Café Santosha Offers Food and Contentment

Sarah Collins attended renowned Pratt Institute in Brooklyn intending to be a schoolteacher. Instead, her husband, Josh, a Penn State grad, became the teacher, and she became the owner of a health food restaurant named Café Santosha.

Now they have a 5-month-old baby boy named Finn, who is attracting much of the attention from the cafe patrons. “It’s like Huck Finn … Josh and I both read Twain’s book,” she said.

Collins, 29, runs the café, which opened Feb. 28 next to , a health food store that has been run for 17 years by her parents, Dianne and Lloyd Burg.

“I went to art school, and that started the whole food thing,” she said. “We have a great organics produce department. You can’t get it many places. Our customers know that’s what I use in the café.
We wanted to do everything green when we opened the café.”

Collins said health food comes natural for her since her parents were hippies and believed in a healthy diet.

“Santosha” means contentment. It‘s a word from her yoga classes. People want to feel content when they finish eating.

Collins and her only employee, Amber Van Wert, work in the kitchen all day and they are both into organic food.

“The farmers care about the land,” Collins said. People that buy it don’t want to have food sprayed with chemicals. It’s hard work, because it’s not easy being an organic farmer, or any farmer for that matter.

“It’s worth it because it doesn’t bring chemicals into our food."

Among the items featured on the Café Santosha menu are:

• Homemade Organic Soup of the Day for $3.50.
• A  vegetarian protein sandwich for  $5.99.
• Fruit and yogurt parfait for $5.95.
• Grilled Vegetable Quesadilla for $8.50
• Herbal hot tea for $1.80

“My parents were into gardens, natural foods,” Collins said. “Mom is a certified nutritionist. She was upset working in hospitals and not seeing the patients get better. It was always a dream to open up a health food store, and the timing and place were right 17 years ago.’’

Her parents cut off a part of their Healthy Alternatives store, which is now 1,950 square feet, and allowed the café to use 1,200 square feet. The health food store employs 11 sales people and attracts about 100 people each day, while the café does half that, Collins said.

The café is open 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Friday at 7150 Hamilton Blvd. in Trexlertown Plaza.

Store hours for Healthy Alternatives are 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday; 9:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Thursday; 9:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Friday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday.