How Crunch Leveraged Data to Become an International, Gym Franchising Titan

What does it take to grow a high-value, low-price gym brand into a global empire with 500+ locations? For Crunch Fitness, the answer was bold strategy and data-driven executing, powered by a partnership with ABC Fitness.

Crunch Fitness, the renowned HVLP chain, knew it wanted to expand around the turn of the 21st century’s first decade. With an established presence with its signature locations and a proven successful business model, it became difficult to find a reason not to.

However, it also knew doing so required careful, calculated steps especially during the initial stages. 

“Before you can grow a global brand, you need to ensure you have the necessary infrastructure in place to support it,” said Mike Neff, EVP of Crunch Fitness. “We knew we already had a strong brand presence. The concept proved that a lower-priced model with similar brand amenities could be very successful. From there, it was our goal to find the right partners who had the capital and desire to grow this brand into all markets across the United States and beyond.” 

Crunch officially began franchising in 2010. The brand assembled a small group of operators to test out various markets. Then, after establishing sustained success, the goal of greater, even abroad, expansion eventually became a lead focus for the Crunch team. 

But even with those early wins, Crunch knew growing its franchise network would be no easy task.

“Real estate is probably one of the most challenging aspects of growing your brand,” said Neff. “This is an area that Crunch has invested a lot in, where we’ve built a level of support to help our franchisees find locations so they have the opportunity to expand rapidly. Our development team works with our franchisees from site location, lease signing, construction and then right up to the point of handing it over to our sales and marketing support teams. They then work with the franchisee on a successful presale to a grand opening.”

To support all that, among other needs like surpassing benchmark growth figures or foreign borders, the brand needed a tech provider able to facilitate connectivity, open software, savings and more. 

Setting the Grounds for Growth

When you find a successful, rapidly expanding fitness franchise, you can almost always find a versatile tech provider working tirelessly under the hood. For Crunch that was ABC Fitness, an equally prominent fit tech provider. 

“With our rapid growth – opening anywhere from 10 to 25 locations in any given month – we had to find a strategic partner that could support our growth,” said Neff. 

After linking with ABC Fitness in 2013, the same year Crunch focused on franchising, it didn’t take long for Crunch to realize they had the necessary dexterity. The provider supports its clients with on-the-ground teams to train employees and support club operations on opening days. It also brings a similar level of manpower and education when necessary to ensure locations sell memberships and properly perform billing.

ABC Fitness also gives Crunch a lift with its API, which keeps things efficient internally but also leaves the door open for other applications to meet any operator’s specific needs. 

“The API and open architecture that ABC Fitness offers allows us to integrate custom applications that larger operators prefer,” said Neff. “For example, our website directly connects to ABC Fitness’ systems, enabling us to sell memberships, personal training and other revenue-generating areas of our business. This makes it efficient for our internal development teams to be able to build on a unified system versus many, decreasing the complications that come with managing multiple platforms.”

A True Expansion Tool

Not long after Crunch began its partnership with ABC Fitness, the gym chain began extending links beyond its initial set of locations.

The brand largely credits ABC Fitness and the connectivity of its platform for making such an endeavor so feasible. 

“Partnering with a global provider like ABC Fitness helps us streamline our systems and how we operate across diverse markets,” said Neff. “It enables us to maintain consistency in what we offer and ensures that the custom developments in our business function reliably across all locations.”

It also helps on the financial side, which any operator knows can be a crippling stressor especially in a franchise location’s early days. Finding ways to make serious fitness fun and easy to access has long been a key principle at the core of the Crunch franchise.  

“Partnering with ABC Fitness also creates a lot of efficiencies and cost savings for our franchisees,” Neff added. “Since we can build an application to integrate with the system, we avoid passing additional development costs onto our franchisees. If we had to build multiple systems, the cost would increase dramatically.” 

Overall, we can negotiate better pricing and offer better support to our franchisees through a centralized provider,” Neff added. “Crunch has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to setting industry trends at an affordable price and we’ll continue to evolve our gym layouts and equipment to exceed member expectations.”

Data that Drives Growth and Retention 

This open, connected and extensive system set up by ABC Fitness has helped Crunch make informed and strategic decisions, and then execute them across the entire franchise grid. It sparked the brand’s initial franchising success and continues to fuel its success today. 

“Accessing system-wide data within our franchise network allows our analysts to dig through the data lake we have built, and we can ensure the data is accurate and consistent across the same system,” said Neff. “We have dedicated teams that analyze data all day long and look for opportunities for our network to grow.”

Neff also added that the influx of data also allows Crunch to identify initiatives that aren’t trending positively and proactively address issues with franchisees before they escalate. 

“Our support teams have access to KPI dashboards that we have built with the help of ABC,” he said. “This gives our franchisees a daily view of exactly how their clubs are trending and dictates where they should be prioritizing focus areas. Having access to this data from over 3 million members has allowed us to fine-tune systems to further enhance the overall member experience, which ultimately strengthens retention across the network.”