Just months after opening its first location in the Drusilla Shopping Center, a new Baton Rouge-based fitness studio concept—Regymen—is expanding, with two additional locations in the local market, a company-owned location in Florida, and a franchise location in Texas.
Developer Donnie Jarreau, who co-owns Regymen with Troy Archer and an out-of-state partner, says the start-up fitness studio is growing fast and aggressively—which is all part of the business plan.
Regymen’s second location opened this week in the South Gates Tower near the LSU campus in a space formerly occupied by Definitions fitness club.
A third location, which will be the company’s flagship location, will open Sept. 1 in the Bluebonnet Village Shopping Center at Bluebonnet Boulevard and Perkins Road, in a space formerly occupied by Mike Ward’s Liberty Safes.
Regymen has also recently opened a company-owned studio in downtown Pensacola, Florida, and has inked a deal with a franchisee for a location in Austin, Texas.
Additional franchise studios are planned for Memphis and Nashville in Tennessee; Macon, Georgia; and Tallahassee, Florida.
Regymen offers group exercise classes that combine high-impact cardio workouts with strength training and boxing in a studio that uses lights and music to motivate and enhance the effect. Other similar concepts have proven wildly successful. The Florida-based Orange Theory is one of the fastest growing fitness franchise chains in the country, with more than 800 locations over the past eight years.
In the three months since Jarreau and Archer converted their Fit 365 gym in the Drusilla Village Shopping Center into the first Regymen studio, about 40 members per month have signed up.
“That’s good for a small studio,” Jarreau says.
Though perhaps better known for his activities in commercial real estate, Jarreau is a veteran of the local health club industry. In the 1990s, he founded Spectrum Fitness and at one point owned as many as seven clubs in the market. In recent years, he has sold off all but one.
In 2013, after acquiring the Drusilla Village Shopping Center, he converted a former stationery store to Fit 365, but never marketed the club because he couldn’t decide on what kind of programming to offer. In 2017, he began working on the Regymen concept, which he believes will be successful because it capitalizes on the growing trend toward high-impact interval training in a boutique fitness center.
