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Spa Offers Speedy Lunchtime Treatments With a Meal on the Side

By Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska | September 26, 2012 8:13am

LONG ISLAND CITY — Would you like a massage with that? 

Stressed-out office workers looking for a little R&R along with their lunch are lining up for an offering of mini-facials, reflexology and other treatments while their food is prepared as part of  “lunchtime treat[ment]s," the brainchild of two Long Island City businesses.

“When they call to book their appointment, we book their food order at the same time,” she Barbara Lynn Catone, the owner of Body & Soul Restorations, a spa in the Court Square area, just across the street from the Citibank building.

After the treatments, which takes about 20 minutes, customers go to Sage General Store, which is located in the same building at 24-20 Jackson Avenue and pick up their lunch.

Options include a tuna salad sandwich, a veggie sandwich, a grilled peach salad and the Hudson Valley salad with mesclun greens, plum tomatoes, carrots and cucumbers. Everything comes with iced ginger mint tea.

A treatment and lunch costs $35 and gets workers back to their desk in 35 minutes, said Catone, adding she wanted to reach out to the growing number of office employees in the area.

The goal, she said, is to “make city life livable."

"And what better way to do that than to offer people a wellness break from their desk.”

"Who could ask for more," said Ally Keschner who works at United Nations Federal Credit Union, only two blocks away. "People can walk over there, get a treatment, get their lunch and come back to the office within half an hour."

Workers can choose from a variety of treatments. The most popular, Catone said, is flash exfoliation, which is a mini facial, and neck relief — a pressure point massage for neck and shoulders. Other options include eye rescue, rapid spot clearing and reflexology treatment, which is a pressure point massage for the feet. 

"Workdays are very elongated at this point and people don't get off work until after 7 o'clock," she Jennifer Brown, 33, a TV producer and Astoria resident who has been coming to Body & Soul Restorations for facials. "To be able to get a spa treatment in the middle of the day quickly is great, because spas are not always open in the evening and not always it's your priority on the weekend."

The offer is available Wednesday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.