Case Study: Stay Gold Fitness—Revolutionizing Gym Access with an Open Gym Model
Last Updated on 5 August, 2025
Business Overview
- Company: Stay Gold Fitness
- Location: Toronto, ON, Canada
Stay Gold Fitness, led by Joel Tellier, operates with a mission to provide an inclusive and welcoming space that accommodates people of varying fitness levels, gender identities, and socioeconomic profiles. With a range of business models under one roof (including small group classes, personal training, events, and Open Gym Hours), Stay Gold Fitness aims to provide a high level of service and community engagement, making fitness accessible and enjoyable for everyone.
In this Case Study, we explore how Open Gym Hours make up an essential part of Joel’s mission-driven business model, allowing him to offer Stay Gold Fitness members an accessible workout option with minimal additional overhead cost to the business. Read on to learn more about Stay Gold Fitness and how you can add Open Gym Hours to your business model!
Challenge
As an artist and an athlete, Joel often found himself at the intersection of diverse social groups. Before founding Stay Gold Fitness, he worked out at a large box gym where he realized that there were no good options for those who required flexible gym access but didn’t feel comfortable in these settings.
Due to the high cost of maintaining staff during non-peak times, boutique gyms in the Toronto area tend to have restricted hours and availability. Knowing how important exercise was for his own well-being, he determined to remove as many barriers to accessing an active lifestyle as possible, including not only limited hours of operation, but also cultural and financial barriers.
Joel envisioned opening his own boutique studio and providing a combination of scheduled services and Open Gym hours. But he needed a way to provide gym access that would generate a reliable revenue stream with limited additional overhead cost. Because his business model sometimes favors inclusivity over profitability, it was important that he offset the cost of certain business policies (like sliding scale pricing and flexible membership terms) aimed at keeping his space accessible. For his vision to become a reality, he would need a streamlined process for customers to reserve and access his facility.
Solution
Joel’s open gym model allows members to access the gym facilities from 5 am to 11 pm, accommodating early birds, night owls, and everyone in between. After a couple of years of trial and error, he eventually found a way to eliminate the need for staff during non-peak hours through an automated process that enables customers to both:
- Reserve “zones” in his gym at the dates and time of their choosing, and
- Gain secure and exclusive access to the gym during the registered time.
With the WellnessLiving software businesses’ customers can do all of this (and more) right from their phones.
Book-a-Spot Asset Management
The Stay Gold Fitness facility includes multiple areas or “zones” clients can book during open gym hours. These include a main gym area, personal training zones, class space, an outdoor area, a boxing gym, and even a sauna and ice bath! Each zone can comfortably accommodate a set number of people, and Joel wanted to ensure that when clients registered for open gym hours, they could access the equipment they wanted without being crowded out by demand.
Fortunately, with WellnessLiving’s Book-a-Spot feature, Joel can designate the capacity of each zone or “asset.” (Assets refer to anything a client can rent at your business, such as rooms, equipment, or lockers.) When a Stay Gold Fitness customer wants to reserve a zone for a workout, but it is too full for comfort, they can easily choose from among the other less-busy open gym hour time slots.
“We need our members to have easy access to our space. When they come in, they want to know that the equipment they need is available, and that they’ll have enough space. With us, they know that they will always have what they need to enjoy a safe and comfortable workout.” — Joel Tellier, Stay Gold Fitness
Door Access Integration
Joel needed a way to automatically provide paying members with secure and up-to-date door access to his facility. He decided to try Brivo, a WellnessLiving integration that enables businesses to automatically control access to their facility. Brivo provides specialized door access hardware that integrates seamlessly with client scheduling and payment data in WellnessLiving.
Once a client is authorized to access the facility, they receive a unique door code to securely enter the gym right from their phone. No longer is an on-site staff person needed to monitor entry during extended hours. Plus, in WellnessLiving, when you set up an automatically updating Client Group for your open gym membership, Brivo will automatically grant or deny door access privileges whenever a client’s membership starts or lapses.
“We’ve become known as the only place in Toronto where you can do what you want to do when you want to do it.” — Joel Tellier, Stay Gold Fitness
Conclusion: The Power of Flexibility and Inclusivity at Stay Gold Fitness
Stay Gold’s flexible gym hours attract new members who value the ability to work out in their own way, on their own terms. Joel’s open gym model currently contributes around 30% to Stay Gold’s sales. This additional revenue supports Stay Gold’s flexible and inclusive pricing model, which sustains the gym’s diverse and supportive community.
This has resulted in a virtuous cycle of prosperity, enabling strategic staffing changes (they added a general manager and a social media marketing manager), to which Joel humbly credits the fact that sales have doubled over the past year!
By focusing on flexibility and inclusivity, Stay Gold Fitness has carved out a distinctive niche in Toronto’s fitness market, proving that innovative business models can drive both growth and community engagement.
“We have multiple spaces and various overlapping business models,” says Joel. “WellnessLiving helps us handle all these different types of bookings and memberships seamlessly, in one system.”
- Learn more about Stay Gold Fitness: STAY GOLD
- Read more about what you can do with the Brivo and Book-A-Spot options available through WellnessLiving.
Are you thinking about adding “Open Gym Hours” at your business? Read our essential guide
