We build phone AI for two kinds of businesses that most people never connect: veterinary clinics and funeral homes. That vantage point showed us something odd. The same family often makes the same kind of call twice, once to a vet about a dying pet and once, years later, to a funeral home about a person, and the pet call is handled worse almost every time. Nobody owns it. The vet's front desk is built for appointments, not aftercare. The funeral home, which is actually equipped for exactly this conversation, usually never hears the phone ring.
The numbers say that gap is now worth real money.
The market, in verified numbers
Pet cremation services in the United States were a $1.3 billion market in 2024, and the sector grew at a 12.5 percent compound annual rate between 2019 and 2024, according to IBISWorld. Within North American pet funeral services more broadly, cremation is the dominant choice, holding roughly two thirds of segment revenue, per Grand View Research. Behind the demand sit 89.7 million pet dogs and 73.8 million pet cats in American homes as of 2024, per the American Veterinary Medical Association, with 71 percent of U.S. households owning a pet according to the American Pet Products Association's 2024-2025 National Pet Owners Survey.
Compare that growth rate to the human side of the profession, where case volume is largely fixed by demographics, and the strategic picture is plain: pet aftercare is one of the few adjacent lines where a funeral home's existing skills, cremation capability, grief literacy, and 24-hour readiness, meet a market that is actually expanding by double digits.
Why funeral homes are structurally suited for this
A funeral home already owns the three hardest parts of pet aftercare:
- The equipment and licensing mindset. Cremation with chain-of-custody discipline is your daily work. Pet crematories that grew out of waste-disposal businesses compete on price; a funeral home competes on trust, and pet owners increasingly shop on trust.
- The grief conversation. A receptionist at a discount pet crematory reads from a script. Your staff have sat with grieving people for their whole careers. Pet loss is real grief, and families can tell who takes it seriously.
- The 24-hour phone. Pets rarely die during business hours. Neither do people. You already run the only local operation designed around that fact.
Where the leads die: the phone, at night
Here is what we see from the vet-clinic side. When a pet dies at home at 10 p.m., the owner calls the emergency vet or their regular clinic. The clinic can euthanize and can usually offer a group cremation through a bulk provider, and that is where the conversation ends, because the person answering has nothing else to offer. The family that would happily have paid for a private cremation, an urn, and a paw print never learns the option exists three kilometres away at your building.
If a funeral home wants this line of business, the requirement is not marketing spend first. It is being reachable at the moment of loss, and being known to the vets who take that first call. The homes that win pet aftercare do two things: they build a simple referral relationship with every clinic in their area, and they answer their own phone at 10 p.m. with someone, or something, that can explain pet services warmly and take the intake without waking the on-call director for a call that is not urgent by funeral-home standards but is urgent to the family.
That second part is exactly what we built FuneralWiseAI to do: answer every call around the clock, handle warm intake, and page a human only when a human is needed. It was designed for human loss. Our funeral-home customers asked us to handle pet-loss calls with it for the same reason you are reading this article: the calls were already coming in, and voicemail was quietly sending them to the discount crematory.
What I would tell a funeral director starting this line
Start with the phone and the vets, not the website. One warm conversation at each clinic in your area beats any ad. Make sure the person or system answering your line after hours knows your pet services and prices cold, because pet-loss callers ask about price far more directly than human-loss callers do, and hesitation reads as gouging. And treat the ceremony options seriously; the families choosing private cremation are telling you they want ritual, not disposal.
Sources
- IBISWorld, Pet Cremation Services in the US, market size $1.3 billion (2024), 12.5 percent CAGR 2019-2024. ibisworld.com
- Grand View Research, Pet Funeral Services Market report (cremation segment share). grandviewresearch.com
- American Veterinary Medical Association, U.S. pet ownership statistics (89.7 million dogs, 73.8 million cats, 2024). avma.org
- American Pet Products Association, 2024-2025 National Pet Owners Survey (71 percent of U.S. households own a pet).
Frequently asked questions
How big is the pet cremation market?
Pet cremation services in the United States were a $1.3 billion market in 2024 and grew at a 12.5 percent compound annual rate from 2019 to 2024, according to IBISWorld. Cremation is the dominant form of pet aftercare in North America.
Can a funeral home legally offer pet cremation?
Rules vary by state and province, and pet cremation is handled separately from human cremation, typically on dedicated equipment. Most funeral homes entering the line either install a dedicated pet crematory or partner with one while handling the family-facing service themselves. Check your local regulator before advertising the service.
How do funeral homes get pet cremation business?
Mainly through veterinary referrals and by being reachable at the moment of loss. Most pet deaths happen outside business hours, so after-hours phone coverage that can explain pet services warmly, and a referral relationship with local clinics, matter more than advertising.