Hydrate IV Bar

BUSINESS profile

Hydrate IV Bar offers alternatives to help maintain well-being

BY CAROL BROCK

Tucked into a strip mall in Boulder’s Folsom Village, Hydrate IV Bar looks like it could be one of a hundred mom-and-pop shops. But cross the threshold and you’ll enter a tranquil, spa-like setting where you can sink into a cushy leather armchair and admire calming art on restfully painted walls or watch nature images scroll on a big-screen TV.

Everything in this pleasant parlor is meant to calm and soothe, which is good when you’re about to get a needle stuck in your arm. The health professionals at Hydrate IV Bar think of it as a gentle prick on your road to personal wellness through injectable supplements and hydrating, nutrient-rich IVs delivered directly into your bloodstream. “A lot of people don’t realize how good their body could feel if they were giving it what it needed,” says Katie Wafer, owner of Boulder’s Hydrate and four sister stores in Denver. Administering saline and nutrients intravenously results in “one-hundred percent absorption,” she says, which is not the case with oral supplements. The shop’s serene environment and wellness services are Wafer’s brainchild. She has an extensive background in medical sales and witnessed firsthand the health-enhancing effects of IV hydration and supplement injections while working with medical doctors who offered these services, and professional athletes who used them to enhance performance. Being personally passionate about alternative medicine, and with a background in conventional medicine, Wafer created the idea for Hydrate. Instead of administering IV therapies and injectables in a clinical setting, she toyed with a different approach: “I wanted to create a boutique spa setting where you’d come to us, tell us what you wanted, and we could provide that service for you.”

When Wafer met Dr. Nora MacDonald, D.O., and owner of the Integrative Center for Health in Fort Collins, everything fell into place. MacDonald has nearly 30 years of experience in integrative medicine, Wafer says, and the two “immediately hit it off.” While Wafer developed Hydrate’s business model, MacDonald crafted its menu of services, protocols, policies and procedures, and oversaw Hydrate’s compounding pharmacies that make all the IVs and injectables on Hydrate’s menu.

Veteran nurses administer Hydrate’s injectables and IVs, and take vital signs and temperatures before treatments begin. “We are very sensitive to the fact that a fear of needles is very common,” Wafer says. “We do our best to make it as comfortable and approachable as possible. I’m very, very confident in our

PHOTOS COURTESY HYDRATE IV BAR