Nobody Owns Pilates. So What Exactly Are Franchisees Paying For?
By Tam Goldsmith
BODYBAR doesn't own Pilates. Its challenge is proving that its franchise system is worth paying for.
Pilates is booming, BODYBAR is growing quickly and its newest franchise disclosure provides some encouraging mature-studio numbers. With an investment that can reach $756,035, however, prospective owners still need to understand exactly what the franchise system adds to the economics of the studio.
Pilates does not belong to BODYBAR, Club Pilates, Solidcore or the independent instructor teaching reformer classes in a studio down the road. That creates an interesting challenge for any franchise built around an exercise method customers can find elsewhere.
BODYBAR Pilates has an increasingly substantial answer. The Texas-based franchise is expanding rapidly across the United States and is preparing to open its 100th studio in Fort Worth in September. The company says it has already opened 21 studios during 2026, has more than 21,000 active members and more than 70 additional studios in development.
That growth is impressive, but the investment required to participate is substantial. According to BODYBAR's 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document, the estimated initial investment ranges from $431,425 to $756,035, including a $60,000 initial franchise fee. Franchisees then pay a 7% royalty on gross sales and a 2% marketing fund contribution, alongside required local advertising and other operating expenses.
For an investor, the useful question is therefore bigger than whether Pilates is popular. They need to understand what BODYBAR provides that makes owning its version of a Pilates studio worth the additional cost.
A Popular Category Still Needs Good Unit Economics
The attraction of Pilates is easy to understand. Customers can attend several times a week, memberships create recurring revenue and the reformer format provides a structured class environment that is difficult to recreate at home. BODYBAR's 2026 disclosure also gives prospective franchisees some useful evidence of how established studios are performing.
The 38 franchised studios included in its full-year 2025 financial performance data produced average gross sales of $766,821, with median gross sales of $756,694. The disclosure reports average net income of $182,646 for those studios.
Those figures deserve attention, but they also need context. The sample consists of 38 of the 73 studios operating at the end of 2025, with newer studios and certain other locations excluded because they did not meet the criteria for inclusion.
A prospective franchisee therefore has considerably more information than simply being told that Pilates is growing. They can compare the cost of opening with the performance of established studios and then validate those figures by speaking with existing franchisees.
Membership Is Where the Model Starts to Matter
A Pilates studio has a limited number of reformers and a limited number of classes it can run each day, so revenue depends heavily on filling those available spaces repeatedly. BODYBAR's disclosure reported average membership of 269 for the studios included in its performance data, alongside average monthly revenue per member of $237.
Those numbers help explain why membership retention matters. Once the rent is signed and the reformers are installed, an empty place in a class cannot be sold tomorrow. Franchisees need enough members attending frequently enough to generate revenue without making the timetable so crowded that customers struggle to book the classes they want.
Utilisation is therefore one of the numbers prospective BODYBAR owners should investigate carefully when speaking with existing franchisees. They should understand how long studios typically take to build membership, what retention looks like after the initial opening period and how instructor costs change as the timetable expands.
The Franchise Has to Earn Its Royalty
BODYBAR franchisees pay a 7% royalty and a 2% marketing fund contribution. The FDD also requires local advertising averaging at least $3,000 per month over a 12-month period, making the value delivered by the franchise system particularly important.
An independent Pilates operator does not pay a franchisor 7% of gross sales, but they also have to develop the brand, operating procedures, instructor training, technology, marketing and customer acquisition themselves. BODYBAR provides a system intended to remove much of that work.
Franchisees receive support around site selection, studio development, training and operations, while instructors work within BODYBAR's training system and customers encounter a consistent class format and brand. The financial test is whether those advantages allow a franchisee to open faster, attract and retain members more efficiently and operate a stronger studio than they reasonably could alone. That is ultimately what the royalty has to pay for.
BODYBAR Now Has More Evidence Behind the Pitch
The strongest development for BODYBAR is that prospective franchisees increasingly have operating history to examine. The system finished 2025 with 73 franchised studios, up from 46 at the beginning of the year, while its 2026 FDD showed 59 signed franchise agreements that had not yet opened at the end of 2025.
Expansion has continued during 2026. BODYBAR has announced that its 100th studio is scheduled to open in Fort Worth in September after 21 openings so far this year. The company also reports more than 21,000 active members and more than 70 studios in its development pipeline.
That matters because franchise development commitments only become valuable when studios open, attract members and produce acceptable returns for their owners. BODYBAR is now building a larger operating base against which prospective franchisees can test the proposition.
The mature-studio figures are encouraging. Average gross sales of $766,821 and average net income of $182,646 among the 38 qualifying studios provide buyers with real numbers to investigate rather than relying entirely on the growth of Pilates as a category.
Prospective owners should still ask existing franchisees what they actually spent to open, how long membership took to build, how much working capital they needed and whether the reported net income resembles the cash return they experience after financing and owner-specific costs. That is normal franchise due diligence rather than a reason to dismiss the opportunity.
Pilates Is Free. A Working Business System Isn't.
BODYBAR cannot prevent another Pilates studio opening across town, and franchisees are paying significant fees to operate under its name. That makes execution particularly important, but BODYBAR is no longer trying to demonstrate the concept with a handful of locations. The network has grown rapidly, established studios are producing meaningful sales and the company continues converting its development pipeline into operating studios.
Its opportunity is to turn that growing scale into an advantage for franchisees through brand recognition, customer acquisition, instructor training, operating support and stronger studio economics. Nobody needs to own Pilates for that proposition to work.
BODYBAR simply needs to operate a sufficiently good Pilates business system that franchisees would rather pay for it than build one themselves. With its expanding network, growing membership base and the performance disclosed by its more established studios, the company is accumulating increasingly credible evidence that its system can justify that choice.
What We Can Learn From This
A franchise does not need to own the product or category to create value; it needs to make the underlying business easier to build and operate successfully. BODYBAR's mature-studio sales and continued unit growth give prospective franchisees useful evidence, but buyers should still speak with existing owners about membership retention, utilisation, labour costs and returns after the full cost of investment. The opportunity for BODYBAR is substantial if it can turn current demand for Pilates into durable studio economics across a much larger network. As more of its newer locations mature, investors will have increasingly useful evidence of what the franchise system can deliver.
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