Funeral Director Daily

A message for Easter

By Funeral Director Daily / April 11, 2020 /

It’s a little unusual for me to publish a message for Easter with Funeral Director Daily, but circumstances in the last week have made me reflect on who we are as a profession, as a country, and as people of faith.  While our friends of Jewish faith are in their period of observing Passover at…

COVID-19 and funeral homes: Where are we. . .where are we going

By Funeral Director Daily / April 10, 2020 /

The other day I received a phone call from a national writer doing a story on how the COVID-19 pandemic is and will affect funeral homes now and into the future.  I shared some of my thoughts and I don’t know if that reporter will use them or not, but I thought I would recount…

Foundation Partners ready for surge

By Funeral Director Daily / April 9, 2020 /

In this press release that we found on the PR Newswire, funeral home operator Foundation Partners Group has announced that it is ready to serve America during the potential surge wave of COVID-19 across the country.  Quoting from the release, “Foundation Partners Group , operator of more than 135 funeral homes, cremation centers and cemeteries…

Information for funeral professionals and suppliers

By Funeral Director Daily / April 8, 2020 /

Last week Funeral Director Daily realized it could make a difference getting out information, mostly pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic and our profession.  Over a few days we attempted to aggregate information that could be useful to people in the death care professions and use our subscription base to blast that information out. Thanks to…

StoneMor reports Year End 2019 results, signs agreement

By Funeral Director Daily / April 8, 2020 /

On April 2 StoneMor Inc., the cemetery and funeral home operator based in Trevose, Pennsylvania, reported their 2019 year end financial results.  StoneMor, who operates 90 funeral homes and 320 cemeteries in 27 states and Puerto Rico, is the 2nd largest funeral home/cemetery operator in North America by revenue. You can access the 2019 Year…

Alleghany Capital completes Wilbert acquisition

By Funeral Director Daily / April 7, 2020 /

Alleghany Capital Corporation of New York City, New York, announced on April 1, in a release you can read here from Yahoo finance, that it had completed its acquisition of the majority of stock of Wilbert Funeral Services, Inc. of Overland Park, Kansas. Wilbert, a name synonymous with the death care industry since its start…

Checking up on the DCI — down about 34% year to date

By Funeral Director Daily / April 6, 2020 /

It’s been a while since Funeral Director Daily has updated its proprietary Death Care Index or DCI.  While not a scientific weighting of public company death care stocks it does give some semblance to what the investment community is thinking about the funeral, cemetery, crematory, and preneed services business community and the direction that they…

Weekend Update: Our colleagues on the front lines

By Funeral Director Daily / April 4, 2020 /

Earlier this week a national reporter called me to ask some questions about COVID-19 and how it might relate to the funeral industry as more and more deaths occur.  My prediction on the services front was that even if we hit the range of 100,000 to 240,000 deaths that the administration is now predicting, that…

Today’s information for funeral professionals

By Funeral Director Daily / April 3, 2020 /

Again, during this COVID-19 pandemic we want to thank our readers for continuing to disseminate information that is helpful to the death care profession.  Here are a couple of items that we have for you today. Webinar: How to continue to serve client families remotely.  This webinar is scheduled for Wednesday, April 8 at 2…

Teaching old dogs new tricks

By Funeral Director Daily / April 3, 2020 /

The old saying is that you “Can’t teach an old dog new tricks”.  Well, I think after this week that I am living proof that statement definitely does not hold water. You see, this week I watched four webinars on what is happening in funeral service and the death care industry.  That, in itself, for…