Our Story

Brian Aussant, founder

Brian is well known in the Pioneer Valley having been in and around the food & beverage industry here for more than 15 years. Brian worked his way up from bar manager at Bishops Lounge to General Manager of the Bishop’s Lounge/Mulino’s/ Brasserie 40A group and spent 10 years there. He moved on to open his own restaurant, Bottega Cucina, 6 years ago.

His inspiration for Karma came, literally, from a life changing event. Five years ago a member of his family was diagnosed with cancer. After receiving conventional treatment that member of his family researched alternative healing methods and learned about the Hippocrates Health Institute in Florida. She attended a three-week Hippocrates “Life Change” program that has had a tremendous track record for beating cancer and healing a broad range of chronic and life-threatening ailments.

After returning home with a new found life and energy, she shared her Hippocrates Life Change Program informational binder with Brian and he began his own Life Change process. The focus of the Hippocrates program was on pure, clean, mostly raw foods. Because he didn’t want to eat salads every day for the rest of his life, he was moved to learn more about the raw food “life style” and, using his professional restaurant experience, to bring a new creativity to raw, vegan and gluten-free food preparation.

He decided to further his culinary background by attending Living Light Culinary Institute in Fort Bragg, California. Living Light is considered the premier learning center for raw foods preparation so he enrolled and graduated from their associate raw chef and instructor program. Being in or around the food industry for so long he had been pretty spoiled and was quite the “gourmet foodie.” But the hook of raw food for Brian was how delicious and pure the food tasted, how vibrant and fresh it looked and, most importantly, how he felt after eating and drinking in such a way. He found that he had tremendous energy and mental clarity, was allergy-free and, as time went on, developed few, if any, colds or others sicknesses.

Karma came into being as Brian, and his wife Coree, decided to open a restaurant that served the type of food that would help every person feel great every day and really appreciate life as it is meant to be. With Karma, their goal is to provide all of the ingredients necessary to achieve a higher quality of life.