Pet Franchise Statistics: Census Share, SBA Lending and FDD Terms

Pet franchise statistics index: concepts, SBA codes and FDDs

This index lists every pet franchise concept that carried an SBA franchise code on a 7(a) or 504 loan approved from FY2020 to June 30, 2026, plus every pet brand in the site’s sample of Minnesota Franchise Disclosure Documents (FDDs). It holds 66 SBA franchise codes and 18 FDDs; 12 FDD brands also appear among the SBA codes, so the table has 72 rows. Sort any column; the default order is alphabetical and the table is a listing, not a ranking of brands.

Concept type is the editor’s coding of each franchise code from the brand name and the franchisor’s own description: daycare and boarding, grooming and dog wash, mobile services, training, retail, veterinary, and other pet services (pet waste removal, pet sitting, pet memorials, a dog park bar). The SBA loan columns come from the SBA 7(a) and 504 FOIA loan files as of June 30, 2026. Item 7 and territory columns come from the FDDs, issued February 2025 to August 2026.

How franchised are pet care and veterinary services? Census counts, 2007 to 2017

Summary: by Census count, veterinary practice is almost untouched by franchising, and pet care is lightly franchised but gaining. The data is thin: the 2017 Economic Census is the latest US franchise tabulation, because the Census Bureau published 2022 franchise status only for Puerto Rico retail (release list).

In 2017, 867 of 18,464 US pet care establishments (NAICS 812910) were franchise units, a franchise share of 4.7%, according to the 2017 Economic Census franchise file. The share was 3.7% in 2012 and 2.2% in 2007, so pet care added 2.5 percentage points in ten years while its count of franchise establishments rose 244%.

Veterinary services (NAICS 541940) had 169 franchise establishments among 31,787 in 2017, a 0.5% share that ranks 258 of 267 covered industries. Pet and pet supplies stores (NAICS 453910) were the most franchised pet industry at 10.6% (rank 50).

Context matters for the word ‘barely’. Pet care’s 4.7% sits above the 3.2% median of the 267 covered six-digit industries (rank 106) but well below the 11.5% pooled franchise share of all covered industries. Franchisees owned 88.5% of pet care franchise units in 2017; franchisors owned the rest.

Size per unit differs. A pet care franchise establishment took in $416,258 in 2017 against $283,766 for a non-franchise establishment (1.47 times), and employed 8.8 people against 5.8, per the same Census file. Receipts are revenue, not profit.

SBA lending to pet franchise concepts, FY2010 to FY2026

Summary: SBA lending to pet franchise concepts rose far faster than franchise lending as a whole. Approvals went from 8 in FY2010 to 112 in FY2019 and 216 in FY2025, about 27 times the FY2010 count, in the SBA 7(a) and 504 FOIA files as of June 30, 2026.

From FY2019 to FY2025, approvals to pet franchise concepts rose 92.9% while all franchise-coded approvals rose 2.9%. Pet concepts’ share of franchise-coded approvals climbed from 0.24% in FY2010 to 1.49% in FY2019 and 2.80% in FY2025, with a high of 3.33% in FY2024.

From FY2020 to June 30, 2026, lenders approved 1,256 SBA loans worth $787.3 million to pet franchise concepts. The median loan was $400,350, close to the $407,000 median for all franchise-coded loans. 71.7% of pet concept loans were marked as funding a startup, against 51.6% for all franchise-coded loans. Only 32 of the 1,256 were 504 loans.

The industry view tells the same story from the other side. Of 3,539 SBA approvals coded to pet care (NAICS 812910) from FY2020 to June 30, 2026, 25.5% carried a franchise code, up from 2.8% in FY2010. That is 5.4 times the 4.7% franchise share of pet care establishments in 2017, so franchise units draw far more than their share of SBA pet care lending. Veterinary is the exception: 1.2% of 2,102 veterinary approvals carried a franchise code.

See SBA franchise loans for the program-wide numbers.

Pet franchise concept types: daycare, grooming, mobile, retail, training and veterinary

Summary: daycare and boarding and pet retail account for 66.3% of SBA pet franchise approvals, grooming concepts appeared in the SBA data only after FY2019, and veterinary franchising is nearly absent.

Of 1,256 SBA approvals to pet franchise concepts from FY2020 to June 30, 2026, daycare and boarding took 423 (33.7%) with a median loan of $740,000, and retail took 410 (32.6%) at a median of $486,800. Grooming and dog wash concepts drew 138 approvals (11%) after none in FY2010 to FY2019. Mobile services drew 114 at a median of $185,650, training 99 at $175,200, other pet services 48 and veterinary concepts 24.

Loan size follows the type of premises. The median daycare and boarding loan is 4 times the median mobile services loan, which matches the gap in FDD estimates below. Startups dominate every concept type: from 66.7% of daycare and boarding approvals to 85.4% of other pet services.

Of the 66 pet franchise codes with an FY2020 to FY2026 approval, 32 appear in the SBA Franchise Directory workbook dated October 15, 2026 (SBA Directory page), which lists 2,475 coded brands. A code missing today may have lapsed, been recoded or not yet recertified, so lenders check the current Directory, not this table.

What pet franchise FDDs charge and require: 18 FDDs, 2025 to 2026

Summary: the median pet FDD sits mid-table on cost, but pet concepts split into two groups: low-cost mobile and service concepts and high-cost facility concepts.

Across 18 pet FDDs filed in Minnesota and issued February 2025 to August 2026, the median Item 7 estimate runs from $226,088 to $572,300, against $265,372 to $573,000 for the other 241 FDDs in the site sample. That comparison is the same as the all-259 median because the pet FDDs split evenly around it (9 below and 9 above on both the low and the high estimate). The pet sector’s median ranks 6 of 14 sectors from lowest to highest, on both the low and the high estimate.

The spread is wide: 8 of 18 pet FDDs start under $150,000, and 7 reach $1,000,000 or more at the high end. The lowest low estimate is $3,620 and the highest high estimate is $3,949,331. Daycare and boarding FDDs have medians of $744,975 to $1,296,893; mobile service FDDs $80,700 to $213,550. For investment ranges across all sectors, see franchise initial investment and franchise costs and funding.

Royalties run slightly above other sectors. The median royalty is 7% of sales against 6% for the other FDDs; the median brand fund is 2% for both; the median initial fee is $49,700 against $49,500. 6 pet FDDs set a minimum royalty, and one pet waste concept charges a 25% royalty. Royalty detail across sectors is in franchise royalty rates.

Unit turnover is close to other sectors. In the latest Item 20 year, the median pet FDD lost 4.6% of its starting franchised outlets to terminations, non-renewals, reacquisitions and closures (other FDDs: 4.8%) and opened 8.8% (other FDDs: 8.9%), across 15 pet FDDs with 1,584 starting outlets (Item 20 dataset).

Territory and owner rules in pet franchise FDDs

Summary: every pet FDD in the sample grants some protected area, pet concepts sell service-area territories more often than other sectors, and most let a manager run the unit.

All 18 pet FDDs grant a protected area of some kind in Item 12, against 79.7% of other FDDs, as coded in the territory dataset. 8 of 18 (44.4%) grant a service-area territory for a mobile or in-home business rather than a radius around a premises (other FDDs: 28.6%). Households define or size the area in 33.3% of pet FDDs against 8.7% elsewhere, and 9 pet FDDs state a minimum population, with a median of 150,000 people.

One pet FDD counts animals: Bark Busters (FDD issued March 16, 2026) builds a standard territory from ZIP codes holding about 100,000 to 125,000 targeted dogs. The rest use people, households, ZIP codes and maps. Only 16.7% of pet FDDs tie territory rights to a performance quota, against 27% of others. More on territory terms: franchise territory rights.

On Item 15, 13 of 18 pet FDDs (72.2%) let a manager run the unit, 9 of them with conditions on that manager; 5 (27.8%) require the owner to work full time. Other sectors: 78.4% and 22.8%. Owner-participation rules across all sectors are covered in semi-absentee franchises.

Is the pet services industry growing? Federal data, 2015 to 2025

Summary: yes, by federal counts the pet services industry is growing fast, faster than veterinary practice and pet retail. These series have no franchise flag; they describe the market franchise concepts sell into.

Private employment in pet care (NAICS 812910) rose from 95,781 in 2015 to 198,402 in 2025, up 107.1%, according to BLS QCEW annual averages. Establishments rose 77%, from 15,885 to 28,121. Veterinary employment rose 38% and pet store employment 18.3% over the same years. Pet care employment fell 10.4% from 2019 to 2020 and passed its 2019 level in 2021.

The self-employed side grew too. Nonemployer pet care businesses rose from 106,692 in 2018 to 162,773 in 2024 (52.6%), against 20.8% for all nonemployers, per Census Nonemployer Statistics. On these counts about 85.7% of pet care businesses had no employees in 2024, which is one reason franchise units are a small share of the industry.

Prices rose faster than inflation. The CPI for pet services including veterinary rose 58.6% from December 2016 to December 2025, against 34.2% for all items and 21.9% for pets and pet products (BLS CPI). BLS projects 11% employment growth for animal care and service workers from 2025 to 2035, much faster than average, with about 69,400 openings a year (Occupational Outlook Handbook).

Does the planned angle hold?

The brief’s angle had three parts. Each was tested against the data above.

• ‘Pet services are barely franchised by Census count’: partly holds. Veterinary practice is barely franchised (0.5% of establishments in 2017). Pet care at 4.7% is lightly franchised but above the median covered industry (3.2%) and more than doubled its share since 2007. The count is nine years old and excludes 162,773 nonemployer businesses.
• ‘Fast-rising SBA lending’: holds. Approvals to pet franchise concepts rose from 8 (FY2010) to 216 (FY2025), and 92.9% from FY2019 to FY2025 against 2.9% for all franchise-coded loans.
• ‘Pet FDDs sit in the low-to-mid investment range’: partly holds. The median pet FDD is mid-range (rank 6 of 14 sectors), and its median Item 7 range ($226,088 to $572,300) is close to the rest of the sample. The median hides two groups: mobile, training and other service FDDs have median low estimates under $100,000, while daycare, boarding and retail FDDs have median low estimates above $500,000.

The finding the data supports: pet franchising is small next to a fast-growing, mostly self-employed industry, but it has become a larger and faster-growing part of SBA franchise lending, split between low-cost service concepts and real-estate-heavy facility concepts.