Brick Hand & Stone To Celebrate 10 Years With Grand Reopening

BRICK, NJ — When Maria Cermatori opened her first Hand & Stone Massage and Facial Spa franchise in 2006, getting a massage was still something of a special treat for most people.

A lot has changed in the years since.

"Now people put this into their lifestyle on a regular basis," Cermatori, who owns the Hand & Stone spas in Brick and Spring Lake, said in a recent interview.

On Sunday, the Brick location will be celebrating its 10th anniversary with a grand reopening celebration at its new location in Brick Plaza. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the festivities will be virtual, but there will be gifts and prizes for people who check in to the Facebook Live celebration.

For Cermatori, the grand reopening celebrates a move that had been in the works for some time, to a larger space to better accommodate customers. The Brick Hand & Stone has moved a few spaces down to 30 Brick Plaza, a goal she has had for some time, Cermatori said.

"We had been working on this for a while," she said. The new location is in the spot once filled by the Hallmark store. The back of the store was completely redone and expanded to accommodate Hand & Stone's expanded clientele.

"They had to renovate and open the back of it," she said. There was a soft opening Feb. 19 and Cermatori said they were shut down long enough to move equipment and other items to the new location.

The celebration of 10 years of serving customers in Brick also is a celebration of surviving the pandemic. Cermatori said her spas in Brick (which is marking its 10th anniversary) and Spring Lake lost customers to the pandemic but are back to about 70 percent of their members.

It's a major change from a year ago, when the spas closed with the belief they would reopen in two weeks.

"We put a sign on our door that we would be reopening April 1," she said of the spas' closing on March 16. It was June 22 before they reopened to members, and even then it was at a greatly reduced capacity between employees and members.

"I think everyone really didn't know what was going to happen," she said of the shutdown.

The return to business was cautious, with both employees and members slow to return at first. The spas allowed clients to freeze their memberships for some time but by August efforts were in place to reopen more fully.

"Our clients were very happy when we did reopen," Cermatori said.

As more people have been able to get vaccinated against COVID-19 they have been seeing an increase in the number of people returning as clients.

The spas have strict protocols to protect clients in the midst of the pandemic. There is a 15-minute buffer between appointments for cleaning and sanitizing, and people who arrive for appointments must wait outside for a text message saying the spa is ready for their appointment, similar to what is happening at doctors' offices.

"We have very little traffic inside," Cermatori said.

Their clients, massage therapists and estheticians are happy to be back, regardless of the restrictions, she said.

The virtual grand reopening is set for 10 a.m. on Sunday. Check their Facebook page for the virtual event. There will be gift baskets, gift cards and a 6-month membership given away, she said.

Hand & Stone is open seven days a week, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturdays and 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sundays.