A year after its 36-year local franchisee exited, Gold's Gym hands Los Angeles and Orange County development rights to a Jiffy Lube operator.
Gold's Gym has signed Valencia-based Roknipour Investment Group to open 15 gyms across Los Angeles and Orange counties over seven years. The deal fills a hole the brand has carried since fall 2025, when its Southern California franchisee of about 36 years exited and took its gyms with it, leaving the company-owned Venice flagship as the only Gold's in the region.
One operator held the region for more than three decades, so when that group sold out, the brand lost its entire local footprint at once. Gold's now runs nine gyms statewide. CEO Brad Reynolds called the region the biggest fitness market in the world and said the company started searching for a replacement operator immediately.
Roknipour runs 24 Jiffy Lube units and two Jersey Mike's, with two more Jersey Mike's in development, plus a commercial real estate development arm. This is its first fitness brand. Matt Roknipour pointed to membership stickiness as the draw, arguing gym dues are among the last expenses consumers cut in a downturn.
The new gyms will run 25,000 to 30,000 square feet, well under the roughly 40,000-square-foot Venice flagship. Reynolds said the floor plan shifts away from group classes toward strength and performance equipment. Eight units are planned for Los Angeles County and seven for Orange County, with the first targeted to open within about 12 months.
Concentrating a major market in one legacy franchisee creates a single point of failure, and Gold's spent a year with almost no presence in its birthplace as a result. Handing the rebuild to a real estate developer with multi-brand experience trades fitness expertise for site access, which matters in a market where Roknipour admits standalone sites will be hard to find.
Revscale Media (illustration)The iconic strength-training brand ended its co-CEO structure, naming Brad Reynolds sole chief executive as it preps a Dallas flagship and pushes franchise growth.
Revscale Media (illustration)A federal judge held Sept. 29 that Minnesota's ban on liquidated damages does not stop a franchisor from suing for the actual fees it lost when a franchisee left 13 years early.
Revscale Media (illustration)The salon suite franchisor signed 22 units across six markets in the third quarter, most of them to new multi-unit owners, and now counts 759 locations.
Hawaiian BrosSouthern Rock Restaurants, which runs nearly 200 McAlister's Deli and Dave's Hot Chicken units, will build 52 Hawaiian Bros restaurants across four Florida markets over six years.
Revscale Media (illustration)Locations using conversational AI turned 69% of applicants into interviews, four times the manual rate, and the spa franchisor took top honors at this year's Franchise Innovation Awards.
Revscale Media (illustration)Distribution Solutions Group agreed to acquire GradeEight Holdings, parent of the Winzer franchise network and FastServ Supply, a business with about $110 million in annual sales.
