Opening a studio in Massachusetts: a $25,000 bond for your first five years

October 14, 2026

This is for anyone opening a Pilates, yoga, barre or boutique fitness studio in Massachusetts. On our reading, the state's health club law has no exemption for short contracts. Before your first sale, founding members included, you need a $25,000 surety bond for each location, and you keep it for your first five years. Every purchase also comes with a three-business-day right to cancel for a full refund, and the notice has to be in the contract.

The health club law covers instruction

The law is chapter 93, sections 78 to 88, of the General Laws. A contract for health club services is one whose primary purpose is the use of a club's facilities or “instruction, training, or assistance by a health club in the preservation, maintenance, encouragement or development of physical fitness, conditioning or well-being, including physical culture, bodybuilding, exercising.” A health club includes “health studios” and “any other similar course of physical training.” The definitions carve out nothing for yoga, class-only studios or month-to-month billing. We read a Pilates, yoga or barre studio as covered.

The bond, and what triggers it

Section 79 ties the bond to time in business, not to how you sell: “Prior to the execution of any contract for health club services and for a period of five years after initially commencing operation of a health club, every seller which sells contracts for health club services” must keep a bond for each location. The only exception is “weight loss and control services which do not provide physical exercise facilities and classes, and which do not obligate the customer for more than thirty days, and which do not require an initiation fee as a condition of said contract.” On our reading, all three conditions describe the weight loss services, so a short contract alone does not exempt a studio. The verb is plural, matching “services,” not “every seller.” A class studio is not a weight loss service.

• The bond is $25,000 per location if your contracts run 24 months or less, and $100,000 per location for contracts over 24 months and up to 36.
• It comes from a surety company admitted in Massachusetts, and you file evidence of it with the secretary of state within 30 days of buying it.
• It pays members who win a judgment, unpaid for 30 days, because the studio closed, failed to open, or did not honor a cancellation under section 82.
• If you buy an existing studio, its bond still covers the members who bought while it was in effect, unless you bond them yourself.

We did not find the filing procedure or any filing fee. Ask your surety how it files.

What every contract and receipt must carry

• A right to cancel within three business days after the member receives “a copy of the written contract or written receipt indicating the buyer's payment” (section 81). The notice starts “CONSUMER'S RIGHT TO CANCELLATION” and runs in at least 10-point bold. The statute's wording has members cancel in person or by certified or registered mail. Everything paid is refunded within 15 business days.
• The same right and how to use it posted clearly in the studio.
• An “ADDITIONAL RIGHTS TO CANCELLATION” notice, also in at least 10-point bold (section 82): death, a doctor-ordered disability lasting more than three months, a studio that fails to open, closes for good or substantially changes, and a move of home or workplace more than 25 miles from your studios. Those refunds are due within 15 days, less the time used.
• No term over 36 months, and no term “measured by the life of the buyer” (section 80). Payments may not run more than a month past the end of the contract. Installments are substantially equal and no more often than once a month.
• All your course and membership prices, discounts, sales and offers posted in the studio (section 84).
• An AED on the premises and a trained AED provider there during staffed hours (section 78A). Section 86 shields the club and its staff from suits over using or not using it, absent gross negligence or willful or wanton misconduct.

The stakes are high. A contract that does not comply is “void and unenforceable as contrary to public policy” (section 85). Violations are unfair and deceptive practices under chapter 93A, so a member can sue for multiple damages and attorney's fees (section 86), and the Attorney General can seek up to $2,500 per violation (section 87).

The Attorney General's regulations at 940 CMR 38.00 also reach autopay. They count memberships as products, and a “Negative Option Feature” includes “an automatic renewal.” Since September 2, 2025, it is an unfair and deceptive practice under chapter 93A to sell one without disclosing, “Clearly and Conspicuously and in writing” before the purchase, that the charges recur until the member cancels and how to cancel. The member also needs a way to cancel that is “at least as easy to access and use” as the way they signed up, on the same website if they joined online (38.05). For a plan of 31 days or less, you send a written notice at least as often as you charge, with the amount and how to cancel, or a reminder 5 to 30 days before each renewal. Prices must be shown as the total price, with every mandatory fee in it (38.04).

What that means for your products

In Frontmat, memberships bill monthly through Stripe on the member's card, and there is no annual or multi-month membership product. Class packs can expire after a number of days you set, or never. In Massachusetts, set every expiry at 730 days or less, which keeps every pack inside 24 months.

Founding memberships need one point of care. In Frontmat a membership can be sold before you open with billing starting on opening day, and a founding membership can be capped at a number of spots. Massachusetts has no ban on selling before you open. But our reading of section 79 is that signing a founding member is “the execution of any contract for health club services,” even with nothing charged until opening day. So buy the bond before the first founding sale. If you never open, those members can cancel under section 82 and the bond answers for it.

Sales tax: classes and memberships are not taxed

Massachusetts taxes services only in a narrow sense. Chapter 64H, section 1 says “the term services shall be limited to telecommunications services.” So memberships, packs and classes are not taxed. Goods you sell at the front desk, such as grip socks or water, are taxed at 6.25% (section 2). The Department of Revenue's pages on mass.gov would not load for us, so this rests on the statute.

Your waiver

Massachusetts courts enforce releases. “Massachusetts law favors the enforcement of releases,” the Supreme Judicial Court said in Sharon v. City of Newton (2002). It upheld a father's release for his daughter's high school cheerleading: “In the circumstance of a voluntary, nonessential activity, we will not disturb this parental judgment.” So here a parent's signature for a child has held up in the state's highest court. Two limits: Sharon was a city school program, and the city did not claim the release covered “gross negligence or reckless or intentional conduct.”

The health club law is the open question. Section 80 says: “No contract for health club services may contain any provisions whereby the buyer agrees not to assert against the seller or any assignee or transferee of the health club services contract any claim or defense arising out of the health club services contract or the buyer's activities at the health club.” On its face that reaches a release written into a membership contract. Whether it also reaches a waiver signed as a separate document is open. We have not found a case or Attorney General guidance that answers it.

In Frontmat the waiver is your own text. Members sign it once, at their first booking, with a typed name. We store the time and a fingerprint of the exact wording they signed, so a later edit never changes what an earlier member agreed to. It is plain text, so emphasis is done in CAPITALS. We never supply waiver language. How a Massachusetts studio presents its waiver, next to section 80, is a question for a Massachusetts lawyer.

Workers' comp, instructors and texts

Chapter 152 says “every employer shall provide for the payment to his employees of the compensation provided for by this chapter,” through insurance or a self-insurance license (section 25A). Your first employee needs coverage.

Who counts as an employee is strict here. For the wage laws in chapters 149 and 151, a worker is an employee unless three things are all true, and one of them is that “the service is performed outside the usual course of the business of the employer” (chapter 149, section 148B). Teaching your schedule is the usual course of a studio's business. So on our reading, instructors paid per class are employees under those laws.

The Massachusetts telephone solicitation law (chapter 159C) reaches a “telephone call or message” sent to encourage a purchase. An unsolicited sales call may not go to a number on the state's no-sales-call list or arrive between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. (section 3). A call to an existing customer (an account or business relationship within 24 months) who has not asked you to stop, or one mainly about an existing contract, is not unsolicited, and a message sent with the consumer's “prior express written or verbal invitation or permission” is not a sales solicitation at all (section 1). Section 3's limits speak of calls. On our reading, a booking text to a member who opted in is outside the chapter, and a promotional text to a cold lead may be inside it. Frontmat sends booking texts only (waitlist offers, confirmations and cancellations) to members who opted in, and stores the time and wording of each opt-in.

Before you sign anything

1. Buy a $25,000 surety bond for each location before your first sale, founding members included, and file evidence of it with the secretary of state within 30 days.
2. Keep every pack at 24 months or less unless you want the $100,000 bond, and sell nothing for life.
3. Have a Massachusetts lawyer write your membership terms and receipts with both 10-point bold cancellation notices, and read 940 CMR 38.00 with them before you set up autopay.
4. Post the cancel right and every price, discount and offer in the studio, and install the AED.
5. Put workers' comp in place before your first hire, and settle your instructors' status under the ABC test.
6. Write the waiver with a Massachusetts lawyer, with section 80 in mind.

This is our reading of the General Laws and the cases as of October 14, 2026. It is not legal advice. Confirm the health club questions with the Attorney General's office and the tax question with the Department of Revenue.

If you are still choosing where to open, we keep the rules in every state on one page.