Jim Donnelly partakes in every service offered at Restore Hyper Wellness—and some the Austin, Texas-based franchise doesn’t provide.
“There’s this whole notion of gut health and you go out to California and you can put sort of the fecal matter of a healthy gut into your system to hopefully improve your gut health,” says Donnelly, Restore’s co-founder and CEO. “That’s probably a little too far for me. But I’ve done it, yeah.”
Restore, launched in 2015 by Donnelly and Steven Welch, co-founder of venture capital firm DreamIt Ventures, began with a focus on whole body cryotherapy, IV drips and hyperbaric oxygen therapy. They’ve since expanded the services and the unit count, to 138 locations that now list photobiomodulation (red light) therapy, intramuscular shots, Cryoskin treatments and more on the menu.
Donnelly, whose background is in building technology and software companies, talks about several macro factors—Obamacare, the opioid crisis, disillusionment with pharmaceutical companies—as influencing a broader shift in how Americans think about health and wellness.
“There were cryotherapy places popping up all over the place. There were IV places popping up all over the place. But it was all just such an underwhelming experience. The retail environments were underwhelming, it was way overpriced,” says Donnelly. “I was thinking to myself, I’m a pretty affluent guy, relatively speaking, I’ve sold a couple companies. I have a hard time paying this much for it, even though it makes me feel really, really good. How can normal people, you know, your man on the street, afford to pay this?
“And I didn’t find that the folks doing it had a deep enough knowledge of the potential. So all of those things were where I found my inspiration.”
Read more: Why New-age Wellness Franchises Are Flying High
Donnelly’s goal is to “democratize” wellness by making it more affordable and accessible. When he started Restore, “finding cryotherapy for less than 50 bucks was unheard of.” Restore members can buy single cryotherapy sessions for $27, and memberships start at $99 per month. On the more expensive end, members pay upwards of $2,000 for a four-pack of NAD+ IV drips. Short for nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, NAD+ is added to an IV drip, the goal being, according to Restore’s description, “to help the body clean house of cellular components that may be damaged.”
“The way I describe NAD to someone who hasn’t done it is, think of doing a five-day cleanse in 30 minutes. So all of the things that go with the cleanse, the way it affects your body, you know, now I’m not drinking coffee and that makes me feel badly. All of those sorts of things get condensed into a 30-, 45-minute period,” explains Donnelly. “The second it starts, it’s miserable. The second it ends, it’s incredibly pleasant.”
Jim Donnelly partakes regularly in Restore’s services, including red light therapy.
The IV ingredient combination Restore uses, notes Donnelly, was developed through its Restore Labs, the research and development facility it opened in 2020. Its proprietary, electric-powered whole body cryotherapy chamber also evolved from the lab, and the company owns a manufacturing facility in Poland that supplies the massive machines. Why Poland?
“The center of excellence for cold technology is oddly enough in Poland. So liquid nitrogen came out of Poland. There are degree programs and the best schools, Ph.Ds., master’s degrees, all around cold technology in Poland, so you get the best engineers for cold-related products in Poland,” says Donnelly. “And they’re super passionate about it. They are literally passionate about cold technology.”
Restore’s investments in product development set it apart in the franchised wellness space, Donnelly believes, as does its emphasis on “layers of safety,” including a registered nurse in each store, client consultations with a nurse practitioner and a medical director overseeing stores in each market. It’s also pushing the science and benefits of the modalities to the forefront, albeit carefully.
“This category is becoming bigger; we’re touching more people. There’s a responsibility that comes from that. No. 1, you’ve got to talk about it in the right way—you can’t make ridiculous claims about what these things do for you,” says Donnelly. “They do wonderful, amazing things for people, but don’t talk about them inappropriately. Why? No. 1, it’s inappropriate from a customer perspective, but also, the FDA, the FTC, these are real things.”
The company last year hired Dan Pardi as chief health architect. Well known in the health behavior world and founder of HumanOS.me, a digital health training application, Pardi has a master’s degree in physiology, a doctorate in neuroscience and he helped create the medical and scientific affairs department at Jazz Pharmaceuticals to “provide scientific support for products on the market.”
Pardi describes his role at Restore as creating “almost like a North Star that helps align all the things we do.” That includes articulating the value of services, promotion and marketing, and evaluation of products. The modalities offered at Restore have “a burgeoning medical base that shows these have positive effects on health,” he says, despite some not being approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Restore doesn’t make medical claims and instead focuses on health promotion and “helping your average person who is interested in being healthy to actually do that.”
He and Donnelly have ambitions to create a digital health platform so clients can track their health evolution and Restore can demonstrate outcomes from its services. The company is “investing tens of millions of dollars in technology,” says Donnelly, and the digital platform, says Pardi, could “turn someone from a dabbler into a lifetime member.”
Demi-Leigh and Tim Tebow are Restore’s first brand ambassadors and also investors in the company.
Restore received its own multimillion-dollar investment last year when it attracted $140 million in Series C funding, led by growth equity firm General Atlantic.
“It validated everything we set out to do,” says Donnelly. “It showed the world we’re a potential category changer.” Bloomberg reported in December Restore is valued at more than $500 million.
General Atlantic’s investment round will help Restore expand its footprint—a new unit opens every three or four days—and Donnelly says the company is making additional investments to improve the user experience.
The average unit volume for franchise locations was $661,862 in 2020, and Donnelly says Restore’s updated franchise disclosure document will show even better unit economics. “What each cohort shows is stores open at higher levels from the beginning and they grow faster. That has been true of every yearly cohort since the day we opened,” he says. “And it’s been a pretty significant improvement year to year. And you’ll see that again this year.”
The cost to open a Restore ranges from $464,703 to $998,029, and the company drew its first round of franchisees from among elite military academy graduates (Donnelly’s wife is a West Point grad) and medical device company execs. Now, says Donnelly, many franchisees come from other systems such as Orangetheory Fitness and European Wax Center.
Another potential franchisee is Heisman Trophy winner and former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow, who with wife Demi-Leigh invested in Restore and signed on as brand ambassadors. The pair, said Donnelly, could become franchisees and open Restore units in Southeastern Conference cities such as Gainesville, where Tebow played at the University of Florida, and in markets such as Oxford, Mississippi, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, both home to SEC schools.
The Tebows “have an authentic relationship” with Restore, says Donnelly, and use services at the brand’s Jacksonville Beach, Florida, location. They’re the company’s first official spokespeople and Donnelly hints more athletes will show up in marketing campaigns. “A whole cadre of famous people will be coming out,” he says.
It’s all part of a big brand awareness push for Restore that includes ads on streaming services such as Hulu, social media campaigns and much more, with “millions of dollars” spent on marketing. “This is the year Restore enters the cultural zeitgeist,” he says.
This is an excerpt from the Franchise Times June/July cover story, “Why New-age Wellness Franchises Are Flying High.”