CR Fitness Holdings, one of the largest Crunch Fitness franchisees in the country, has signed a multi-unit agreement to open 25 Yoga Joint studios across Florida and Dallas, marking the group's first franchise investment outside the Crunch Fitness system. The agreement covers Western and Central Florida markets including Tampa, Sarasota, Naples and Orlando, and brings the infrared yoga brand into Texas for the first time.
The move comes roughly nine months after CR Fitness secured a $350 million strategic investment from Sixth Street, and Tony Scrimale, CEO of CR Fitness, has said it won't be the last expansion beyond Crunch. He described the decision as driven as much by diversification as by growth, noting that in franchising, the available white space in any one category eventually narrows, and CR Fitness wanted to put its operating strength to work in a new category rather than wait for that ceiling to arrive.
Founded in 2010 by Paige Held, Yoga Joint began franchising only about three years ago and currently operates 16 corporate studios and four franchised locations, all in Florida, ahead of this new 25-unit commitment. The brand's format blends 50-50 hybrid yoga and high-intensity workouts, FITT-based training and vinyasa-inspired traditional yoga, all conducted in workout rooms heated to roughly 96 degrees. Studios open for all of 2024 posted average unit volumes near $1.84 million, with mature locations surpassing $2.4 million, the kind of unit economics that made the category hard for CR Fitness to ignore.
Scrimale said CR Fitness holds outside investments to the same standard it applies to its own business: proven unit economics, a concept that stands apart in its category, and a model built to scale the way CR Fitness scales. He said Yoga Joint delivers on all three, calling the format genuinely different from anything else in boutique fitness and pointing to the brand's instructor training as the reason he's confident the experience can be delivered consistently across every studio. Bernie Zarco, CEO of Yoga Joint, said CR Fitness is exactly the kind of partner the brand looks for as it scales nationally, adding that being chosen for CR Fitness's first investment outside Crunch validates Yoga Joint's differentiation and economics.
Backing a 25-studio commitment with real numbers instead of instinct is part of what made this deal happen in the first place, and keeping that same financial discipline in place as the studios open will matter just as much. Gorilla Dash offers a Financial Reporting feature designed to give multi-unit operators clear, consistent visibility into revenue and performance across every location, supporting the kind of data-driven expansion decisions behind a deal like this one.
