Franchising Gyms

Bain Case Study Prompt

Your client is a gym franchisor. The client focuses on small gyms (approximately 3000 square feet) with standard fitness equipment, but no classes or lockers. The gyms are typically located in local strip malls. They are open 24 hours per day; members enter the gym via an access card. Staffing at the gym is minimal to none (depends on each individual franchisee). This business is growing very rapidly.

However, there is now a new competitor offering a similar franchising opportunity. To make our client’s franchising opportunity more attractive, our client would like your input on how the profitability of its franchises can be improved.

How would you structure your approach to this problem?

Bain Case Study Overview

This Bain case study involves a gym franchisor looking to increase profitability of its franchises. Your job is to dig into the profitability, ask the right questions, and gather the critical data needed to give an informed recommendation to the client.

If you are prepping for a second round Bain interview, the Profitability Framework is a good place to start with your structure for the case. However, don’t try to force the case to fit into a singular framework. Use your knowledge of the basic frameworks, combined with your own business understanding, in order to create a custom structure tailored to the case.

With a qualitative difficulty score of 2/4, this Bain case study will set you up for a Bain second round. The case contains no math exhibits.

Bain Interview Tips

Bain is looking for candidates that are able to take a step back from the case, and into the real world. The firm wants to see how you would react to and navigate complex business problems on the job.

Don’t get so focused on cracking the case that you lose sight of the bigger picture!

In this case, focus on creating a structure that would be translatable to a real-world environment. Would you assign a team of analysts to the work-streams you created in your structure?

If you need some expert insight into your case prep process, schedule a session with one of our ex-MBB interview coaches today.