Until has opened its fourth club at Canary Wharf, in the iconic YY London building.
Following on from existing sites in Soho, Marylebone and Liverpool Street, Canary Wharf is the biggest and most ambitious to date, bringing health and wellness specialism under one roof including fitness, nutrition, physiotherapy, medical and dental.
“Our Canary Wharf Club is the fullest expression yet of what Until is trying to do,” says CEO and co-founder, Vishal Amin. “Hundreds of practitioners and 50+ specialisms, are working side by side, not in silos.
"People often assume Until is a gym or a wellness clinic, but we're trying to build something genuinely new.
“Our State of the Industry Report, which surveyed more than 500 of London's leading health and wellness practitioners, found that 56 per cent were already considering expanding into Canary Wharf, and 93 per cent believe it will become a major wellness hub within five years.
“They identified a huge concentration of time-poor, high-performing professionals in the area who are willing and able to invest in their health but haven't had a credible, joined-up destination to go to.
“There's also a growing appetite around corporate wellbeing and employers wanting to embed health into what they offer their people. We're now firmly in the growth phase of the business. The plan is to open more London clubs and, ultimately, to take the model global.”
A debate was hosted at the launch event around how to make people’s health better. The panel was made up of Marc Diaper, CEO of Fitness First (who will be speaking at this year’s HCM Summit; Dr Nikita Kanani MBE a GP as well as global medical director of Neko; Until member Dr Flora Bailey and Vishal Amin.
Questions were asked which are relevant for the whole industry, such as are the longevity modalities creating anxiety rather than agency? And are we overcomplicating health and wellness before nailing the basics?
One audience member made the point that people who live in blue zones – the places in the world where people live longest – seem to be getting it right without all the gadgets.
A big thread running through the whole evening was the shift from reactive to proactive health. People are increasingly thinking about their health before something goes wrong.
The key takeaway was that despite more information and more choice and AI, what people still need is real expertise. Someone who understands their specific context, their nuance, their history and can help them cut through the noise.
“It's exactly why Until exists – to connect people with the right expert for them,” says Amin. “What we've built is new: a destination where your PT, your GP, your dentist and your physio are all in one building, and actually talking to each other. That's never existed before.
“The practitioners who are part of it are building real businesses on their own terms, keeping 100 per cent of their client revenue. When that works well, everyone wins – the practitioners and the clients.”
