One recent Loyola graduate hopes that a new restaurant project will bring “maximum wellness” to the community. That grad’s name – Maxwell Eaton.

Eaton, Loyola A‘07, plans to open Max Well (Maximum Wellness) New Orleans on Magazine Street early fall this year, a health food restaurant focusing on vegetarian meals and juice pressing.

Max Well will be a salad and cold-pressed juice cafe featuring an organic menu that includes fruits, nuts, whole grains and vegetables.

Eaton, who has been a vegetarian for four years, is also an avid cyclist and studied nutrition at Tulane University.

And Eaton doesn’t feel that living in one of America’s great gastronomical cities can’t mesh with this healthy lifestyle.

“I have found that there are many people living healthfully here,” Eaton said. “They find a balance to the cultural celebrations of New Orleans. Like Mardi Gras, there’s always an Ash Wednesday after Fat Tuesday.”

Inspired by food science, Eaton wanted to provide a menu for New Orleans that could “offer healthy alternatives to the southern standard fare.”

After graduating from Loyola, Eaton followed a music career performing alongside friends and Loyola alumni in the New Orleans area. Eaton began cooking meals for friends and, following Hurricane Katrina, hosted weekly dinner parties with other Loyola alumni.

“We were excited about cooking and had the opportunity to bring people from different parts of the city together who were all remaking their social connections,” Eaton said.

Eaton made those connections in both the event production and catering industries from his experience in the music industry. He took his first catering job in 2008.

“I learned the importance of health responsibility from the difficult hours and traveling that come along with performing,” Eaton said. “I also realized the difficulty of procuring healthy food in many locations, and its importance to help balance a good life.”

Eaton said he learned several lessons from the experience.

“I learned a lot about how to recover and adapt meals with what you have in the kitchen,” Eaton said. “Having to cook for large groups of people also taught me how to scale workloads and make deadlines in a stressful environment, both of which have been very helpful in preparing for my opening.”

Opening hours will span breakfast to early evening seven days a week with counter service and some grab-and-go meals. Max Well says it offers transparent information about what customers eat and where their food comes from as well as other nutrition information.