Sometimes at Funeral Director Daily we get too wrapped up in mergers and acquisitions, in financial news, and in things like new products to the profession. Those things are all interesting and are necessary to know if we want to make the services that we offer to the public profitable for us. But, it is also of utmost importance that, aside from profits, that those of us in the death care realm make a positive difference to those we serve. […]
I’m writing this post on Saturday morning shortly after returning from my Summer Saturday morning bike ride. I couldn’t help but think that many independent funeral home operators live in small towns and really get to know their community. . . . I don’t think I’m much different. Today’s column is a small-town Chamber of Commerce column. The community I live in is Alexandria, Minnesota. When I grew up here in the 1960’s and 1970’s it was populated with about […]
Park Lawn Corporation (PLC), the Toronto based funeral home and cemetery operator released First Quarter 2021 results last week. As expected the results were very strong as deaths from the pandemic in those months, especially January, continued to be high. Park Lawn Corporation’s net revenue grew about 26% to over $89 million for the quarter. Probably more interesting, however, was CEO Brad Green’s comments on the labor market, acquisitions, preneed, and revenue per case. In the press release from PLC, […]
Upholding to the Covid-19 social distancing rules of the University of Minnesota the graduating class and faculty of the Department of Mortuary Science had to come up with a creative way to make this year’s graduation ceremonies memorable for the graduating seniors. With indoor facilities on campus off limits for this year, the department worked with Minneapolis’ beautiful and historic Lakewood Cemetery to hold the ceremony there on Friday, May 7. Here’s a local news video and print article on […]
Service Corporation International (SCI) reported their 1st Quarter financial results last week and in it we found a lot of information and perspective that we believe is informative and, in our opinion, pretty good news as to how the American public is coming out of the pandemic with their actions on funeral care seemingly indicating that they are in line with how they felt prior to the pandemic. First of all, SCI’s results from the first quarter are indicative of […]
An online cremation provider has been opened in the Nashville and Middle Tennessee areas according to this press release. Lumen Cremation, LLC, makes a point to mention to consumers that every cremation will be performed by a well-established Nashville mortuary that owns its own crematory. Lumen Cremation touts in the press release that “. . . . is different because everything happens online. Families make their arrangements from the comfort of their own homes.” Lumen Cremation also touched on the […]
I’ve noticed with much interest over my career in funeral service that most funeral home owners are really up to date when it comes to market share percentage as compared to the competitor(s) in their market area. They all either watch the local obituaries or have someone else watch and count death numbers on their competitor(s) website to be up to date on this percentage. Holding on to that percentage rate is one aspect of making sure that your business […]
If you have been a funeral director and did prep room work for any length of time you are aware that there are some situations where you will question that you can get the deceased back to an acceptable level of appearance for a casketed viewing. I will be honest and tell you that while there were times when I enjoyed the satisfaction of prep room work, I wasn’t real skilled at it. I was fortunate to have teammates that […]
Security National Financial Corporation (SNFC), the Utah based company with segments in the preneed insurance, funeral home assignment, mortuary, and cemetery business, released their 4th Quarter of 2020 and Year End 2020 results last week. The first line from that press release which you can read here, states, “For the twelve months ended December 31, 2020, SNFC’s after-tax earnings from operations increased 410% from $10,894,000 in 2019 to $55,597,000 in 2020, on a 70% increase in revenues to $481,463,000.” To […]
One of the most exciting initiatives since I have been involved in the funeral business has been brewing and is about to be presented to the industry through the philanthropy of the Funeral Service Foundation and the ICCFA Educational Foundation. These two organizations have collaborated to bring us the “Journey to Serve” initiative which is aimed at recruiting United States military veterans for employment throughout the death care profession. You can register for the launch event of this initiative that […]
