After a six-year partnership with Excel Fitness, a Planet Fitness franchise group, California-based Altamont Capital Partners has exited its investment with the sale of the company Olympus Partners from Connecticut. As part of the transaction, which closed last month, Excel’s management team and founders worked with Altamont to establish a bonus pool that awarded each of the company’s employees - more than 1,500 people - a payment at closing in recognition of their performance.
Altamont acquired the Planet Fitness franchisee business in 2016, building on its previous experience investing in multi-unit consumer businesses, including with Tacala, the largest Taco Bell franchisee in the U.S. At the time, Excel Fitness operated 18 Planet Fitness locations in Austin and Dallas. Today, Excel operates 90 locations in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, North Carolina and Virginia and has been named Planet Fitness’ 2019 Franchisee of the Year. Altamont is a founding partner of Ownership Works, a new nonprofit organization dedicated to developing broad-based employee engagement programs to create better work environments and financial opportunities for employees and help companies improve performance by attracting and retaining engaged employees who are invested in the success of their business. Under the Ownership Works partnership, Altamont will continue to work with its partner companies to build on existing efforts and implement shared ownership more broadly across its portfolio.
The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
