Wen Raiti moved from China to Pittsburgh in 2000 and started eating a lot of popular American food.
Pizza, Buffalo wings, processed foods in grocery stores. Soon she didn’t feel well and saw a doctor, who told her she was fine and was adjusting to a new environment.
“I said, OK, maybe he is right,” she said.
Wen and her husband, Jon, moved to Jacksonville in 2006 and she didn’t feel any better. A doctor diagnosed a digestive condition and she spent about two years trying to deal with it.
“Nobody could help, so I decided to help myself,” she said.
After research, she decided to focus on regular exercise, meditation and a fresh, organic, healthy diet, like the plant-based protein she grew up eating in China with soy products like tofu and soy milk.
People noticed. So did her physician.
“My doctor told me, I don’t know what you’re doing, but keep doing what you’re doing.”
Wen and Jon Raiti now are planning to do that for customers.
They are transforming a former Taco Bell at Beach Boulevard and San Pablo Road into the House of Leaf & Bean, which they call an organic café for the mind, body and spirit “where East meets West.”
She expects to open in late October or early November.
The restaurant, designed to include a Zen room, is being remodeled at the Intracoastal Center at 14474 Beach Blvd. Interior Buildouts Inc. is the contractor for the 1,939-square-foot project.
The total project is expected to top $300,000.
The restaurant will seat 40 to 50 customers and is hiring 15 to 20 people.
The exterior already has been repainted green and white with a sign on the window identifying its coming use. Hurricane Irma didn’t inflict any apparent damage.
Nurturing a goal
Wen is an accountant and Jon is an importer-exporter. The venture brings together those skills and more.
The House of Leaf and Bean says on its Facebook page that it “strives to provide a unique culture and culinary experience that educates the mind and lifts the spirit. We hope to educate Jacksonville consumers and teach them that eating organically can be affordable, functional, and delicious.”
It will become the only organic drive-thru cafe in the city, it says.
It also will offer free meditation classes, traditional Chinese tea ceremonies, the device-free Zen room, fresh food bought locally and tofu made in-house.
The Zen room will seat six to eight people who can relax, listen to soothing music, read, meditate and drink tea — but without their smartphones, tablets or laptops, which can cause stress rather than lessen it.
Raiti spent about 10 years with EverBank Financial Corp., which she left last year. Before that, she was with Ernst & Young and Fidelity National Information Services.
Jon Raiti runs RZI International Trade & Consulting.
State corporate records show that Wenxia Raiti of Neptune Beach is the president of House of Leaf & Bean and Anish Mehra of Jacksonville is vice president and secretary. Qi Zhang of Jersey, City, New Jersey, is the treasurer.
Mehra is a technologist for a New York-based IT company with a company in Jacksonville and Zhang is a CFA and vice president at Bank of New York, Raiti said.
Wen Raiti said she built an advisory panel of nine people, including the officers along with a food scientist, a tea master, a production and HR director, a PR and marketing director, a researcher, others and Dennis Chan, chef and owner of Blue Bamboo, her restaurant adviser.
Raiti set it up as a C corporation, which allows for an unlimited number of stockholders to assist expansion and perhaps an IPO. She is the sole shareholder now.
For now, they are starting at Beach and San Pablo. The remodeling is making space in the back of the former Taco Bell kitchen area for a large tofu production line.
The equipment starts with a bin to soak 300 pounds of soybeans for 8 hours and then turn those beans into tofu in 3 hours, producing soymilk as well along the way.
The Raitis have a small tofu machine at their Beaches home, where they taste-tested Wen’s recipes.
Fresh tofu, Jon said, is as different from the store-bought brand as fresh bakery bread is from the factory-produced loaves on the grocery shelves.
Wen Raiti said the concept also was tested at the Beaches Green Market at Jarboe Park in Neptune Beach.
Tastes and location
The House of Leaf & Bean menu lists organic beverages and foods using plant-based protein products and includes vegetarian, vegan, low-carb and gluten-free options.
Beverages will include Chinese, chai, kombucha and other organic teas; organic coffees; local organic beer and wine; and organic protein smoothies.
House specials will include handmade dumplings; organic hummus blend; stuffed tofu that can include a mix of chicken or shrimp and a blend of vegetables and spices; vegan tofu squares; fried rice; croquettes; salads; homemade organic hot sauces; and snacks and desserts.
Wen Raiti intends to apply for USDA organic certification for the café and offer in-house produced certified food products for distribution.
“This location is pretty ideal to test the business case,” Jon Raiti said. It’s near the Beaches and at a busy intersection that connects Downtown to Jacksonville Beach and East Arlington to Butler Boulevard.
The location is a shopping center outparcel with a drive-thru, making it more accessible to suburban families.
If it can work there, they said, it can be replicated more easily.
Chan, whose Blue Bamboo restaurant is a popular Southside destination, said the House of Leaf & Bean concept is like nothing he’s seen in the area and he predicts it will do well.
He and Wen share culinary roots and some of her menu items are created from scratch like his family made at home.
The meat-stuffed tofu is one example. “It’s a craft that’s kind of lost,” Chan said. “It was comfort food when I was growing up.”
While there might be similar concepts in California, he said, “We are so far away that they can easily get market share before any competition comes in.”
The Raitis are aware of the risks. People have been telling Wen that half of food-and-beverage startups fail in the first year.
They also are aware of the growth in organic foods and drinks and the diagnoses of diabetes, cancer, obesity and, what she battled, irritable bowel syndrome.
“We are offering a natural holistic path to these people who are required to change their lifestyle and diets because of their illness or physical conditions,” she wrote in a company description.
Wen, 50, tells her friends “this is my midlife crisis.”
“I wanted to help other people, just like me, gradually do something different and have a better quality of life.”
