ANEU Kitchens founder Meridith Coyle with her daughter Alex McAvoy and newest granddaughter Eloise at the May 5 ANEU groundbreaking party in Wayne.
ANEU Kitchens’ founder Meridith Coyle isn’t just opening a new café Wayne. She’s swinging bigger – much bigger.
The veteran caterer and prepared foods entrepreneur is converting 20,000 square feet at Eagle Yards Corporate Center into a sprawling food-and-wellness destination complete with café, provisions market, production kitchen and gathering space designed to nourish both body and community.
“It’s going to be a place where people can come together to learn, eat well and feel good,” says Coyle.
She also confirms plans to open an ANEU outpost at Ardmore Farmers Market in mid-June, stretching the brand’s footprint across most of the Main Line. ANEU will operate a grab-and-go market café in part of the former DiBruno Bros.’ space.
The new Wayne location will be ambitious in every sense.
Blueprints for the Wayne space. The production kitchen is at left, the market and café are in the center and the flex studio space is at right.
In addition to ANEU’s signature “healthy comfort” foods and salads, the market will stock grocery staples, fresh produce and locally sourced provisions from area farms and makers.
“There’s nowhere to shop down here — no Mom’s Market, no Kimberton Whole Foods,” Coyle said of the Devon Park Drive/Swedesford Road corridor near her Tredyffrin home. “It’s a food desert for me.”
The space will also feature a café and espresso bar, smoothies, juices and YEU-branded products. Customers will be able to take meals to-go, settle in for lunch or even pull up a seat at a bar serving ANEU’s own wine and spirits.
But the most intriguing piece of the concept may be the flexible studio and event space.
Coyle describes it as a natural extension of ANEU’s monthly “Longevity Lab” conversations – only “on steroids.”
ANEU’s May 6 Longevity Lab featured Dr. Asare Christian, founder of Aether Medicine in Wayne and board-certified in Longevity and Regenerative Medicine, in conversation with yours truly, Caroline O’Halloran.
She envisions cooking demos, healthy-living lunch-and-learns, meditation classes, sound healings and community gatherings alongside social activities like Mahjong, canasta and crafts.
A Valentine-themed night at ANEU in Paoli last February. The Wayne location will offer a wide range of community events.
Part of the inspiration came from Coyle’s own search for restorative wellness experiences closer to home. A regular visitor to Miraval Arizona Resort & Spa, she hopes to bring a more approachable version of that atmosphere to the Main Line.
“I’m trying to make those kinds of experiences more accessible,” she said. “Not destination-spa expensive — but something people can drop into as part of everyday life.”
Programming will likely include both drop-in options and membership-based perks.
Roughly half of the Wayne facility will function as ANEU’s operational backbone — housing its catering division, wholesale business, e-commerce operations and a central production kitchen serving all of its cafés, outposts and events.
The kitchen alone will span about 10,000 square feet, roughly eight times the size of ANEU’s current Paoli setup.
Construction is expected to continue through the summer, with an opening targeted for fall.
A few hundred customers and friends recently filled the cavernous space for a festive groundbreaking celebration – a sign of both ANEU’s loyal following and the Main Line’s growing appetite for health-focused, communal experiences.
As ANEU grows in Wayne, its longtime Paoli home (below) will evolve, too.
The café will remain but transition to a streamlined grab-and-go market model similar to ANEU’s Bryn Mawr, Ocean City and Margate locations. Coyle, who owns the Paoli strip center, is seeking long-term tenants for the former catering office and dining/event spaces.
ANEU has been a hit in Ocean City, N.J. since its launch Memorial Day Weekend of 2021. Another shore location in Margate has also been well-received.
A small ANEU cafe is also under construction, albeit slowly, at the Maurice Stephens House in Valley Forge Park, a public-private partnership between Valley Forge Park Alliance and the U.S. Park Service that’s been in the works for years.
Coyle insists she isn’t just chasing growth. She’s chasing an idea: living with intention.
Food is part of it.
Wellness is part of it.
Community is part of it.
Her Wayne headquarters, she hopes, will balance all three – in, well, a new way.
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