Which, ideally, never gets used. That way it never has to be maintained, repaired and eventually replaced. Or at least as infrequently as humanly possible.
I’m sure they enjoy a nice revenue stream from people who pay and don’t show up, but it may well be more profitable to actually get MORE people to show up and get fit because that’s a bigger pool of people who might use the premium services. The marginal costs incurred by people coming to the gym and using the equipment may well be more than offset by the profit made from the portion of those people who use the premium services.
If a guy pays $20 a month and doesn’t show up, you get a free $20 per month until the guy finally cancels. If a guy pays $150 a month for boot camp and another $130 for 2 personal training sessions, he’s paying $280. Subtract the cost of the personal trainer and the boot camp instructor, and a marginal amount for wear and tear on the equipment and stuff, and you still come out ahead for that particular guy. That guy is unlikely to cancel his membership entirely, and he’s probably spreading good word-of-mouth about the place too. Of course, doing it that way requires a lot more effort on the part of management.
The good news for the average guy who goes to the gym and does not use the premium services is that he’s getting a hell of a bargain. He’s being subsidized by both the guy who never goes and also by boot camp/personal trainer guy.
Ultimately, you can make money at the expense of people getting fit, or you can make money while people get fit. Planet Fitness chooses the former, while many other gyms try for the latter. The former is easier, and frankly, probably more profitable over the short term, but many business people would rather build a business that is a little less profitable but a lot more ethical and sustainable.
If it’s free and convenient and they’re not trying to scare you away from better gyms, then it sounds great. Do they have free weights? There’s something that’s just so right about lifting weights in a dingy basement. 
I like the fact that the “weight room” is integrated into the main floor of my gym, but I kind of miss that feeling of being in a separate world.
C’mon over to my house! Can’t say I’ll socialize much though. 
No, they don’t. Someone quoted PF as giving away 3 million pieces of pizza last year. 3 million pieces spread across every location is about 3 sheet pizzas per pizza night per location. If you don’t go on pizza night, you don’t get any pizza. And if you do go, you might get a single slice (which is actually a half slice, because they further cut up every pizza they get) before it’s all gone because Monday night is a busy time whether there is pizza or not.
But that’s insane. Of course people use it. A lot. All the time. I only go 2-3 times a week, but I see every piece of equipment used. They don’t discourage anything.
Justin, you did notice the word “ideally” in his post, right?
This is what a lot of PF defenders don’t understand. There are ethical and unethical ways to do business. One cannot legitimately defend unethical actions by saying “But they’re so cheap!” or “They offer all the equipment that I intend to use, so what’s the big deal?”
But that goes back to the “Every gym does that!” argument. Every gym would love it if no one used the equipment, but only PF is getting tarred with that brush.
And a lot of these claims that PF is anti-fitness basically boil down to the fact that they’re a gym designed for people who are still tentative about the whole fitness thing. I don’t even know what they could be doing that would act as discouraging towards their members. If that many people were getting thrown out because they used the equipment too much, wouldn’t there be more than just a handful of public stories? Maybe there are, but the PF haters don’t make these claims easy to check out after all the bluster.
We’ve been over this several times now. PF doesn’t get flak simply because they hope to have clients that seldom use the facility. Rather, they are criticized because they (a) use unsavory tactics to drive away people who will tend to be frequent users, and (b) use other unsavory tactics (promoting unwarranted fears, enticing people with fattening foods, etc) to specifically attract the kind of people who will seldom use the equipment. Other gyms don’t do that sort of thing.
They ruthlessly scavange at the underbelly of our society’s psychological obsession with body image.
ETA: And, no, goddammit! There is no use of hyperbolic language here! 
Do they use unsavory tactics to drive away people who will tend to be frequent users? Or is that a few isolated incidents? Again, with all the bluster, it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s hyperbole.
And again, the fattening foods thing amounts to offering their members one free slice of pizza on one day a month. They’re not exactly force-feeding people.
Justin, even if it’s just once a month, the prospect of free pizza will tend to attract people with little resolve rather than the ones who’ll tend to be serious about getting in shape. It’s no accident that all the free foods they offer – pizza, bagels, candy, and in some locations, donuts and cupcakes – are all highly fattening. No fruit, no protein shakes, not even bottles of water.
PF doesn’t even try to urge people to consume moderately. On their own website, they brag about the sheer amount of pizza that they give out, as though they felt no remorse that their customers were consuming so much of the stuff.
Could things be a lot worse? Certainly. We can be thankful that they only do this once a month, but it is still a transparent ploy to attract the people who have little resolve to get fit.
I’m going to keep harping on this until someone responds to it, but for like the fifth time, that isn’t that much pizza. It’s about three sheets per location. How far can three sheet pizzas reasonably go? Especially if it’s a draw and more people than normal show up.
Though I’ve been in PF on pizza night and it’s no busier than usual. The pizza is unceremoniously put on a table and the people that want a slice eat one and those that don’t don’t.
Three sheets is still a pretty generous amount. Moreover, that’s hardly the point. The point is that this tactic is clearly designed to attract people who are unlikely to use the gym earnestly.
Will these slices of pizza, by themselves, make you grossly obese? Certainly not, but they don’t help and they send entirely the wrong message about nutrition. Morever, the fact remains that every single freebie offered is fattening, and that they are offered with no appeals to moderation. This tells you a lot about the purpose behind this tactic.
Just because it’s not YOUR path to fitness doesn’t mean it’s invalid for others. Just because you find their approach would actually discourage YOU from meeting your fitness goals doesn’t mean such is the case for others.
For a lot of people, it being unlike other gyms, with couches and snacks, makes it more comfortable for many. People who frequent this gym, might not be doing things as you would, doesn’t mean they are doing it wrong, just that they are doing it differently.
Cost is a factor for many people, so if the lower cost gets some into a gym who otherwise could not afford it, that’s a win. If it encourages people who would otherwise not enter a gym because they find it intimidating, also a win. Gyms filled with true believers and strident work out enthusiasts ARE intimidating for people with smaller work out goals. Just getting moving IS a win for anyone who finally breaks that barrier.
Just because you’d never vocalize your judgement of others at the gym, doesn’t mean they don’t feel it. And you don’t have to look very hard in this thread to see who dominates and who is being very judgemental toward other choices in a gym or other people’s attempts to get started at better physical activity, even if it doesn’t meet the lofty standards of the true believers.
How can you continue to express, repeatedly, your disapproval and NOT think others can see that as judgement. Yes, you’re passionate, and want everyone to do things the RIGHT way, but it just comes across as you know best. But maybe, just maybe, what’s the right way for you, isn’t the right way for everyone. Why are you so invested in where other people go to the gym?
Elbows, you are imagining things.
+1
It is hard to tell. It will be interesting to see if chiroptera ends up experiencing any negative pressure there after it becomes clear that she is indeed an almost every day user on an ongoing basis. Still it will be just n of one.
It does seem that the industry as a whole (not just PF … that was my bad) gets poor customer satisfaction ratings. Consumer Reports basically finds the independents, workplace gyms, and community centers (the Ys and JCCs) to get the best ratings. Of the chains only Life Time Fitness did well.
Most complaints though seem to be about about high pressure to sell the personal training services and billing type issues.
Green Bean and Ambi, sure elbows may be imagining others looking at him/her and passing judgement … but the fact is that there are many … not yet very fit … people who also imagine that people more visibly fit are silently looking at them and judging them (after all some of them are passing those negative judgements on themselves and it is hard for them to believe that others just look right past them), and whose self-consciousness is keeping them out of a gym at all. It may all be in their heads but the perceived discomfort is still real. And again, better that they are doing something somewhere.
Let us assume that the allegation is unfounded, that active discouragement is actually a rare event … I would still state however that PF brings it on themselves with the explicit hypocrisy in their marketing. To market “no judgement” by passing negative judgements on those who are committed to fitness and have results to show for it, by calling those people meatheads and lunks and making it clear that pushing yourself hard will be commented on, maybe even with an attempt at public humiliation, as a matter of official policy … really?
The business plan is clearly to attempt to preferentially attract the low utilizer. Probably some insurance company should do the same thing, advertise to young healthy folks only, with ads that make fun of older people, those with diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, anything that is likely to actually use health care, telling them that if they sign up for insurance with them they not only won’t get what they need but may get mocked. Yes, every insurance company wants a larger population of healthy people who do not use the insurance at all and just pay each month … but no one would tolerate active pursuit of it.
I tell you what - Saturdays must be their big sign-up-newbies day at PF. It wasn’t that crowded, but I noticed more employees than usual and a near-steady stream of potential clients being shown around by the Chirpy Young Things who appear to run the place.
Talked to my friend who managed a Curves for about a year. She estimated that only about a fifth of the people who signed up stuck with it for more than a month or two, and many people quit coming in, but still allowed the $29.00 monthly payment to be withdrawn. She did say there was a small core group of dedicated regulars and during the time she worked there she saw a few get much thinner and more mobile, but they were a tiny minority.
Of course. And I’m sympathetic to that. However, it does not make it acceptable for her and others like her to make nasty and unfounded accusations. It’s very Planet Fitness-like really, being so judgmental of people who are not being judgmental of you.