Who founded You Can Sauna?

You Can Sauna was founded by Yussef and Jake, who are on a mission to create the UK's best sauna experiences. Yussef manages partnerships with Forestry England, public bodies, councils, and Scotland expansion, while Jake focuses on West Midlands and Birmingham.

Where does You Can Sauna operate?

You Can Sauna operates at Haldon Forest Park near Exeter in partnership with Forestry England, with active expansion into Birmingham, West Midlands, Devon, Somerset, and Scotland.

What makes You Can Sauna different from other sauna operators?

You Can Sauna specializes in authentic wood-fired sauna and cold plunge experiences in natural settings, operating in partnership with major landowners like Forestry England. The company is SEIS-backed and focuses on professional, full-service operation that combines traditional sauna culture with modern safety and booking systems.

‘The sauna was not built for saving time but for spending it well’

The Sauna Is, Bernhard Hillila

About

Two friends. One obsession.

You Can Sauna was started because we believe sauna changes things for the better. When this is a regular ritual, it helps heal your body, your mind, and your relationship with others.

Yussef

Co-founder • Finance and strategy

Yussef's first sauna was the night before his wedding. He walked in sceptical and came out converted. He has been a regular ever since, partly because he genuinely loves it, and partly because managing a serious autoimmune condition means he doesn't really have the option of not looking after himself.

He spent seven years in finance before starting You Can Sauna, which means he thinks carefully about structure, margins, and how a business actually sustains itself. That rigour runs through everything we do, from pricing to the way we think about new sites.

Jake

Co-founder • Operations

Jake got into sauna through Yussef, his childhood friend, after getting sober. He needed something to replace the social ritual of drinking: the wind-down, the time with people, the way a long evening with friends leaves you feeling good rather than hollow. Sauna gave him all of that.

He came to this with years of operational experience managing a care home: staffing, compliance, the attention to detail that keeping people safe actually demands. That background shapes how we run everything at site level, from daily operations to the way we train our team.

Sauna is for everyone.

We named ourselves You Can Sauna because we mean it literally. It doesn't matter where you're from, what you look like, or whether you've done it before. The heat doesn't care. We've watched people arrive wound tight and leave loose, arrive alone and leave talking to strangers.

Where we're going

We started in Devon. We want to be everywhere.

Our first site is in a forest with Forestry England. We're now actively looking for new locations across the UK and working with partners who want to bring the same experience to their land and communities.

If you have land that could host a sauna, or you want to run a You Can Sauna site in your area, we'd love to hear from you. We've built the whole model around making that easy.

Run a site → Offer your land →

Member of

British Sauna Society — Operator members, running to BSS standards and guidelines.