10/08/2026
A sustainable grooming business isn't about doing more dogs
There’s a conversation I think we need to have more often in the grooming industry.
We talk a lot about wages, staff shortages, and burnout, and rightly so.
We want groomers to earn good money. We want reasonable workloads, proper breaks, quality equipment, training, and genuine career opportunities. Most importantly, we want people to be able to stay in this industry long-term without damaging their bodies.
But there’s another side to that conversation.
How do we actually build grooming businesses that can afford to provide all of those things?
Because ultimately, they have to be paid for.
A $35/hour groomer doesn't cost $35/hour
Let's take a groomer earning $35 an hour.
It's easy to look at that number and think that if they're generating $70 or $80 an hour, the business must be doing pretty well.
But the business isn't actually paying $35 an hour.
As a simplified example:
Base wage: $35.00/hr
Super at 12%: $4.20/hr
Annual leave: ~$2.70/hr
Personal/sick leave: ~$1.35/hr
Workers comp: ~$1–$2/hr
Payroll, training, administration, and other employment costs: ~$1–$2/hr
Suddenly, that $35/hour employee can realistically cost somewhere around $45–$48/hour.
And we haven't paid a single salon expense yet.
There is still rent, electricity, water, shampoo, towels, equipment, sharpening, repairs, software, insurance, merchant fees, accounting, marketing, and everything else required to open the doors.
So when a $35/hour groomer generates $70/hour, the owner isn't pocketing the other $35.
There is only about $25 left to cover all other expenses and, hopefully, leave some profit at the end.
And profit matters.
It's what allows a business to replace equipment, survive quieter periods, increase wages, employ support staff, invest in training, and create secure jobs.
So what should that employee generate?
This is where it's useful to look outside grooming for a moment.
A common rule of thumb in labor-based service businesses is that a revenue-producing employee should generate between 2.5 and 3 times their base wage in revenue.
It's not a hard rule. Every business has different overheads, margins, and operating models, but it gives us a useful starting point.
For a groomer earning $35/hour, that would mean:
2.5 × wage = $87.50 revenue per productive hour
3 × wage = $105 revenue per productive hour
When you look at the actual employment costs above, those numbers start to make more sense.
At $105/hour, the business isn't making $70/hour profit from a $35/hour employee.
Their actual employment cost could already be around $45–$48/hour.
That leaves roughly $57–$60 per hour to cover bathers and support staff, rent, utilities, equipment, consumables, software, insurance, administration, and every other expense.
Then, after all of that, the business still needs to make a profit.
That's why I think 2.5 to 3 times the base wage is a useful benchmark for grooming businesses to understand, even though the right number will differ from salon to salon.
It also raises a much more interesting question.
If we need a $35/hour groomer producing somewhere around $90–$105+ per productive hour, how do we achieve that without simply putting more dogs on their table?
Maybe we're measuring productivity the wrong way
This is where I think our industry sometimes gets the conversation wrong.
We tend to measure groomer productivity by one number: How many dogs did you groom today?
But the number of dogs per day doesn't necessarily tell us much about productivity.
Consider this:
7 dogs × $115 = $805
6 dogs × $135 = $810
5 dogs × $160 = $800
4 dogs × $200 = $800
Four very different workloads producing almost exactly the same revenue.
Obviously, every dog takes a different amount of time, which is precisely why simply counting dogs isn't particularly useful.
I'd rather look at revenue per productive hour.
The immediate answer to improving that number shouldn't be: “Do another dog.”
It should be: “How do we create more value from the dogs we're already grooming?”
What if we found another $15 per dog?
Take a groomer who grooms six dogs per day, with an average customer spend of $120.
That's $720 per day.
Now increase the average spend by just $15.
The groomer hasn't done seven dogs. They haven't worked faster. They haven't skipped lunch. They've still groomed exactly six dogs.
But revenue is now $810 per day.
That's an additional $90 per day, $450 per week, and more than $20,000 per year from one grooming position.
So where does the extra $15 come from?
It could be a facial, teeth brushing, nail filing, deshedding treatment, premium shampoo, paw treatment, coat treatment, or retail purchase.
Or instead of trying to sell five different $10 extras, perhaps we create a $25–$40 spa package that customers actually understand and value.
It can also come from simply pricing our core service properly.
A large oodle that takes significantly longer shouldn't necessarily cost the same as a straightforward groom just because they're both technically in the same weight category.
Time, coat condition, behavior, and complexity all have a cost.
Are we paying skilled groomers to do work someone else could do?
There's another side to productivity that has nothing to do with asking someone to work harder.
Look at what your groomers actually do during their day.
Are they answering phones? Taking payments? Doing laundry? Cleaning? Washing every dog? Managing appointment changes?
A skilled groomer's time is one of the most valuable and hardest-to-replace resources for a grooming business.
If we're paying someone $35 an hour to spend significant parts of their day doing tasks that could be performed by a bather, junior employee, receptionist, or even technology, that's not necessarily an employee productivity problem.
It can be a business design problem.
A good bather doesn't just wash dogs. They can create more productive grooming hours.
Better booking systems, automated reminders, online payments, better equipment, and smarter salon layouts can do the same thing.
The objective isn't necessarily to make people work harder. It's to make more of their working day productive.
Then there's frequency
Revenue per groom is only part of the equation. There's also the value of the customer relationship.
A customer groomed every eight weeks gives you approximately 6.5 appointments per year.
Move that customer onto an appropriate six-week schedule; that's approximately 8.7 appointments.
That's around 33% more appointments from the same customer relationship.
You haven't spent money finding another customer. You've done a better job of rebooking and maintaining the dog on an appropriate schedule.
That's where pre-booking, maintenance programs, memberships, and automated reminders become much more than marketing tools. They become part of the salon's economics.
We need both sides of this conversation
I don't think the answer to rising wages is pushing groomers to squeeze another dog into an already full day.
But I also don't think we can talk seriously about higher wages, better conditions, and lower workloads without addressing the revenue needed to support them.
Business owners have responsibilities here too.
If your salon can only survive by continually pushing staff to groom more dogs, perhaps your pricing needs work. Perhaps your average spend is too low. Perhaps you're not charging appropriately for difficult or time-consuming work. Perhaps you're underusing support staff. Perhaps your systems are inefficient.
Or perhaps you've never worked out what one productive grooming hour actually needs to generate.
That's a business problem, not a groomer problem.
At the same time, productivity does matter.
If we want grooming to become a genuinely professional industry where people can earn good money, have sustainable careers, and work in well-equipped salons with proper support, then the businesses that employ them must be financially healthy.
Staff wellbeing and profitability aren't opposing ideas. They depend on each other.
The goal isn't to get the maximum number of dogs through the salon.
The goal is to deliver more value per dog, more revenue per productive hour, and a business model that's sustainable for everyone.
