Pet Care Recon - Who's Charging What for Pet Services?

Helloooooooo! Now that Spring has sprung, we've been doing a lot of improvements around the facility. Power washing, redecorating, rearranging etc.

We have also used some of this "downtime" to do a little poking around at other pet care facilities. We haven't had a price increase here in four years. In light of this, as well as needing to be "in the know" with what's going on in the market, we called and visited other boarding and daycare facilities as pet owners to see what the current rates are.

The results were nothing short of shocking. If you review the table I created, you will see what I mean. I didn't use company or individual names. I felt it would be inappropriate to do so but I listed the towns they were in. We called or visited businesses or individuals we know of through our customers or know as being direct competition. We also had a couple of people who called each place, to ensure the information was accurate.

In summary:

7 nights of boarding, with own food, medication and a full day of play:

Hounds Town:

$296 + free bath

Deer Park:
$433.41(small to med breed)
$509.45(med to large breed)
$585.49 (x-large breed)

Lake Grove:
$395.40

Riverhead:
$448.62

Bayshore:
$304.15 Boarding only

I know you're all waiting for it - yes, I'm raising our prices, effective June 1st. Boarding will go up $2 a night, daycare $1.

Now that wasn't so bad, was it?

My motivation for raising our prices is really to cover the cost of my staff. They are amazing and I want to be able to continually give them raises and keep my salaries above the top rates in the pet care industry.

That's about all for now. As always, I welcome your feedback!

Marianne