Traditional funeral homes: Is your clientele “aging out”?

April 21, 2026/Business/

That might be an odd headline for a funeral home article, but I had the thought process this week when I wondered if the market for “traditional funerals” has “aged-out”. And, if so, what do you do about it?

My process started on Friday night of last weekend when my wife, Angie, asked if I would like to take a little road trip on Saturday. The reason behind a 60-mile one way trip to St. Cloud, Minnesota, was to visit a couple of stores that we don’t have in our community and make some purchases for our two sons’ (age 31 and 27) birthdays that are both coming up within the next month.

Pulling into St. Cloud in mid-morning I noticed the Perkins Restaurant that had been in the same location for probably 50 years. To me it looked like business was quite slow and I made the comment that it seemed like their business had really dropped off since the pandemic. Angie responded by saying, “I just think that their customers have aged out”.

She continued on by saying that she just thinks a change in attitudes of younger diners, such as our boys, has simply caused the “Perkins concept” to be favored by less and less people as Baby Boomers have started moving on into older age and even death. And, that younger generations, such as Milennials, much prefer different types of franchised resaturants — such as Chipotle, Panera, and others.

When I returned home that day I asked Gemini Artificial Intelligence about the issue. Sure enough, one of the comments was as such, “Based on various analyses of consumer behavior over the last decade, Millennials have significantly impacted—or “aged out” of—several traditional industries and brands by prioritizing health, convenience, sustainability, and digital-first experiences.”

Specifically to the dining industry here’s what Gemini had to say, “Brands like Buffalo Wild Wings, TGI Fridays, Ruby Tuesday, and Applebee’s faced major sales slumps due to a preference for fast-casual options (like Chipotle) that offer quicker, healthier, and more customizable food.”

The artificial intelligence site also made note of other products or customs that are, or have, “aged-out”. Specifically, it noted large beer brands, department stores, and traditional weddings have fallen into the category of “aged-out” products.

Well, that makes some sense as Angie had to stop at the Macy’s “going out of business” sale while we were in St. Cloud.

Is there a correlation with traditional funeral homes? — One thought process is that fads move to trends which then move to become lasting changes or “classics”. I would argue that the trend of cremation in North America has solidly moved to the “classic” choice of disposition.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

And, I would also suggest that cremation has moved to a majority of dispositions for most traditional funeral homes and the revenues produced by cremation dispositions are generally less than what are derived from traditional funerals. . . . . In resturant parlance, your would say that the average “guest check” has gotten smaller.

In comparison to Perkins Restaurants and others like them, they are getting less clientele but not necessarily smaller “guest checks”. Whereas, traditional funeral homes may not be getting less clientele, but are probably getting smaller “guest checks” or as we call it in Death Care, less “revenue per service”.

Traditional funeral homes, like restuarants, have high fixed costs including real estate and staff. So, if the “guests checks” are getting smaller because of more cremation services, these funeral homes need to find a way to replace that revenue. Getting more clients is one way.

Another way is to offer and add more ancilary services to their menus — services such as monuments, reception meals, and other services that might be available to them in their service areas. Again in my opinion, there is a correlation between businesses such as Perkins Restaurants and traditional funeral homes when it comes to the preference of the generations. My take is that the Greatest Generation and a part of the Baby Boomers were both inclined to be users of Perkins Restaurant and a traditional funeral home.

However, just as restaurants have moved into a Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) category of favorites among Milennials and Gen X’ers, one might ask if those same generations have begun opting for simplified cremation providers as their Death Care disposition of choice.

From my way of thinking, traditional funeral homes need to find ways to compete with the low-cost cremation providers for the dollars that consumers have available for Death Care services. As the generation of Americans who believed in the full-service traditional funerals “age-out” and a new group of future clients who have different ideas of Death Care emerge, status quo, like at Perkins Restaurants, will not pay the bills.

More news from the world of Death Care: