLearningk12, the online learning school servicing the Bayou Region. Claire Kopfler, who runs Healthe with her husband John, is the daughter of Nancy and Doug Toups, the owners of eLearningk12.
Claire and John opened the café in January as a way to service the eLearning students and staff. At first, the business only had one or two things on the menu per day. However, Healthe started to build out its menu, and customers not affiliated with the virtual school kept popping in for fresh meals. By March, Claire and John expanded Healthe’s focus to cater to the entire local market. Claire said the café’s first few months were critical to learning how to run a business and best serve customers.
“Let’s just start with eLearning and see how that goes to get our feet wet. Then we were like okay, we’re comfortable, we feel like we can service a larger population,” Claire said.
Since then, Healthe’s menu has grown into a dependable yet evolving array of offerings. The café has a collection of fresh fruit smoothies, sandwiches, wraps and pitas, salads and even kids’ meals. For those with dietary restrictions, Healthe has gluten-free, dairy-free and vegan options. According to John, Healthe preps as much of the fruits and vegetables as it can daily to provide top-notch meals.
“I think people can tell the difference with everything that we do because it’s clean and it’s fresh and it’s quality. I think that makes a huge difference,” John said.
To keep the menu as fresh as the ingredients, Healthe is also offering an ever-changing series of daily specials, with a new schedule each week. The most popular sellers graduate to the regular menu. This week’s specials include a lentil soup and grilled three-bean salad wrap offered on Wednesday and a white bean and turkey chili soup and turkey apple pepper pita on Friday. Claire, who worked as a dietician before starting Healthe, said many of the meals she’s brought to Healthe were things she had been cooking for herself for years. However, the search for new creations to add to the menu has resulted in an expansion of her own mental cookbook.
“It’s definitely been a learning experience for me, because to always do something different and keep it fresh, I had to learn a few things as I went,” Claire said.
Claire and John said part of their mission at Healthe is to neutralize the stigma around healthy meals, most notably that they lack in flavor. They said they want to show the Bayou Region that meals can be both good on the way down and for one’s nutrition. They said they hope to provide an alternative to South Louisiana culinary staples while helping locals live healthier lives.
“People like that Cajun, down-home cooking, which is fine, but you can’t eat like that every day and not pay a price. Especially for lunch, people are looking for something light, fresh,” Claire said.
According to Claire and John, the plan for Healthe is to continue growing in both market share and community involvement. The café hosted a summer cooking camp with children this year and will begin teaching an enrichment cooking class at eLearning this school year. According to the Kopflers, any causes supported by Healthe is payback for the generous help the café received from everyone at eLearning to staff and patients at TRMC stopping by for a snack.
“The support we’ve gotten from eLearning, different patrons, different customers, has been overwhelming. They just want to see us succeed,” John said. •
