M&A activity snapshot
Pet care services are fragmented and consolidating. BLS data for NAICS 812910, pet care except veterinary, shows 28,121 establishments and 198,402 employees in 2025, an average of about seven employees per location. Capstone Partners reports that while total pet-sector M&A declined to 96 transactions in 2024, the Services segment saw a 45% year-over-year increase in deal flow, driven by fragmentation in grooming and boarding.
Activity picked up in 2026. Capstone counted 18 announced or completed pet-sector transactions in early 2026 against eight a year earlier, three of them in Services.
Spending supports the category. The American Pet Products Association puts U.S. pet spending at $158 billion, including $14.3 billion in Other Services. That bucket includes boarding, grooming, insurance, training, pet sitting, and pet walking, so it overstates the pure grooming and boarding market.
Who is buying
PE-backed resort platforms. The typical lower-middle-market deal is a family-owned resort sold to a platform. Best Friends Pet Care, a Mosaic Capital Partners portfolio company operating in more than 52 locations across 20 states, bought Paws Pet Resort of Sioux Falls. Destination Pet acquired Pet Palace, with 11 locations in Ohio, Indiana, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, and describes itself as one of the largest consolidators of pet care resorts in the U.S.
Multi-brand franchisors. Propelled Brands, owned by LightBay Capital and Freeman Spogli, acquired Camp Bow Wow, a daycare and boarding franchise with over 200 locations in 40 states and Canada.
Growth equity. VMG Partners invested in Scenthound, a membership-based grooming franchisor with plans for over 300 franchised and corporate-owned locations across 30 states.
Sponsors also need exits. Capstone reports financial sponsors formed 66 pet platforms between 2019 and 2022 but exited only nine through M&A from 2023 to early 2026, which points to continued add-on buying and sponsor-to-sponsor sales.
What buyers look for
Recurring visits are the main value driver. VMG cited Scenthound's "loyal and expanding membership base" as a reason to invest. Daycare packages, boarding repeat rates, and standing grooming appointments are the equivalents buyers ask for in a resort.
Labor is the operating constraint. The median annual wage for animal caretakers was $35,360 in May 2025, and BLS expects about 69,400 openings each year, mostly to replace workers who leave. Petco's 10-K lists its ability to hire, train, and retain groomers and trainers as a risk. Buyers look at groomer tenure, wage rates, and training programs.
Licensing is set at the facility level and varies by state. In Colorado, each separate physical facility must obtain a separate license, renewed annually after inspection, so a multi-site buyer checks every site's license and inspection history.
For specialty pet retail, buyers focus on consumables pressure and live-animal sales rules. Online autoship is the main competitor: Autoship customers drove 83.3% of Chewy's fiscal 2025 net sales. Some states ban puppy sales in stores. California has prohibited pet stores from selling dogs, cats, or rabbits on and after January 1, 2019 unless sourced from shelters or rescues. New York's ban took effect December 15, 2024, with fines up to $1,000 per violation.
What makes a strong company
A pet services business that draws platform interest typically shows:
- A mix of boarding, daycare, and grooming at each site, so revenue holds up between holiday peaks.
- Memberships, packages, or standing appointments covering a large share of visits.
- A stable team of groomers and caretakers with training documented, not held in the owner's head.
- Current facility licenses and clean inspection records in every state that requires them.
- Owned or long-leased real estate with kennel and yard capacity a buyer can grow into, since a platform is paying for that site's capacity.
For retailers, the strongest profile is a growing services line. Petco's services and other revenue reached 17.2% of net sales in fiscal 2025, up from 15.7% two years earlier.
Valuation and deal structure
Services-specific multiples are not published. The closest proxies cover the whole pet sector, including vet care and products. Capstone puts the 2023-2024 pet-sector average at 11.1x EV/EBITDA, against 19.3x in 2021-2022 and 8.4x in 2019-2020. R.L. Hulett, using PitchBook data, reports the median for private-equity pet deals fell to 12.2x in 2025 year to date from 16.8x in 2024, and to 8.1x from 13.0x for strategic deals.
Single-site resorts usually price below these platform-level figures. Capstone itself notes that grooming and boarding fragmentation creates "valuation multiple arbitrage" opportunities, meaning platforms buy small sites below their own multiple. Real estate often decides the structure: sellers may sell the business and keep the land on a lease, or sell both. Rollover equity into the platform is common in add-ons, though no public dataset tracks its frequency for pet services.
Outlook
Expect add-on buying to continue through 2027. Capstone reports PE buyers completed three platform deals and five add-ons in early 2026, against five add-ons a year earlier, and the backlog of aging sponsor-owned platforms points to more sponsor-to-sponsor sales. Demand is growing too: APPA projects Other Services spending of $14.9 billion in 2026.
Specialty retail will keep losing consumables share to online autoship, so retailers with services lines will draw more interest than product-only stores. Pet-store employment already fell 1.1% in 2025 while pet care services employment grew.
Own a pet resort, grooming, or pet retail business and want a market-data starting point? Run the valuation tool, or see the broader Consumer & Retail M&A overview. For how buyers find owner-operated targets, read the search fund deal sourcing playbook.