Our Story
Red Light Retreat is built by the same family behind Isabella’s Italian and The Golden Venue — because caring for people has always been what we do.
35 Years of Showing Up for This Community
Chef Todd and Nickki Golden have been part of the fabric of Northwest Arkansas for over 35 years. Through Isabella’s Italian — with locations in Fayetteville and Bentonville — The Golden Venue, TJ’s Sandwich Shop, Hugs Ice Cream, and Mermaids Catering, they’ve built something that goes beyond a restaurant group. They’ve built a community table.
Golden Table Collective was founded on a single belief: that hospitality, done right, makes people feel genuinely cared for. Not just fed. Not just served. Seen.
Red Light Retreat is the next expression of that belief — and the first time the Goldens have brought it outside a dining room.
Why Step Outside the Restaurant?
People ask us that — why wellness, why now, why red light therapy? The honest answer is that this was never really a departure. It’s the same instinct that has driven everything we’ve built.
In a restaurant, you take care of someone for two hours. You feed them, make them comfortable, send them home feeling better than when they came in. That’s the goal every single time. Red Light Retreat is built on the exact same instinct — just applied to the body in a different way.
We’ve watched our community work hard. We’ve watched people need rest and not take it. We’ve watched stress accumulate in the body for years without relief. We wanted to build a place where people could come in for ten minutes and leave feeling genuinely better.
That’s all this is. That’s everything this is.
Why Red Light Therapy
Todd and Nickki didn’t arrive at red light therapy through a trend. They arrived at it because the research made sense, and the technology had finally caught up to where it needed to be to make it practical for everyday people.
Red light therapy has been studied for decades. The outcomes for pain management, inflammation, skin health, circulation, and recovery are well-documented in the clinical literature. The Max Miracle 9600 — the bed at Red Light Retreat — represents the pinnacle of where this technology has arrived. It’s an FDA Class II medical device that delivers 5.8 million joules in a ten-minute session. Doctors use it. Medical schools use it. Athletes use it.
And now your community has access to it.
What We Built
It’s a private studio — right next to The Golden Venue in east Fayetteville — where every session happens in your own room, at your own pace. Spa music. Warm light. The most powerful red light therapy bed in the industry. And a team that knows your name.
We chose the Max Miracle 9600 by Red Light Wellness because it’s the bed used by doctors, medical schools, and research institutions. FDA Class II medical device. Built in the USA. The kind of equipment that delivers results you can actually feel.
And we wrapped it in the same hospitality you’d expect from any Golden Table Collective experience — because we don’t know how to do it any other way.
Nickki’s Perspective
I opened Red Light Retreat because I lived it. After a fall left me healing slowly with two cracked ribs and a bad elbow, red light therapy was the thing that turned it around — and Todd saw it working on me and started right alongside me. Between the inflammation relief, the energy it gives us for these long restaurant days, and everything we’ve watched it do for guests since, we knew this was something worth building a home for. This is a space for anyone ready to feel better, at their own pace, in their own room.
Nickki Golden, Co-Founder
Come See Us
Red Light Retreat is located in east Fayetteville, Arkansas — right next to The Golden Venue. We’d love to have you in.