As certain as the Minnesota weather will turn chilling cold in January you can count on at least one of the national acquisition and consolidation funeral home companies to announce an acquisition on the verge of the National Funeral Directors Association convention.  It’s my opinion that an announcement on the verge of the convention is used to give those companies a “head up” on the public relations which may generate discussion about the company at the convention.

It happened again this week as Park Lawn Corporation announced in this press release the acquisition of the Honquist Family Funeral Homes which operate in Loves Park and Roscoe, Illinois.

According to this map from the Park Lawn Corporation website the addition of these two funeral homes will give the company seven operating funeral homes allocated to the northwest of Chicago near the state’s norther border.  The area appears to be a recent growth cluster priority for Park Lawn as it was less than two years ago (December 2024) that the company acquired four funeral homes in an acquisition in the same general geographical area

As for this week’s announcement, Park Lawn President Markus Sturm made the following prepared remark in the press release, “We’re pleased to welcome the Honquest team to Park Lawn.  We look forward to building on the tradition Tim (Honquist) and his team have established in the community.”

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  The purchase of the Honquist facilities appears to reinforce the Park Lawn Corporation strategy of “clustering” their operations for maximum efficiencies.  You get a pretty good idea when you look at the linked map from this article where Park Lawn has attempted to  establish beach heads of geographic dominance.

I’m sure that Park Lawn has a strategy to establish these beach heads in other geographic areas as well. In the meantime, if your funeral home operation sits in one of their current geographic clusters, and you are interested in selling at some point, it might make sense to visit with the company before you do sell.

Related —  Honquist Family Funeral Home website

More news from the world of Death Care:

• Should you trust the funeral insurance ads?  Here’s how to separte fact from fear-mongering.  Stuff  (New Zealand)
• The woman helping restore dignity to those buried at former asylum near Sleaford.  LincolnshireLive (Great Britain)
• “We want to be proud”:  Reviving Dignity plc, the funeral business.  The Times of London (Great Britain)

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