The Bognor Regis business offering a 'holistic' approach to wellbeing

From the outside, Brooke's Lounge looks like any other café. It serves hot food, sweet treats and frothy lattes from within an insistently chic lounge, complete with cosy booths and instagrammable art. Scratch the surface, though, and there's a lot more to discover.

Between yoga, pilates, fitness and pre-natal classes, hand-picked self-care products and bespoke self-catered accommodation, founder Dani Delaney said Brooke's Lounge offers something much more ambitious than oat milk cappuccinos: a holistic approach to wellbeing.

"It's a brand new concept, really," Mrs Delaney, a qualified counsellor, said.

"It's not new in my profession, but it's new to the general public. We see so much in the news and the media about people having problems with their mental health, and there doesn't seem to be a solution for that. I think, in my work as a counsellor, I was often sign posting people to do things alongside the talking. I'd ask them 'have you been to Yoga?' 'Have you been practicing mindfulness?' 'What's your exercise routine like?'. And that's what holistic means, it's about taking all those things and putting them under one roof.

"I wanted to set up something that was accessible, something that didn't seem scary. When you go to a yoga class or a Pilates class or a stretch class, you're working towards something bigger. It's also a kind of self-care. And self-care isn't something you have to do in the shadows, and that's part of what I'm trying to achieve with Brooke's Lounge."

Opening with a soft-launch in December last year, Mrs Delaney wanted to give staff a chance to settle in before announcing the business properly. Now though, she feels like Brooke's Lounge is ready for the big time, having announced a grand opening weekend over March 5 and 6. Complete with taster sessions, kids classes, mini beauty treatments and more, Mrs Delaney hopes to announce Brooke's Lounge's presence in Bognor Regis.

"We just needed a bit of time. I wanted to make sure we found our feet with the business. There are a lot of new things under one roof here, and I really just wanted to feel confident that the staff were happy with the services we're offering."

Part of that confidence, she explained, comes from the positive feedback Brooke's Lounge has received from existing customers.

"The people who come in are the people who are looking for something like this," she explained "and I think they notice the attention to detail.

"But I wanted to normalise self-care, so my challenge is reaching people who might not always reach out for help."

To find out more about Brooke's Lounge, click here.