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.
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