Designing a Session-Pack Menu for a Private Pilates Studio

Most private studios start with one price. Then a client asks for a deal if she commits to ten, a couple wants to come together, someone moves away and wants to keep going on video, and a year later the price list has eleven lines on it. Some of those lines nobody has bought since the spring.

If that sounds like your studio, this piece is a way to step back and look at the whole menu. It lays out the choices most private-heavy studios face: how many options to offer, what size packs to sell, how deep a discount to give, how to handle duets and virtual sessions, and whether packs expire. There's no single right menu. It depends on your clients, your schedule and how much tracking you want to do.

Fewer options, or more?

There's a decent body of research on what happens when people face too many choices. A 2015 meta-analysis by Chernev, Böckenholt and Goodman in the Journal of Consumer Psychology pooled 99 observations from earlier studies. It found that bigger assortments do lead to "choice overload" under certain conditions: when the options are complex, when the decision is hard, when people are unsure what they want, and when they're trying to decide with little effort.

A new private client often fits that description. She doesn't yet know how often she'll come or what the work will feel like. A short menu makes the first purchase easier.

That said, a short menu isn't free. Some studios find that a single pack size leaves out clients who come twice a week, or clients on a tight budget who'd buy a smaller pack but not a big one. Here's how the common setups tend to play out.

Seran Glanfield made a related point on The Pilates Business Podcast in September 2025. She argued that "your pricing directly impacts how long people stay, how much they spend and how loyal they are to your studio," and that heavy reliance on intro offers tends to attract clients who buy the intro pack and stop there. Her suggestion was to think about what keeps the right people in the studio longer, rather than about matching a competitor's deal.

Pack size and discount math

Two numbers drive a pack: how many sessions it holds and what each one costs compared with a single.

Pack size. A useful starting question is how long you'd like one pack to last. If most clients come weekly, a 10-pack lasts about two and a half months and a 12-pack about three. Twice-weekly clients go through the same pack in half the time. Some studios like a size that lines up with a season or a quarter, so renewals land at predictable points in the year.

Discount depth. There isn't a reliable public benchmark for private-session pack discounts. Most of the numbers floating around come from software vendors' own blogs. A more grounded way in is to work out what the discount costs you per pack, then decide whether the commitment is worth it.

Here's a worksheet using a made-up single rate of $130. Swap in your own numbers.

Read across the last column. A 10% discount on a 10-pack is the same as giving away one session. Some owners are happy with that trade because the client has paid up front and committed to ten weeks. Others find that their regulars would buy a pack anyway, and that the discount mostly lowers income from people who were never going to leave.

A few other things change the math:

• Card fees. If you take cards, the fee on a $1,400 pack is larger in dollars than on a single.
• Prepaid money isn't earned yet. From a bookkeeping view, a pack is a promise of future sessions. The Beancount guide to studio bookkeeping (2026) describes recording a pack as deferred revenue, a liability, and moving it to income as each session is used. Whether that applies to your books depends on your accounting method, so this one is worth asking your bookkeeper about.
• Late cancels. How a late cancel interacts with a pack (does it use a session?) belongs in your policy and in your pack terms, in the same words.

Duets, semi-privates and virtual sessions

Duets and virtual sessions are where menus tend to sprawl. A few patterns come up:

• Per-person pricing. Each duet partner buys their own pack at a duet rate. This is clean when partners come at different frequencies, and it gets messy when one partner cancels and the other comes alone.
• Shared pack. A couple or two friends share one pack. It's easy to sell, but you need a rule for what happens when only one shows up, and for who gets the balance if they stop coming together.
• Virtual as its own product. Some studios price virtual privates lower, since there's no equipment or room. Others charge the same, on the view that the teaching is the product.

Lesley Logan suggests in Pilates Journal that a fully booked teacher can make room by moving some clients into duos or trios. If duets are a capacity tool for you, it can help to price them so they're attractive to clients and still work for you per hour.

Booking the whole pack up front

One of the 19 expert tips collected by Pilates Anytime is blunt: "When a client purchases a package, book those sessions so they are committed to you for the remainder of the package." Another tip from the same piece suggests telling clients how often you'd like to see them, rather than asking when they want to come.

Booking ahead has clear upsides. The schedule fills, the pack gets used, and the renewal conversation happens naturally when the last session is in sight. It also has costs. Clients with changing work schedules may end up rescheduling half of what you booked, which shifts the admin rather than removing it. Some studios book the full pack for clients with fixed routines and only two or three weeks ahead for everyone else.

Should packs expire?

Studios genuinely disagree on this. In a 2019 Philadelphia Magazine piece on Philly boutique studios, one owner said expiration dates "are there to encourage our crew to show up," while another said her studio had never used them, because putting clients in a use-it-or-lose-it spot felt unfair.

Rules on prepaid services and expiry vary by state and country, and the bookkeeping guide above notes that some states treat unredeemed prepayments as unclaimed property. Before setting an expiry, it's worth checking with a qualified professional where you are. This isn't legal or tax advice.

Low-balance reminders that feel like service

The moment a client has one or two sessions left is the natural time to talk about the next pack. Done well, it reads as looking after her schedule. Done badly, it reads as a sales message.

Here's a sample text some owners adapt:

Hi Maria, just a heads-up that you have 2 sessions left on your pack, Tuesday and Thursday next week. Want me to set up the next one so your Tuesday 10am stays yours?

The useful parts are the specific count, the dates and the reason to renew (keeping her slot), with no pressure to decide that minute.

Some studios send these by hand from a weekly list. Others rely on software. This is the problem we built Wundaful for. It tracks sessions left on every pack, flags clients with two or fewer remaining, and the owner can text Wundaful to ask who's running low. Whatever you use, the reminder lands best when it sounds like you.

Questions to help you decide

• How long would you like one pack to last for a typical client?
• What does your current discount cost you per pack, and what do you get for it?
• How many active pack types do you have now, and which ones has anyone bought this year?
• Do duets in your studio share a pack, or does each person buy their own?
• Would an expiry date change how often your clients come, or just how they feel about you?
• Who sends the "two sessions left" message today, and when?

Sources

1. When Product Assortment Leads to Choice Overload: A Conceptual Review and Meta-Analysis: Chernev, Böckenholt and Goodman, Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2015 (Kellogg School of Management listing).
2. Stop Leaving Money on the Table: The Hidden Link Between Pricing and Client Retention: The Pilates Business Podcast, Seran Glanfield, September 8, 2025.
3. 19 Expert Tips for Growing Your Pilates Business: Pilates Anytime, Amanda Altman, December 13, 2018.
4. What No One Tells You About Being Fully Booked: Pilates Journal, Lesley Logan, undated.
5. This Is Why So Many Philly Boutique Fitness Studios Have Credit Expiration Policies: Philadelphia Magazine, Leah Groth, July 31, 2019.
6. The Pilates Studio Owner's Bookkeeping Playbook: From Class Pack Breakage to Reformer ROI: Beancount, 2026.