Those of you who have followed this publication for any length of time know that I like to hypothesize on what I see are trends in business.  And, you’ve also seen my post sometimes in reference to serving on the board of the University of Minnesota.

One of my fun things to do now is to visit about business in general with one of my board colleagues, Ken Powell, who has recently retired as the CEO and Chairman of publicly traded General Mills — the worldwide purveyor of consumer food products such as Cheerios and Wheaties.  Today Ken and I had a phone discussion about University of Minnesota business, which as many times does turns into a general discussion of business, and because of our common interest, into the topic of our former businesses and how they seem to both look at the “humanization of pets” for potential growth.

I brought the topic up when I mentioned that I had seen a recent article, which you can read here, about General Mill’s investment into a growing business called Pet Plate.  Pet Plate is subscription based  home delivery of veterinary nutritionist meals for pets.  Don’t laugh. . .since 2016, they have delivered more than 9.2 million meals to pets!  And, that is at an average weekly price (it varies by breed) of $119.26 for a Labrador retriever.

This business is the 2nd pet related business that General Mills has invested in.  The first, Blue Buffalo Pet Products (a dog food company) they bought for $8 billion dollars just a couple of years ago.  Pet food is growing at a 2.6% annual rate. . .which is faster than the human food market.

Why do I bring this up?  I really believe that death care for pets will be a booming market before you know it.  If pet owners are willing to pay over $100 a week for home delivered meals to pets, don’t you think that they may well wish to memorialize that furry loved one?

I think it would be wise for any funeral home practitioner to look into the possibility of creating a sideline business along these lines.  Maybe it would be using your brand name or maybe it would be starting a separate business all together with a different identity.  However, the trends seem to show that pets will continue to be more and more consumer humanized. . .and my guess is that will include death care.  Someone will do this in your community. . .why not you?

Related: Here is an article that Funeral Director Daily wrote last July entitled, “Is pet death care the new cremation?”.  An update from that article is that Chewy, Inc. a new public company launched about a year ago did $3.533 billion in revenue for its fiscal year 2019.  In comparison, death care giant Service Corporation International reported total 2019 year revenue at $3.231 billion. . . about $200 million less than Chewy.  Which do you think will grow faster in 2020?

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