How much does a Planet Fitness franchise owner earn?

Answer 1

Not much and low return on investment when you factor in overhead; utilities, payroll, leases, franchise fees(which isn't bad actually), remodeling costs for site location, and add in equipment replacement costs you can eke out an existence only until a competitor gets wise and converts to a low cost model. The key is finding a very densely populated area. We had one of these franchises up until about a year ago and decided to close it. Our grand opening was somewhat successful and we had roughly 3000 members within the first 3 months of our opening. We did fall short of expectations but things were decent. I will compliment them on their marketing support which was outstanding. The summer months were very challenging but the marketing tools they provided helped.

The real problem for us occurred when our competitors began offering $10 a month memberships for restricted access to their machines, free weights and cardio. The membership trend line quickly turned negative and from there are cash flow got progressively worse. Compound that with equipment repair and replacement costs and it's not nearly as rosy as the picture they paint. One of the problems we found with being a high volume low cost provider is many of our members were inexperienced with using the equipment. Combine that with the relentless usage and we had allot of equipment failure and breakdown

Their sales people do a good job of presenting the opportunity to those of us with assets to qualify, but if we had to do it again we would have invested in a less competitive industry. The model only works until another low cost provider comes to town or your competitors adjust their models accordingly to compete. There is substantial overhead in operating a health club and being as competitive as it is, we felt charging $10 a month was not a long term sustainable business model.