Business
When the New York Times starts writing articles that include thoughts on the Federal Trade Commission’s “Funeral Rule” I think it is time to say that the issue has caught some attention. My wife and I spend the months of January, February, and March in a rented condo in South Florida and…
Read More
There’s no doubt that for the last 3-4 years most of the news coming on the business front has resulted in employers raising wages and benefits to their employees even while other aspects of the business were not necessarily positive. For instance, inflation at higher than anticipated rates has caused most employers to…
Read More
Over the past couple of years many in the Death Care profession have identified that there has been a labor issue in funeral service. Anecdotally, in my opinion, most of that labor issue has simply been in being “short-staffed” on the licensed funeral director/embalmer realm. There seems to be somewhat of a lull…
Read More
So, I was raised in an era where you could have any type of funeral service you wanted — as long as it consisted of embalming, a visitation, a church funeral service, and ended with a traditional burial in a cemetery. As a 4th generation funeral director, beginning my job in 1980, I’m guessing…
Read More
In America our court systems help define what is a Federal issue and what is an issue for a lesser proportion — say a “State’s Rights Issue” or an issue of a city or county within a state. And, sometimes the decision can be confusing and the decision on how to approach the issue,…
Read More
Getting people to know about you and know what you have available is a big part of any new business. Some businesses may track a “promotional cost per sale” or look at something they call “customer acquisition cost” which is really the same thing. . . . It tracks the amount of money…
Read More
This recent article in Florida’s Business Observer is titled “Funeral home finds success with new life celebration model”. The article goes on to discuss, among other business changes in the death care industry, the Robert Toale & Sons Celebration of Life Center in the Sarasota, Florida, area. The Robert Toale & Sons…
Read More
Collins Dictionary, a British publisher, named “AI” as its “Word of the Year for 2023”. In doing so they added this explanation, “AI, short for artificial intelligence, is a term that describes “the modeling of human mental functions by computer programs.” Using that definition, “the modeling of human mental functions by computer…
Read More
2023 marked the 60th anniversary of Jessica Mitford’s book related to the customs of American funerals, “The American Way of Death“. If you are much younger than I am you probably don’t even remember it or have never heard of the book. It is my opinion that funeral directors and funeral homes…
Read More
It’s difficult to know exactly this early into 2024 if 2023 was a year in which opioid deaths continued to climb or if the United States is starting to make progress in its fight to limit these number of deaths. However, every funeral director in the country has probably had to deal…
Read More
