Welltodo Today: Mars To launch Vegan Chocolate, David Lloyd Is Opening A Boutique, Calm Goes After Corporate Sector

Today’s key global wellness news articles from around the world, impacting the industry and influencing the business of wellness.

Exclusive: Billion-Dollar Meditation Startup Calm Is Getting Into the Corporate Perks Business

Calm, the $1 billion-valued wellness and meditation app, is staffing up to sell itself as a perk for employees at other businesses–and it’s hoping large insurance companies will bite too. Over the past year, a handful of its roughly 100 San Francisco-based employees have begun selling Calm to business clients, who then offer subscriptions as a perk to its workers.

How Whole Foods, yoga, and NPR became the hallmarks of the modern elite

If you’re anything like me, today’s episode of The Ezra Klein Show will make you think about the way you shop, learn, eat, parent, and exercise in a whole new way.

Salary transparency is key to the future of workplace wellness

Earlier this week, someone forwarded me a Google spreadsheet filled with real-time salary information from hundreds of journalists and editors around the country.

David Lloyd Clubs to spin off its Blaze training format as boutique studio concept

David Lloyd Clubs has revealed plans to spin off its HIIT-based group exercise format Blaze and launch it onto the high street. The first stand-alone boutique studio – branded BLAZE by David Lloyd Clubs – will open in central Birmingham in early January 2020.

Fitness startup Katalyst raises $5.6M for Peloton-like electrified workout experience

Seattle startup Katalyst has raised $5.6 million for an at-home workout experience that uses full-body electrical muscle stimulation (EMS), a training technique that’s popular in countries such as Germany, Japan and Brazil. The round was led by London-based investor Octopus Ventures, whose partner…

A better use for sprawling, big-box store parking lots? Urban farms

A typical parking lot at a big-box store, sprawling over several acres, is empty most of the time. With a new design called Car Parks 2.0, the French design firm Studio NAB shows how that space could be reimagined as an urban farm, with a little room left at the side for charging electric cars from onsite solar panels.

Mars to launch vegan Galaxy bar

Mars is to launch a vegan version of its best-selling Galaxy bar in the UK, the first move by a large mainstream confectionery brand to offer consumers a plant-based alternative to milk chocolate. The new variant, certified by the Vegan Society, will be available in three flavours: smooth orange, caramel and sea salt and caramelised hazelnut.