Out of your last 10 bookings, how many included an add-on? If you’re not sure, you’re in good company. That question opened the latest session of the Pet Industry Leaderboard Series, a webinar series built on the 2026 Pet Boarding, Daycare and Resort Industry Benchmarking Report from PocketSuite, IBPSA, and The Dog Gurus, where Alyson Fisher (PocketSuite) and Heather Murphy (The Dog Gurus, and former owner of a pet care facility she sold to Destination Pet in 2023) walked through exactly how top-performing resorts are building real revenue out of the moments between bookings.
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The Opportunity Hiding in Plain Sight
The benchmarking survey found that add-ons show the widest performance gap of any metric measured, wider than occupancy, marketing, or repeat revenue. Operators earning $1 million or more see 4 or more add-ons in every 10 bookings, compared to just 18% of businesses under $150,000 in revenue. That gap is the biggest opportunity most pet care businesses have sitting right in front of them.
Building the Add-On Menu, Tier by Tier
Alyson broke the “idea catalog” into four tiers, based on how much labor each option actually requires:
- Tier 1, Passive (zero incremental labor): Suite upgrades, preferred placement, webcam access, late checkout, and weekend or holiday pricing. These cost nothing extra in staff time and are pure margin once they’re built into your booking flow.
- Tier 2, Batchable enrichment: Frozen stuffed toys, lick mats, snuffle mats, and treat-based add-ons that can be prepared in bulk ahead of time. Heather shared her facility’s approach: pre-made “ice cream cones” using frozen Cheerios and peanut butter or canned pumpkin, displayed at the front counter so customers could see them and ask.
- Tier 3, Short one-on-one (5 to 20 minutes, generalist staff): Cuddle time, solo yard time, nature pack walks, and extra potty breaks. These take a little staff time but don’t require a specialist, just enough scheduling awareness to fit them into the day.
- Tier 4, Specialist services: Full grooming, training, and day school. These require dedicated, trained staff and typically carry the highest price points and the biggest impact on overall revenue.
Membership and subscription models came up as a related, higher-commitment option. Heather’s daycare membership program, launched in 2017 alongside a significant price correction, increased her facility’s bottom line by 35% and came with perks like discounted boarding and free nail trims to keep members engaged.
Pricing Add-Ons So They Actually Make Money
The biggest warning from the session: charging for an add-on doesn’t automatically mean it’s profitable. Alyson laid out a simple framework:
- Calculate your fully loaded labor rate, not just the hourly wage, for whoever delivers the add-on.
- Know your contribution margin per unit, meaning the price of the item minus what it actually costs you to deliver.
- Set a pricing floor. A good rule of thumb is 60 to 70% contribution margin, or roughly 3 times the direct cost. If an ice cream cone costs $5 to make, it needs to sell for around $15 to be worth offering.
- Rank your ideas by margin per minute so you know which add-ons are worth prioritizing when staff time is limited.
Alyson shared her own example of nearly cutting a waste removal service over staffing headaches, until she ran the numbers and realized the contribution to her bottom line was too strong to walk away from.
Scheduling Add-Ons Without Sacrificing Coverage
The rule both speakers repeated: never fund an add-on with your supervision ratio. Add-ons should fill genuine downtime, not pull a handler away from a group they’re responsible for.
A few practical ways to find that time:
- Map your day and find the dead zones. Nap times, quiet stretches, and natural lulls are where batchable and passive add-ons fit best.
- Move labor-intensive add-ons to a rest window or assign them to a non-floor role if delivering them would pull someone away from active supervision.
- Use add-ons as a training ground. Starting a staff member on distribution tasks (handing out treats, prepping enrichment items) can be a natural first step toward training them for higher-tier services like private walks.
Getting the Message to Customers
Even a great add-on menu doesn’t sell itself. Alyson shared a story about a longtime boarding client who posted on social media asking for grooming recommendations, without realizing her own facility offered grooming. The lesson: customers don’t automatically know everything you offer, so the message has to show up at the right moments.
The session outlined four key touchpoints:
- At booking. Present your highest-converting, most universal add-ons (like a frozen treat) on every booking.
- Pre-arrival or check-in. Use online forms or in-lobby check-in to walk customers through the full menu without overwhelming your front desk.
- During the stay. Use report cards to flag relevant add-ons, like a grooming appointment for a dog with matted fur, or a seasonal offer like a weekend brunch.
- At pickup and after. A simple “when will we see you again” or a small comeback coupon can turn a one-time visit into a repeat booking. Automated follow-up messages, sent a set number of days after checkout, can do the same work at scale.
The Takeaway
Pick one add-on from your passive or batchable tiers, run the margin math, assign it a delivery window, and put it in front of customers this week. With 54% of operators drawing the majority of their monthly revenue from repeat customers, the add-ons and follow-up messaging that keep clients coming back may be doing more for your bottom line than any new marketing push.
