Inside Covington's Haven Café, a Health-Focused Coffeeshop with Mindful Ingredients

When Sabyle Zeringis made the choice to start living a healthier lifestyle, she struggled to find coffeeshops in her area that used the kind of quality ingredients she wanted to put in her body. So she began crafting her lattes at home, using alternatives she couldn’t find on menus and soon realized that maybe she wasn’t the only one facing this choice. Zeringis opened Covington's Haven Café — she held her soft opening the weekend of Aug. 6 — to offer a “safe haven” for people looking for recognizable, high-quality ingredients. Haven Café uses organic syrups, local dairy with zero hormones or antibiotics and dairy alternatives including oat milk. They also offer a variety of classic coffee and espresso drinks, along with creative alternatives such as an organic matcha mango lemonade and turmeric-infused lattes. Grab a charcoal lavender cookie, specially made for Haven by Brown Bear Bakery, or Haven’s new Summer Toast: sourdough, goat cheese, honey and fresh peaches, with more breakfast and lunch items coming to the menu soon. They also carry gluten- and dairy-free donuts from local Charnee's Doughnuts. Zeringis says that Haven Café stands apart from other coffeeshops, not only because of their wholesome ingredients, but also because of the healthy add-ons they have begun to offer, such as collagen supplements and adaptogens (an herb family used to boost the body’s ability to handle stress). Haven Café will soon have a sister holistic business called Haven Spa to offer additional ways to nourish the body. The goal is for Haven Spa to be open in fall 2020, offering manicures and pedicures, facials and waxing, along with some Eastern medicine techniques such as Gua Sha, a lymphatic drainage treatment. The café and spa with have separate entrances to the same building and can be cross-accessed from within. The vision comes from the idea that Zeringis doesn’t want people to feel like they’re walking into a spa to get their coffee or vice versa, but she wants each to be easily accessible to the other.