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.

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