Pet Care (except Veterinary) Services — U.S. Industry Primer

NAICS 2022 code 812910 · Boarding, grooming, sitting, walking, daycare, and training for pets

(NAICS = North American Industry Classification System, the U.S. government's standard code for industries.)

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1. Overview

This is the "everything for your pet except the vet" service economy: dog and cat grooming, overnight boarding and kennels, doggy daycare, in-home pet sitting, dog walking, and obedience training [4]. It is a large, fast-growing, and unusually fragmented business — tens of thousands of small operators plus a long tail of solo groomers, sitters, and gig-economy dog walkers, with only a handful of corporate names on top.

Why it matters to an investor: pet ownership is broad and sticky, and "pet humanization" (owners treating pets as family) keeps pushing spending on services upward over time [7][8]. The federal government counts roughly 25,551 employer establishments, ~175,116 employees, and ~$4.9 billion in annual payroll in this industry [1] — but that materially undercounts it, because most operators are self-employed sole proprietors the employer statistics miss [5][6].

The ways in are lopsided by audience. This is overwhelmingly a private, small-business, and franchise industry, and that is the honest headline for both public- and private-market investors. The two former pure-play public companies — Rover and Wag! — have both left the public markets (Rover taken private by Blackstone in 2024 [12]; Wag! through a 2025 Chapter 11 recapitalization [13][14]). Public-market investors today get exposure only indirectly, through retailers with a services arm (Petco) or a thematic pet fund [15][21]. The real money in the core services is made privately — by owner-operators, franchisees, franchisors, and private-equity platforms.

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2. What it is and how it's structured

Scope (what NAICS 812910 includes) [4]:

• Animal grooming (bathing, clipping, styling)
• Boarding / kennels (overnight care while owners travel)
• Pet sitting (in-home care) and dog walking
• Doggy daycare
• Training (obedience, guard, guide, service, and working-dog training)
• Animal shelters and dog pounds; pet pedigree-record services

That last item matters for reading the federal numbers: because the code also sweeps in some shelters and pounds, the official totals are not purely commercial, for-profit activity [4].

What it EXCLUDES — and where those activities live instead [4]:

• Veterinary medicine → NAICS 541940 (Veterinary Services). This is the big neighbor; medical care is a separate, much larger industry. Operators that cross into diagnosis or treatment take on that industry's regulation and liability.
• Pet and pet-supplies retailing (pet stores) → NAICS 459910. PetSmart and Petco are primarily retailers under this code, even though each also runs sizable in-house grooming/boarding/training operations.
• Pet food manufacturing → NAICS 311111.
• Horse boarding → NAICS 115210 (Support Activities for Animal Production).
• Pet transportation → NAICS 485991.
• Pet insurance → an insurance line (NAICS 524-series), not a pet-care service.

Ownership mix. Four business models coexist:

1. Independent brick-and-mortar — a local groomer, kennel, daycare, or training center, usually a single owner-operator. This is the bulk of the industry.
2. In-home / mobile services — pet sitters, dog walkers, mobile groomers, and private trainers who travel to the client.
3. Marketplaces / platforms — apps (Rover, Wag!) that match pet owners with independent caregivers who work as 1099 contractors (self-employed, paid per job; "1099" is the U.S. tax form for independent contractors).
4. Franchise and corporate chains — franchised daycare/boarding brands (Dogtopia, Camp Bow Wow, Scenthound) and services embedded inside big pet retailers (PetSmart, Petco).

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3. How big it is

Federal ground-truth figures (U.S. Census Bureau), for employer businesses only:

That works out to roughly 7 employees and ~$420,000 of receipts per establishment, at an average wage near $28,000 a year [1][2] — a small-unit, low-wage, labor-intensive industry. (Note: ~$420,000 is a simple average, not a typical unit; the long tail of tiny operators pulls the median well below it.) Nearly every operator falls under the U.S. Small Business Administration's (SBA) $9-million "small business" line — but that line is a federal-contracting qualifier, not a market-share statistic [3].

The undercount caveat (important here). Those Census figures cover only businesses with paid employees; CBP by design excludes the self-employed with no employees or no employer ID [1]. This industry is dominated by exactly those tiny and individual operators. Federal analysis found nonemployers made up about 84% of pet-care-service businesses, that the industry had 100,000+ businesses, and that roughly 47% of its ~211,000 workers are self-employed — solo groomers, pet sitters, dog walkers, and gig workers on platforms like Rover and Wag! [5]. Self-employed (nonemployer) receipts alone reached about $2.5 billion in 2021 [6]. So the true operator count and activity are far larger than the ~25,551 employer establishments suggest [1][5][6].

Whole-market demand sense (private research, broader scope than the federal series). The American Pet Products Association (APPA, the pet industry's main trade group) puts total U.S. pet spending at $158 billion in 2025 (up 3.7%), with roughly $13 billion going to non-veterinary "other services" — grooming, boarding, training, sitting, walking, plus pet insurance [7]. Independent researchers size the non-medical services market at about $13–15 billion and growing in the mid-single digits (Packaged Facts/Freedonia: $13.2B in 2024 → ~$14.3B in 2025) [9][10].

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4. The investable universe

There is no clean public pure-play left in this industry. Both former public marketplaces exited the public markets, so listed investors reach the core services only indirectly.

(This section is where tickers, share prices, and fund weights belong.)

Major private and franchise owners — where the real 812910 activity is:

Others include K9 Resorts, Best Friends Pet Care, Central Bark, and Woofie's (mobile grooming/sitting). Note: pet-adjacent public names like Trupanion (insurance), IDEXX and Zoetis (veterinary), and Freshpet (pet food) sit in other NAICS codes and are not pet-care-service plays.

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5. How the money works

Different economic engines run side by side.

Brick-and-mortar (grooming salon, daycare, boarding kennel). This is a fixed-cost, capacity-utilization business — closer to a gym or a hotel than a retailer. Capacity is the industry's manufacturing-equivalent metric: a facility cannot sell an empty kennel run or an idle grooming chair later [10][11].

• Revenue = filled capacity × price. A boarding kennel earns on occupancy and revenue per available dog-night; a daycare earns on average daily attendance and recurring membership/package plans; a grooming salon earns on appointments per groomer per day, average ticket, and rebooking frequency [10][11].
• Cost structure: rent/real estate and labor dominate; wages are low (~$28k average) but turnover is high [1]. Once fixed costs are covered, incremental bookings drop largely to profit — so these businesses live and die on occupancy leverage.
• Services margins are attractive relative to selling pet products. Inside Petco, the services segment (grooming, training, vet) runs ~60–80% gross margin, versus ~25–35% on merchandise — which is exactly why retailers keep pushing services [15].
• Recurring revenue (grooming every 4–6 weeks, daycare memberships) is the prize; it smooths utilization and lifts customer lifetime value. Grooming and basic boarding are the most repeatable; boarding is seasonal; training and premium add-ons are the most discretionary.

Marketplaces (Rover, Wag!). Asset-light platforms that don't own kennels or employ groomers. They match owners with independent caregivers and take a cut (a commission/service fee) of each booking [12][13]:

• Economics turn on gross bookings, take-rate, and repeat frequency, minus the marketing spend to acquire both sides of the market.
• The structural weakness is disintermediation — once an owner meets a good sitter through the app, they can book directly next time and cut the platform out. Marketing to keep re-acquiring users is a persistent drag (visible in Wag!'s losses and eventual restructuring) [13][14].

Franchising (Dogtopia, Camp Bow Wow, Scenthound). The franchisor sells the brand and system and earns upfront franchise fees plus ongoing royalties on franchisee sales; the franchisee funds and runs the unit. It's how the industry scales without the franchisor carrying every lease. Franchisee build-out costs are high — roughly $358k–$1.4M all-in depending on brand — so unit-level occupancy, ramp speed, and four-wall EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization — a unit's cash profit before corporate overhead) decide whether a location works [17][19].

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6. What drives demand

• Pet population and new-pet formation. About 94 million U.S. households own a pet (roughly two-thirds), with dog ownership near 53% of households [7][8]. In headcount terms that is roughly 68 million dogs and 49 million cats [8]. Dogs drive most services demand (grooming, walking, daycare, boarding).
• Pet humanization / premiumization. Owners increasingly treat pets as family and pay for premium and recurring care — the durable long-run tailwind behind services growth [7][21].
• Work patterns (a real swing factor). Return-to-office boosts dog-walking and daycare demand (dogs left alone need midday care); remote work suppresses it. This variable moved sharply after 2020 and cuts both ways [9].
• Travel and leisure. Boarding and pet-sitting demand track how much owners travel.
• Disposable income. These services are discretionary. In softer consumer spells owners trade down — groom at home, skip daycare — which is why core hands-on services grew only an estimated ~2% in 2025 even as total pet spending rose [9].
• Demographics and digital. Younger (millennial/Gen Z) and urban owners over-index on paid services; app-based booking, subscriptions, and loyalty programs raise repeat usage.

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7. Regulation

Regulation here is light at the federal level and concentrated at the state/local level.

• Federal (USDA APHIS / Animal Welfare Act). The Animal Welfare Act (AWA), enforced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), regulates breeders, dealers, exhibitors, and research — not ordinary boarding kennels or groomers serving the public, which are generally exempt from federal licensing when simply housing owners' pets [22]. The federal touch is minimal, though transportation-related custody and other regulated activities can trigger registration [22].
• State and local — where the rules live. State kennel/boarding licenses (often via a state agriculture department), local business licenses and zoning (daycare/boarding facilities are noise- and land-use-sensitive), health/safety and fire inspections, and vaccination requirements. Requirements vary widely by jurisdiction; large operators like PetSmart explicitly reference state and local boarding-vaccination rules [16].
• Grooming and training are largely unlicensed. Most states require no license to groom or train, though periodic incidents of pet injury/death in grooming keep prompting proposed safety and disclosure laws.
• Liability / bailment. A business holding someone's pet is a bailee under state law and can be sued for injury, illness, escape, or death of an animal in its care — a core operational and insurance risk.
• Worker classification (platform risk). Marketplaces depend on caregivers being independent contractors (1099). Federal or state efforts to reclassify gig workers as employees would raise platform costs materially — a live regulatory risk for the Rover/Wag! model [12][13].

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8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

This is one of the most fragmented industries in the U.S. economy. Federal concentration data are striking: the top 4 firms hold just 3.1% of receipts, the top 8 hold 4.9%, the top 20 hold 7.5%, and even the top 50 hold only 10.4% [2]. The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI, a standard market-concentration measure that runs from near 0 for perfect fragmentation up to 10,000 for a monopoly) is 4.2 — essentially atomistic [2]. For context, antitrust regulators consider anything under 1,500 "unconcentrated."

Why so fragmented: low barriers to entry (a groomer or sitter needs little capital and few licenses), intensely local and trust-sensitive service (customers pick nearby providers), and no pricing power for the individual operator. National concentration also understates local competitive power — a well-reviewed local operator can beat a national brand in its own zip code, while one bad facility can damage a national brand fast.

Consolidation is happening — but slowly, through four channels:

1. Franchising — the main scale vehicle (Dogtopia, Camp Bow Wow, Scenthound), turning independent daycare/boarding into branded systems [17][18][19].
2. Private-equity roll-ups and platform investing — Blackstone's ~$2.3B Rover buy, Crane Group's Pet Paradise, and VMG's stake in Scenthound signal institutional conviction in the category [12][19][20].
3. Corporate services inside retail — PetSmart and Petco bundling grooming/boarding/training into their store networks [15][16].
4. Marketplaces aggregating fragmented supply and demand into one app [12][13].

The main constraint on scale is quality control: consolidation creates value only when safety, staffing, service consistency, and local reputation survive expansion. Even so, the numbers show the long tail still dominates — consolidation has a very long way to run [2].

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9. Risks

• Discretionary-spending sensitivity. Services are among the first pet costs owners cut in a downturn; trade-down to at-home care is easy [9].
• Labor. Low wages (~$28k) [1], high turnover, groomer/handler shortages, and wage inflation squeeze the labor-heavy cost base and can erase price increases.
• Animal safety, liability, and reputation. Injury, illness, escape, bites, or death of a pet in care brings lawsuits, insurance costs, fines, closures, and viral reputational damage.
• Disease and contagion. Kennel cough and similar outbreaks can cut utilization and raise cleaning/vet costs.
• Real-estate and fixed-cost leverage. Boarding/daycare units carry rent, build-out, and staffing regardless of occupancy; a soft ramp or a demand dip hits margins fast [10][11].
• Platform-specific risks. Worker-reclassification law, customer disintermediation, fraud, cyber/insurance exposure, and heavy marketing spend — the combination that pushed Wag! into restructuring [13][14].
• Leverage. Private-equity ownership can accelerate expansion but can make a labor-intensive, seasonal business vulnerable to high interest expense.
• Post-2020 normalization. The pandemic pet-adoption boom has faded; slower new-pet formation tempers demand growth [8][9].
• Data quality. Federal statistics omit much of the self-employed universe, complicating market-share and valuation work [5][6].

Wag!'s restructuring is a reminder that strong category demand does not guarantee viable platform economics [14].

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10. How to invest, and the outlook

Public-market routes (limited, indirect).

• Petco (WOOF) is the closest listed exposure to the services economics, via its grooming/training/vet segment (~$1.0B, ~16% of revenue, high-margin) — but you're buying a pet retailer, not a services pure-play. Isolate service revenue/margin, appointment productivity, and retention from merchandise and vet exposure, and watch store-level cash flow, debt, and lease obligations [15].
• Chewy (CHWY) and Trupanion (TRUP) are useful read-throughs on overall pet spending and recurring pet relationships, but should not be valued as direct 812910 operators.
• Thematic ETF (PAWZ) offers diversified pet-industry exposure, but its weight sits in diagnostics, food, and retail — not a bet on grooming/boarding/daycare specifically [21].
• For mature companies compare enterprise value (EV — equity value plus net debt) with EBITDA; for marketplaces emphasize bookings, take-rate, contribution margin, customer-acquisition cost, and repeat usage.
• Bottom line for public investors: no way to own the core services cleanly on an exchange today; the pure-plays were taken private [12][14].

Private-market routes (where this industry actually is).

• Own or build an independent business — a grooming salon, daycare, or boarding kennel — a classic owner-operated small business under the SBA's $9M "small" line [3].
• Buy a franchise — Dogtopia, Camp Bow Wow, or Scenthound, typically ~$358k–$1.4M all-in to open a unit; returns hinge on occupancy ramp and local density [17][19].
• Build a multi-unit regional platform around a dense service area, or provide private credit to operators with conservative leverage and proven utilization.
• Growth equity / private equity into franchisors, marketplaces, or regional roll-ups — the path Blackstone, Crane Group, and VMG have taken [12][19][20].
• Real estate — owning and net-leasing the specialized buildings that boarding/daycare operators occupy.
• Diligence should center on normalized owner earnings, labor dependence, insurance claims, utilization by day and season, repeat bookings, permits, lease terms, and required capital expenditure — not just brand growth.

Near-term drivers and outlook (forward-looking). The long-run tailwind — more pets treated as family, more spent on premium and recurring care — appears intact; APPA expects total U.S. pet spending to reach about $165 billion in 2026 (a whole-market figure that includes food, supplies, vet, and insurance, not a 812910 forecast) [7][8][21]. Near term, growth in the core hands-on services has cooled to the low single digits as consumers stay cautious with discretionary dollars [9]. Return-to-office trends should support daycare and dog-walking demand, while boarding tracks travel [9]. Expect consolidation to keep advancing through franchising and private-equity capital, even as the industry stays overwhelmingly a small-operator, private business — one where the most direct opportunity is to own an operator or a franchise, not a stock [2][17][19]. These are judgments about direction, not guarantees; the discretionary, labor-heavy, liability-exposed nature of the work makes the sector sensitive to the consumer cycle, and returns accrue to operators that control capacity, labor, safety, and retention.

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau. County Business Patterns (CBP), 2023 — NAICS 812910 (establishments, employment, annual payroll, Q1 payroll). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html
2. U.S. Census Bureau. 2022 Economic Census — Concentration of Largest Firms, NAICS 812910 (firm count, receipts, CR4/CR8/CR20/CR50, HHI). https://data.census.gov/table/ECNSIZE2022.EC2200SIZECONCEN?codeset=naics~812910
3. U.S. Small Business Administration. Table of Small Business Size Standards, 2023 (NAICS 812910 = $9.0M receipts). https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
4. U.S. Census Bureau. 2022 NAICS Definition — 812910 Pet Care (except Veterinary) Services (inclusions, exclusions/cross-references). https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=812910&year=2022
5. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. "A 'tail' of productivity in pet care services: new technology enables rapid growth," Beyond the Numbers, 2024 (nonemployers ~84% of businesses; 100,000+ businesses; ~47% of ~211,000 workers self-employed). https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-13/a-tail-of-productivity-in-pet-care-services-new-technology-enables-rapid-growth.htm
6. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. "Self-employed revenue in pet care services industry $2.5 billion in 2021," The Economics Daily, 2024. https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2024/self-employed-revenue-in-pet-care-services-industry-2-5-billion-in-2021.htm
7. American Pet Products Association (APPA). U.S. Pet Industry Reaches $158 Billion in 2025, Poised for Continued Growth in 2026 ($158B 2025; ~$165B 2026 outlook; ~$13B non-vet "other services"). https://americanpetproducts.org/news/u.s.-pet-industry-reaches-158-billion-in-2025-poised-for-continued-growth-in-2026
8. PetfoodIndustry / APPA. "Cats and dogs lead US pet ownership growth 2023–2025" (APPA National Pet Owners Survey 2025) (~94M pet-owning households; dog ownership ~53%; ~68M dogs / ~49M cats). https://www.petfoodindustry.com/pet-ownership-statistics/article/15747936/chart-cats-and-dogs-lead-us-pet-ownership-growth-20232025
9. Packaged Facts / The Freedonia Group. Pet Services in the U.S., 4th Edition (non-medical services $13.2B 2024 → ~$14.3B 2025; core-services growth ~2%). https://www.freedoniagroup.com/packaged-facts/pet-services-in-the-u-s
10. IBISWorld. Pet Grooming & Boarding in the US — Industry Report, 2026. https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/industry/pet-grooming-boarding/1735/
11. Grand View Research. U.S. Pet Daycare Market Size, Share & Growth Report, 2030, 2025. https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/us-pet-daycare-market-report
12. Blackstone / GlobeNewswire. "Blackstone Completes Acquisition of Rover" (~$2.3B; $11.00/share), Feb. 27, 2024. https://www.blackstone.com/news/press/blackstone-completes-acquisition-of-rover/
13. Wag! Group Co. / GlobeNewswire. "Wag! Reports First Quarter 2025 Results" (Q1 revenue $15.2M). https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2025/05/12/3078984/0/en/Wag-Reports-First-Quarter-2025-Results.html
14. U.S. SEC / Nasdaq. Wag! Group Co. Current Report and Nasdaq delisting following Chapter 11 (Retriever LLC recapitalization; equity cancelled), 2025. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001842356&type=8-K
15. StockStory / Petco Health & Wellness 10-K. Petco (Nasdaq: WOOF) — Services & Other segment (~$1.0B / ~16% of revenue; services gross margin ~60–80%), 2026. https://stockstory.org/us/stocks/nasdaq/woof/news/earnings-call/woof-q1-deep-dive-flat-sales-margin-discipline-and-service-expansion-amid-market-caution
16. BC Partners / Apollo. "Apollo Funds to Make Strategic Equity Investment in PetSmart" (BC Partners-led group; $8.7B 2015 buyout; ~$10B revenue; ~1,650 stores; 200+ PetsHotel), 2023. https://www.bcpartners.com/news/apollo-funds-to-make-strategic-equity-investment-in-petsmart/
17. Franchise Investor Data / Red Barn Equity Partners. Dogtopia Franchise (units ~290+; investment ranges) and Red Barn Equity Partners' significant investment in Dogtopia, 2020–2026. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201008005717/en/Red-Barn-Equity-Partners-Announces-Significant-Investment-in-Dogtopia
18. Propelled Brands / PR Newswire. "Propelled Brands Acquires Camp Bow Wow" (~170+ Camp Bow Wow locations), 2024. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/propelled-brands-acquires-camp-bow-wow-elevating-the-prominent-franchisor-to-over-1-300-locations-302050439.html
19. Franchise Times / PetAge. "With VMG Investment in Hand, Scenthound Focuses on Next Growth Phase" (~146 locations; VMG Partners minority stake), 2025. https://www.franchisetimes.com/franchise_mergers_and_acquisitions/with-vmg-investment-in-hand-scenthound-focuses-on-next-growth-phase/article_c5fb751e-ee35-4ffa-a0d6-a1e7e5713e38.html
20. Pet Paradise. "Meet the Pet Paradise Family" (company-owned pet resorts; Crane Group majority owner). https://www.petparadise.com/our-family.htm
21. ProShares. Pet Care ETF (PAWZ) — Fund Overview & Holdings (thematic pet-industry basket; top holdings IDEXX, Freshpet, Zoetis, Chewy), 2026. https://www.proshares.com/our-etfs/strategic/pawz
22. U.S. Department of Agriculture, APHIS. Licensing and Registration Under the Animal Welfare Act (boarding kennels/groomers for owners' pets generally exempt; transportation custody can trigger registration). https://www.aphis.usda.gov/animal_welfare