Fitness Center Lures Customers With Free Pizza

My strip-mall gym is next-door to an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet, which I've thus far mustered the willpower to resist. But if there was pizza inside my gym, I'd for sure spend more time on crust than crunches. A Knoxville, Tennessee Planet Fitness, though, says free monthly pizza dinners and morning bagel-and-coffee buffets motivate customers to come work out.

KnoxNews.com reports the gym offers free bagels and coffee on the second Tuesday of the month, and free pizza on the first Monday evening of the month. The gym calls it a "reward" for getting out of bed to come to the gym, or for sweating hard on the elliptical or weight bench.

"I come to the gym three times a week, but I always look forward to the bagel mornings," customer Christa Johnson-Mayti tells KnoxNews.com. (She chose a plain bagel and black coffee after her workout—true discipline.)

Planet Fitness has a reputation as a "judgement (sic)-free zone," so say the signs inside their buildings. (Most of these signs, and the company's website, misspell judgment, which I have a hard time moving past. Once a copy editor, always a copy editor.) The pizza and bagels seem in keeping with that more inclusive attitude; you're less likely to find the hardcore protein-shake crowd at Planet Fitness than, say, a cross-fit place. Of course, if you want to join a gym with no food, no distractions, and just hardcore weight-lifting, fat-shredding equipment, there's always Curves.