Pittsburgh’s Mecka Fitness Plots Growth in Suburban Markets

With ambitions to grow regionally and possibly nationally, Mecka has built a model that caters to the suburbs, a relative rarity in boutique fitness

In many ways, boutique fitness was built for the city corner with dense foot traffic and young professionals often trading happy hour for workouts.

But Mecka Fitness founder and CEO Kevin Beamon, who has spent years operating on both sides, sees the untapped gold rush in the ‘burbs, where members stay longer and rent tends to runs lower. He’s behind a popular multi-format group fitness studio with boutique programming, a health-club-wide menu and a price between a mid-tier gym and a luxury operator.

This fall, Mecka will open its third location, a 6,240-square-foot facility at 700 Thomson Park Drive in Cranberry Township, one of the fastest-growing corners of the Pittsburgh metro. As of mid-June, the township’s development ledger shows an “opening soon” list that runs 25 businesses deep, including a Wegmans and two wellness newcomers, Rooted in Movement and Zen Bodyworks, alongside eight residential and commercial projects in the pipeline. 

What Beamon brings to the area is a track record. His Pittsburgh-based brand has spent 12 years in the game with no membership contracts, no outside investment and no franchising. Mecka counts roughly 1,000 members across two locations, runs more than 200 coached classes a week, employs nearly 100 people and reports annual revenue in the multiple millions.

The name is a play on the famous pilgrimage, Beamon said, and a nod to the idea that fitness is never about the destination, always about the journey.

It also doesn’t hurt that Google doesn’t bury the name under a million hits.

Presales for the new club opened earlier this month. Standard memberships at Cranberry will run $163 a month, but the presale turned pricing into a gamified race. The first 50 members locked in $89 for a year, the next 25 got $109 for six months and signups could jump the queue by referring friends.

Within 10 days, more than 260 people had signed up.

An Unlikely Gym Owner

Before the fitness business entered the picture, Beamon spent years as a publisher for the Pittsburgh Business Times.

“If you would have told me back then that I would be owning multiple gyms, I would have probably laughed in your face,” he said.

The origin story runs through Miami, where a family relocation for his wife’s career and a CrossFit habit got the wheels in motion. When the family moved back to Pittsburgh and nobody opened a CrossFit gym in his suburb, he got certified and did it himself. His wife, an attorney, signed off with lawyerly pragmatism.

“She said, ‘Listen, if it fails, at least we’ll get two free memberships. It’ll be a write-off,’” Beamon recalled.

His MBA from Pitt’s Katz Graduate School of Business came in handy, too. Beamon watches a wave of new studio owners enter the industry on passion alone and sees trouble.

“I love the passion for fitness, but I don’t know if they have the same passion for business,” he said. “People don’t realize fitness is a business. I have full-time employees that have mortgages and kids. This is their career.”

And though passion may help in opening a fitness studio or gym, it’s patience and knowledge that keep them open, which is reflected in Mecka’s pacing.

“We don’t move on to a new location until we understand profit,” Beamon said.

A Tale of Two Zip Codes

Mecka’s two existing locations have given Beamon something most operators never get: a controlled experiment on where the mid-priced fitness market actually works.

The Mt. Lebanon facility sits in the suburb where he raised his kids, spans roughly 20,000 square feet and holds members who have trained there since the CrossFit days and are now in their 50s. The local high school football team that won a state championship came through as eighth graders.

Meanwhile, the Strip District location is buzzing with a younger crowd and high energy, but the urban market — for all of its dazzling vibes — does come with some downsides. Apartment dwellers cycle out after a year or so, relocating for new jobs in another city and many sample studios through class booking aggregators. 

Lively as the district is, “It’s harder to build community in that type of environment,” Beamon admitted.

Cranberry Township, roughly 45 minutes north of Pittsburgh, is the opposite profile. It has more than 33,000 residents, family density and a population that’s climbing.

“It’s a place where you raise your family and your kids go to the same gym you do,” he said.

His advice to anyone eyeing a lease, urban or otherwise, is simple: “You make your best mistake when you sign that lease,” he said. “Do the math before you sign.”

One Membership, Many Formats

Mecka members get access to multiple fitness disciplines and never face the dreaded waitlists at boutique fitness studios, with pricing that is deliberately below the boutique ceiling. 

Class offerings include BodyLab, Bootcamp, RowFit, The Grind, a kettlebell-only format, the seasonally heated and mindful movement Mecka Blend, yoga, CrossFit Kids and Teens, Fitt 55 for older adults, Hybrid Race Class and The Assential, a posterior-chain class. CrossFit, the format that started it all, requires a separate membership, and members also have access to personal training, small group training and nutrition coaching.

The Hybrid Race Class, of course, is meant to prepare members for the hottest trend in fitness right now: competitions like Hyrox. Mecka, for its part, stages the Mecka Hybrid Great Race, a partner-format competition at Mt. Lebanon that borrows the run-station-run structure, caps each division at 20 two-person teams and requires partners to run together.

“We’re getting people that would never do a real Hyrox to come in and see our studio for the first time,” Beamon said. After race day, the journey doesn’t end there, with competitors commonly migrating into BodyLab and Bootcamp.

The wellness layer also runs deep.

At the Mt. Lebanon location, partner practice Next Level Spine & Sports offers massage, physical therapy and chiropractic care on site, Luxe Skin Studio & Wellness handles skincare treatments and Botox, while ReJoove by Mecka, a contrast therapy suite with an infrared sauna and cold plunge, sells separate memberships of its own.

Mecka also offers GLP-1s through a partnering physician whose oversight steers patients toward Mecka’s coaching and nutrition programs to ward off muscle loss, while specialty cohorts are offered for those who are new to working out, such as Women Only Strength School and Only Dads Strength School. Both eight-week programs run a couple of times a year.

The complexity of Mecka is also why Beamon waves off the idea of franchising.

“We put on a Broadway show every day,” he said.

Regional First, National Next?

In an era of consolidation, it’s no surprise acquirers have come knocking. Beamon has fielded three or four approaches, including national venture capital investors drawn to Mecka’s recurring revenue. So far, he has passed, but that doesn’t mean the door is bolted. 

As Mecka gears up to open its third location in Cranberry, Beamon has his eyes on the fast-growing suburbs, particularly on the East Coast, describing a hub-and-spoke regional expansion as the model, possibly with investors aboard.

“Eventually I’d like someone to come to me and say, this concept is amazing, help us take this really national instead of regional,” he said.