Michael Rae, The Joint Chiropractic franchise owner, speaks to Fresno City Council President Mike Karbassi at the grand opening May 19. Photo by Ben Hensley

Daniel Rae, Central Valley franchise owner of the The Joint Chiropractic clinics, opened his long-awaited fifth location Monday at Fresno’s Marketplace at El Paseo, an opening more than two years in the works.

“This one’s been a little bit of a challenging one,” Rae said.

He said the lease was signed three years ago prior to construction of the building and before many businesses now at the still-expanding shopping center had opened their doors.

Rae said the region, which has embraced The Joint’s walk-in chiropractic business model, has provided the company with some of its best-performing clinics.

“The community really loves the model that we have here and they’ve supported it quite well,” he said.

Rae’s journey with The Joint began during the pandemic, after his Arizona-based business, which operated under contracts with Native American reservations, saw its funding slashed, effectively shutting him down overnight.

 

Rae, however, didn’t lose his drive for the chiropractic business; shortly after being shut down, Rae reached out to a friend in the industry.

“I actually had a friend of mine who owned several of these, so I called him looking for a job,” Rae said. “I reached out to the corporate office and started looking into available territories and opportunities that they had.”

With no franchise availability in Arizona or Utah, where Rae has family, he turned to California and identified a gap between Los Angeles and San Francisco — a region that lacked any locations.

Since then, he has introduced the Valley to The Joint’s business model, opening locations first in Fresno, then Clovis, Visalia and Merced before opening his fifth location at El Paseo.

Aside from an initial consultation, The Joint’s business model does not rely on an appointment-based schedule. Rather, it focuses on quick walk-in, walk-out visits, seeing patients on their own time and at their own convenience.

“We direct them in their care,” Rae said. “We tell our patients it’s far more about being consistent with care than an exact date.”

The model allows clinics to open in retail centers, cutting visit times down to as little as ten minutes and keeping costs as low as $17 per visit.

“They walk through the door, we get them straight back, we get them adjusted and they’re on their way,” he said.