A New Jersey family is bringing a Florida-born fitness concept home to Bergen County, with plans to open the first Yoga Joint studio in the state at the Crossroads Shopping Center at 305 Route 17 South in Paramus come March 2027. The 3,850-square-foot studio, built to hold 56 mats and accommodate 55 participants at a time, will be the family's opening move in a broader push to bring the infrared-heated fitness brand across North Jersey.
Behind the venture is a family team: Steve Clarke, Laura Mays, Danielle Clarke and Brittany Clarke, according to NJ.com. For Mays, who grew up in Paramus, the project doubles as something of a homecoming. Construction on the Paramus location is expected to begin in December, with the studio targeting a March opening roughly a year from now.
Mays first discovered Yoga Joint after her family relocated to South Florida shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic, and Steve Clarke, a retired businessman, has described how his wife urged him to try a class, framing it to him as fitness rather than traditional yoga. He came away impressed, according to the report, a reaction that helped set the family's expansion plans in motion.
Family Roles Divide Up the New Venture
The Clarke-Mays team plans to open four Yoga Joint studios across New Jersey in total, with additional locations slated for Essex, Morris and Passaic counties beyond the Paramus flagship. Each family member has carved out a distinct role: Danielle Clarke, a former college gymnast and sports orthopedic therapist who lives in Kinnelon, will manage day-to-day operations, while her sister Brittany, who works in public relations, will handle marketing for the brand locally.
Steve Clarke is set to focus on the financial side of the business, and Laura Mays will oversee the startup phase as the Paramus studio gets off the ground. The Paramus facility itself is designed with amenities beyond the workout floor, including a lobby, a small retail space, and a boutique stocked with curated workout apparel. Members will also have access to private showers with complimentary shower products, workout and shower towels, personal lockers, changing rooms and restrooms.
What a Class Actually Looks Like
Yoga Joint offers two class formats: a vinyasa-based yoga class and a strength- and cardio-based fitness class, both of which run in infrared-heated rooms. Per the family, the infrared heating penetrates muscles and warms the body from within, which they say promotes better circulation and range of motion. Separately, AthletechNews reports that the brand's two signature formats, Flow60 and FIIT45, are held in rooms kept between 94 and 96 degrees Fahrenheit systemwide.
Membership at the new studio will include unlimited monthly passes, class packs and individual class purchases, and the family expects to line up 300 to 400 founding members before the doors open, with those early sign-ups receiving promotional memberships. Instructors will be hired locally but will travel to Florida for training, a structure meant to keep quality consistent as the brand expands outside its home state. The company also says it provides ongoing instructor education and places a heavy emphasis on customer service and client engagement, drawing a clientele that ranges from teenagers to people in their 70s, with women making up 65% of the client base.
A Brand Scaling Fast Beyond Florida
Yoga Joint's New Jersey debut comes as the company pursues a much larger buildout. The brand's founding year is itself disputed in company materials: a Businesswire release describes Yoga Joint as founded in 2010 by Paige Held, while sgbonline.com has reported it was founded in 2012. Either way, the brand has grown well beyond its original Florida base, having added eight studios through its Joint Venture Program and continuing to build a presence in South Florida, Orlando, Tampa and Jacksonville, per sgbonline.com.
Yoga Joint has also secured a $5.5 million growth-capital raise aimed at fueling an expansion into New York City, with a goal of scaling to more than 15 studios across the city and surrounding markets, including Jersey City and Hoboken, by 2030. The company's first New York-area locations are slated to open this fall. Separately, the brand has drawn a minority equity investment from Jon Canarick through a friends-and-family round, though specific terms were not disclosed, and it says it is pursuing nationwide growth primarily through multi-unit franchise deals, having already fielded interest from entrepreneurs in Georgia, Texas, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut.
Fitting Into New Jersey's Boutique Fitness Boom
The Paramus launch arrives amid a broader surge of specialty fitness studios moving into New Jersey shopping centers and downtowns. According to re-nj.com, these boutique concepts typically occupy far less space than traditional gyms, generally around 1,800 to 3,000 square feet, and often need just 300 to 500 members while charging $150 to $200 a month for unlimited access. One industry executive described specialty fitness as a concept that is here to stay in the state's retail landscape.
Other chains have already staked out similar territory in New Jersey, including the cluster of Rumble Boxing, CycleBar, Club Pilates and YogaSix at the Shoppes at the Livingston Circle, and OHM Fitness, which opened locations in Park Ridge and Wayne with a Princeton studio following. For Yoga Joint, the numbers from its established Florida studios suggest high stakes: the company projects average unit volumes of $2.2 million for mature locations, with roughly 830 recurring members accounting for 65% of a typical studio's revenue.
