Sauna House Is Franchising the Nordic Bathhouse. The Numbers Back It Up.

Most wellness concepts that try to scale from Asheville to Austin end up diluted. Sauna House may be the exception. Founded in 2019 by Andrew Lachlan and Jennifer Richter, the North Carolina-based communal bathhouse brand posted 276% two-year revenue growth, landed at #838 on the 2024 Inc. 5000, and has quietly assembled one of the more credible franchise machines in thermal wellness, including a proprietary sauna factory built to supply its growing network of franchisees.

This is not a spa brand slapping "sauna" on a menu. Sauna House is building real infrastructure around a specific and repeatable concept. The question is whether the infrastructure holds as they push beyond the Carolinas.

The Origin

Lachlan built Sauna House out of personal necessity. While living in San Francisco, he turned to cold water therapy and sauna to manage chronic pain and stress. The experience changed how he thought about wellness: not as a service delivered to an individual in a private room, but as something practiced communally, the way Scandinavians have done it for centuries.

The concept he and Richter brought to Asheville is called the Hot-Cold-Relax cycle, a two-hour communal session rotating between traditional sauna, cold plunge, and rest. Phones and technology are banned inside the bathhouse. That is not incidental. The digital detox rule is central to the brand's identity, a hard stop that forces the psychological reset that many members say is the whole point. In a market crowded with amenity-first wellness brands, "no phones" is a genuine differentiator. It takes nerve to enforce.

We are thrilled that the hard work and dedication of our team have been recognized. More importantly, we believe that with growth comes the opportunity to give back to causes we are passionate about in significant ways. — Andrew Lachlan, CEO, Sauna House

A Business Built for Volume

The Sauna House model layers several revenue streams on top of the base session. Two-hour thermal cycle passes are the primary driver. Monthly memberships convert that session demand into recurring revenue. Private Hot-Cold-Relax suites command a premium for guests who want the experience without the communal element. Deep tissue massage, bundled with bathhouse access, rounds out a higher-margin add-on channel. Retail and e-commerce make up a meaningful fourth pillar: the brand sells apparel, bathing supplies, and home sauna equipment including Auroom modular saunas and Haljas glass cabins (specifically the Hele Nano), paired with HUUM pebble-style electric heaters from Estonia.

The economics work in part because of labor efficiency. A communal sauna session requires far less staff per guest-hour than a treatment-room spa. Once the facilities are built and the water is chilled, the marginal cost of adding one more body to the sauna is close to zero. High fixed costs, low variable costs, recurring membership revenue: that is a business model that rewards scale.

The Franchise Stack

In 2023, Sauna House sold 10 franchise territories and targeted 10 more by the end of 2024. The initial franchise fee is $49,500. Total investment to open a location runs $1.56 million to $3.83 million, a wide spread driven almost entirely by local real estate and construction costs for the plumbing, mechanical, and electrical work these facilities require. The bathhouses are infrastructure-heavy: the Durham flagship covers 6,900 square feet and required a full gut-retrofit for thermal and water management. Ongoing royalty is 5% of gross sales.

One thing that separates Sauna House from most wellness franchisors is that they built their own sauna manufacturing operation to supply the network. Franchisees receive custom-built traditional wet saunas constructed from premium cedar and aspen. Each sauna room runs on dual 12-kilowatt commercial electric heaters, sized to maintain stable temperatures as guests cycle in and out across a high-traffic day. That is a deliberate supply chain decision that gives the brand control over product quality in a way most competitors simply cannot match.

Between sauna sets, guests rest on heated ergonomic loungers from Galanter and Jones. Locker room products are exclusively from certified B-Corps Dr. Bronner's and EO Products. Facilities run no single-use plastics, use organic cleaning supplies, and install low-flow showerheads to offset the energy and water consumption that a commercial bathhouse inevitably produces.

The Cold Plunge Hardware

Sauna House does not use pod-style personal cold plunge units. Their communal cold plunges are commercial-grade pools holding more than 400 gallons of chilled water, built to accommodate multiple bathers simultaneously at temperature. That distinction matters both for the guest experience and for the regulatory reality: pools of that size fall under public pool water-treatment requirements, including filtration, disinfection, and testing protocols. It is a harder operational lift than an infrared studio with a single-person cold tub, and it creates a genuine barrier to entry for anyone trying to replicate the concept cheaply.

Where They Are Building

The corporate footprint anchors in the Carolinas. The original Asheville location remains the flagship. Durham is the company's blueprint for the franchise system. Charlotte and Raleigh are operating or in late construction in North Carolina. Greenville, South Carolina, Knoxville, Tennessee, and Bonita Springs, Florida, are all franchise markets in various stages of build-out.

Austin is the biggest bet. In late 2025, the company opened an interim concept in North Austin called the Sauna Garden, an indoor-outdoor experience built around wood-burning saunas while the permanent full-format location is constructed. Austin represents the largest market Sauna House has sold franchise rights in to date. Summerville, South Carolina, and Raleigh, North Carolina (targeting January 2026), are also in the immediate pipeline.

By any honest count, the brand has more than a dozen units in active construction or near-term development. New 2026 territories are already being negotiated.

The Competitive Context

Sauna House is not the biggest social thermal wellness brand in America. Bathhouse in New York is approaching $120 million in run-rate revenue across its two locations. Othership raised $11.3 million to expand from Toronto into Manhattan. SweatHouz has 78 studios in 25 states. QC Terme is bringing European thermal spa hospitality to the U.S. market.

But Sauna House is arguably building the most replicable version of the concept, the one most likely to reach mid-sized American cities that will never see a Bathhouse or an Othership. Meanwhile, scrappier independents like White Mountain Sauna Haus in North Conway, NH are proving that the communal sauna model works even without a franchise system, just a renovated barn and a walk-in policy. The communal format, the custom manufacturing supply chain, the documented franchise economics, the digital detox rule, the Inc. 5000 placement: there is a real business here. The question is whether they can execute the build-out at speed without diluting what makes the Asheville original work in the first place. Expansion is always where the founders' vision meets the operator's limitations. For Sauna House, that test is just getting started.