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Some gyms offer Smoothie bars, why not do them one better and offer a full restaurant?

My friend Kate the other day mentioned an idea to me that I loved. How about combining a health club and a salad bar?

We both go to Planet Fitness to work out occasionally– and by ‘both go’ I mean that she goes to Planet Fitness to work out regularly while I just pay my bill each month and haven’t stepped foot in the gym in over a year. Planet Fitness likes to show that they’re not your typical gym by discouraging meat-heads from banging weights, focusing more on the cardio side of fitness, and even bringing in boxes of free pizza on the first Monday of every month.

The pizza idea seems a little silly- I mean I get it, they’re relating to us normal people instead of making us feel out of our league when it comes to working out. But maybe they should consider something a little healthier to pull clients in.

Some gyms offer Smoothie bars which have been very popular in the last decade. Often they’ll offer powdered additives like creatine or acacia berries that are supposed to increase the benefits you see from your workouts.

I think it’d be an awesome idea to focus on the health and lifestyle aspects of a gym and combine both nutritional and cardiovascular aspects. I say we create a health club with a relatively nice and affordable restaurant built in that is available only to members. Focus the menu around healthy options– it could be as simple as a salad bar that costs a couple of bucks or as complex as a full scale health restaurant.

You could offer menu choices that serve as supplements– protein powder packets next to the milk machine, acacia berries s to top your salad with, etc. Each option could have a few sentences that explain the health benefits of the item, and a one word label like “Power”, “Recovery”, or “Muscle-Mass”.

Healthy options and nutrition-centric menus are one of the hottest trends in the restaurant industry today. If you pay careful attention to quality and cost controls on the food end, and make sure you offer a solid range of fitness equipment on the gym side then you’ll be able to hook customers on their way in and their way out. Suddenly you could make me feel guilty not just about skipping my workout but also for skipping out on a healthy meal. If nothing else, it’d keep me paying that monthly membership fee!