The Beck family has served the Liberty Hill, Texas area for more than three decades.  The Beck family also operates funeral chapels in Cedar Park and Round Rock, Texas, and loves to provide personal service to those they serve.  The funeral homes are operated by family members, Blake Henderson and Jan Beck Cleveland.

According to an article in the Liberty Hill Independent the Beck Funeral Home in Liberty Hill has been sold to RockePoint Church.  For years the family serviced Liberty Hill, eight miles from Cedar Park, with the Cedar Park chapel but then remodeled the Sendero Events Center in Liberty Hill  into their third chapel.  Following the sale they now will go back to serving the people of Liberty Hill from Cedar Park.  According to Henderson, most families from Liberty Hill preferred the Cedar Park Chapel and continued to use it, rather than the new Liberty Hill Chapel.  In addition, the staffing of two funeral homes instead of three will just offer more personal service, which will be good for the consumer,  he argues.

Both Henderson and Cleveland are third generation funeral directors with a deep commitment to central Texas.  They have stressed to the people of Liberty Hill that they are still here for them and will continue to be active in the Liberty Hills business community and Chamber of Commerce.  And with their strong connection to Liberty Hill they may eventually decide to build there again if the community keeps growing.

Funeral Director Daily take:  This is an interesting juxtaposition — contracting when most death care companies are expanding.  Usually, expansion makes sense so that you can spread the human resource (salaries) across three enterprises rather than two.  However, financially, if you can close one location and continue to get the vast majority of the death calls from that area to another location you have — then you are getting more services under one roof — and bringing down fixed costs exponentially.  A great strategy if it works.

I once looked into buying a funeral home competitor about two miles from a present location.  The only way it really made sense was to purchase the location, sell the location to a third (non-funeral home) party, and then move that operation under our roof.  The gamble in that situation was that no one would fill the void left by the departing funeral home.  Nobody did — and it worked out great for us.  Go back 30 or 40 years and you will discover that is exactly how Pierce Brothers took over the Los Angeles market — buying a neighborhood competitor and then closing it one at a time.

Lots of strategies can work in the mergers and acquisition game.  I’m guessing that third generation funeral directors like those at Beck Funeral Home have enough built-up goodwill to hold on to most of the Liberty Hill business.  This will be an interesting case to look at 3 to 5 years from now.[wpforms id=”436″ title=”true” description=”true”]