Heal Me Health Shop owner Zelia Boyd is closing her shop early next month.
Just 12 months after opening her store, Zelia Boyd has made the difficult decision to close down Heal Me Health Shop.
She will be shutting the doors in the first week of February and spending the month looking at ways of continuing to run her business online.
"I'm going to re-evaluate how I run the business. The future is online and I need to get my head around how I am going to do that as I move forward," Boyd said.
One of the options was to restart the click-and-collect service Boyd initiated during the Covid-19 lockdown.
"Several of the lovely local businesses on High St have offered to act as a collection point and I'm happy to make deliveries around town."
On a personal level Boyd said it had been a year of major change which meant she wanted to spend more time with her four children, 5-year-old triplets Zander, Xavier and Harper and 2-year-old Kira.
"My kids come first so I want to spend time healing my family, to spend the year with my kids, but I still want to run my business."
Boyd said she started her business because there was a lack of gluten-free products available in Dannevirke.
"The products were inconsistent so I dived in. I started selling 100 per cent gluten-free and 95 per cent dairy-free products. I wanted to make them as budget-friendly and accessible to people in Tararua as possible. But the odds have been against me, particularly with the Covid lockdown.
"However, I still want there to be good healthy and affordable food for people both within and outside the area.
"When I first opened the store I had a lot of European tourists coming in and buying products, they loved what I could offer, but of course Covid has affected that."
Boyd said most of her customers were regulars who knew exactly what they wanted.
"A lot of people depend on me to carry the products they need."
Over the past 12 months, Boyd has been running keto seminars, which had proved extremely popular.
"I've had up to 40 people at some of these seminars, although during [Covid alert] level 2 because of social distancing I had about five or six people so the seminar sizes went from one extreme to another."
Boyd said the seminars were aimed at providing the foundation to succeed on the keto diet.
"By giving the right information it gives people the chance to be autonomous and confident with their dietary choices or, if required, do a supported programme with me to reach their goals."
Boyd said providing consultations was something she was keen to continue and she hoped to branch out into holding sessions in Manawatū and Hawke's Bay.
She is a registered nurse and has an integrative nutrition qualification specialising in gut health and the microbiome, working with autoimmune conditions.
"My main passion is consulting and education. I do know there is a need for this but with the overheads involved in running a shop I need to rein things in a bit."
One of the first tasks Boyd will take on once she has closed her shop is to rework her website.
"I have almost 1200 people who follow my Facebook page and I want to do more video tutorials and blogs. So it's a case of 'watch this space'."
Making sure people had the right information about the food they were buying was important, Boyd said.
"Often they will pick something up off a shelf because of the way it is being marketed, but they really need to take a look at the back of the package. Understanding food labels is important."
While Boyd says she is disappointed to be closing her shop, she is positive about the future.
"I could carry on but I want to concentrate on my family."