What does a “good” labor percentage actually look like in pet boarding and daycare? Ask ten owners and you’ll get ten different answers, calculated ten different ways. That gap in shared language was the starting point for a new webinar series built around the 2026 Pet Boarding, Daycare and Resort Industry Benchmarking Report, and the first session tackled the topic every operator feels in their gut but rarely defines on paper: labor.
Welcome to the Pet Industry Leaderboard Series
This webinar, Labor & Efficiency in the Pet Boarding and Daycare Industry, kicks off a new series built on the benchmarking report from PocketSuite, IBPSA, and The Dog Gurus. The report drew on survey responses from pet-service business owners across the country, and each session in the series will unpack one of the operational disciplines that separates the highest-performing facilities from everyone else.
The first session was hosted by Carmen Rustenbeck of IBPSA, with Alyson Fisher of PocketSuite (owner of three pet care facilities in the Midwest) and Amber Burkhalter, better known as Coach Amber, from The Dog Gurus. Together they walked through what Carmen called four connected conversations, not four separate topics: how you define labor, how you support the people behind the number, how you tighten operations, and how pricing ties it all together.
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Myth Number One: The 30% Labor Ratio
Alyson opened by pointing out that the biggest source of confusion is definition, not discipline. An owner running a 28% labor ratio and an owner running 42% might both be doing great, or both be missing the full picture, depending on what actually gets counted.
Her recommendation: use fully loaded labor cost, not just base wages. That means wages plus payroll taxes, workers’ comp, benefits, PTO, and payroll processing fees. A $15 an hour employee, once fully loaded, often runs closer to $20 or more, and Alyson shared an example of an hourly employee whose true loaded cost was $33 an hour, meaning nothing gets billed under $34 without losing money.
She also pushed back on the industry rumor that 30% is the labor benchmark to hit. Coach Amber agreed without hesitation, sharing that she doesn’t know a single operator currently running at 30%, and that the honest number across the industry is closer to 45%. Both speakers pointed to COVID as the moment that permanently changed the math, moving many facilities from a pre-pandemic average in the low 30s to a new reality well above it.
A few practical definition tips from the session:
- Segment your labor ratio by department. Training tends to run highest, daycare tends to run lowest.
- Owner labor counts. If you’re cleaning kennels, walking dogs, or answering phones, that time belongs in the labor bucket, even if you’re not drawing a paycheck for it.
- Consistency matters more than precision. Track the same way, the same group, every period, so your trend line actually means something.
Your People Are the Number
Once the definition is settled, the conversation shifted to retention. Coach Amber was direct about why pet care sees such high turnover: the work asks for real skill, animal behavior knowledge, safe handling, group management, and it takes a physical and emotional toll that rivals fields like nursing or social work. Employees don’t usually leave because the job is boring. They leave because the job is heavy, and the pay doesn’t always reflect that.
A few ideas that came up as working solutions:
- Cross-training. Replacing an employee costs somewhere between $4,500 and $7,200, and that number doesn’t include the institutional knowledge that walks out the door with them. Employees who can move between roles break up monotony, cover for each other during a flu outbreak, and see a real path forward instead of a dead end.
- Structured time off. Coach Amber shared that she required trainers to take two full weeks of paid vacation a year, no exceptions, and paid for management team cell phones specifically so people could disconnect. Alyson does the same with her groomers and trainers, running a 4-on, 3-off schedule to protect against burnout.
- Shift leads over layers of managers. Several facilities are moving away from stacking full-manager salaries and toward shift leads who run day-to-day operations. The result is a lower labor line item and a smaller management team that’s less likely to burn out and more able to focus on culture.
- Minimum availability at the point of hire. Setting clear expectations upfront, and treating a major drop in availability after hire as a signal the fit has changed, avoids a lot of scheduling headaches down the road.
Where the Minutes Actually Go
The third leg of the conversation was operational efficiency. Across facilities of every size, from ten employees to seventy, the same time sinks kept coming up: feeding rounds, potty breaks and cleaning, medication administration, and report cards.
Report cards got a real moment in the conversation. Alyson described testing nearly every version imaginable before landing on a tiered approach: automated feeding and medication updates go out daily through PocketSuite, and fully personalized report cards are reserved for a couple of days a week or offered as a paid add-on. Her take was simple: if something takes staff time, it’s fair to either simplify it or charge for it.
Coach Amber offered a useful gut check for smaller operators here. If you’re running seven dogs on a Tuesday, no amount of process redesign fixes that. At low volume, the lever isn’t efficiency, it’s revenue mix: add-on services, partnerships, or pricing that improves the economics of your slow periods.
Pricing Is the Release Valve
The session closed on pricing, and Alyson was candid that it took her years to get comfortable charging what the business actually needs to charge. Her framework: know your margin on every service line before deciding whether to raise prices. Twice a year, she and her team map out every cost tied to a given program, down to the dollar, to see what’s actually left over.
She also shared a simple rule of thumb. If your state raises minimum wage 9% in a year, your prices go up 9% across the board, because the math has to hold. Coach Amber backed this up with her own numbers, including one program where prices climbed 225% over time as she corrected years of underpricing.
Soft signals that prices are too low came up too: a two- or three-week waitlist, no open capacity, or clients who never push back. Both speakers agreed that pricing should be reviewed at least once a year, not just when costs force the issue, since gradual increases are far easier for clients to absorb than one painful correction down the road.
The One Thing to Take Away
Carmen closed the session with a line that captured the whole hour: most labor problems are really clarity problems. Labor efficiency isn’t about doing more with less, it’s about knowing your numbers, investing in your people, tightening operations, and charging what the service is actually worth.
The challenge for attendees was simple. Define your labor ratio if you haven’t already, write down exactly what you’re including, and run the number. If you already have a number, pick your biggest lever, pricing, scheduling, or structure, and set a 30-day goal to work on it.
Recruiting in a tight labor market came up repeatedly in the Q&A and didn’t get the full conversation it deserves in this session, so watch for it as a dedicated topic in an upcoming installment of the series.
This is the first in a series of webinars built on the 2026 Pet Boarding, Daycare and Resort Industry Benchmarking Report. Stay tuned for the next session in the Pet Industry Leaderboard Series.
