GroomBoard on your phone.
Your day, your route and checkout in your pocket. Sign in with the account you already have.
GroomBoard on your phone.
Your day, your route and checkout in your pocket. Sign in with the account you already have.
Long form, source cited guides for professional groomers, starting a business, leaving corporate chains, pricing services, hiring staff, and running a salon that lasts. Every claim is backed by a primary source.
A copyable dog grooming business plan, section by section, with fill in the blanks wording and worked financials for three models side by side: home based salon, mobile van and small storefront.
Should a groomer pay table rent or work on commission? We run the break even from both sides of the table, with every input labeled so you can swap in your own numbers, then cover the IRS and Department of Labor rules that decide whether a "renter" is really an employee.
A mobile dog grooming price table by size and coat, built on salon rates plus a 20 to 40 percent premium, and the cost per stop math behind it: van payment, fuel, insurance, generator, supplies and drive time, worked through with labeled assumptions you can swap for your own.
A copyable cat grooming price list built from five real salon menus, with the per minute math to set your own numbers, a consent and refusal policy, the certification options, and a worked example of what a weekly cat afternoon adds to the year.
Where grooming businesses for sale are really listed, how they are priced on owner earnings, how to rebuild SDE from a seller's P&L, and the checks that separate a book of loyal clients from a groomer who is about to leave with them.
Two hundred original name ideas for a grooming salon, mobile van or cat friendly studio, grouped by style. Then the part most lists skip: how to check a name is actually free before you print a single card.
Reviews are one of the few local ranking signals a groomer can move every single week. Here is where to find your review link and QR code, the exact moment to ask, scripts for the counter, text, email and social, reply templates for good and bad reviews, and the rules that get reviews deleted.
There is no single dog grooming certification. There are about ten, from four organizations, and they prove very different things. Here is every current credential in one table, with the costs we verified on each official site, how long grooming school really takes, and an honest look at what certification does for a grooming business.
Some clients cost more than they pay. Here is how to tell which ones, a simple scorecard, the order to do things in, short neutral scripts for each reason, and how to protect yourself from a revenge review.
A neutral look at dog grooming franchises: what the franchise disclosure document is, which items to read first, the published fees for five grooming brands, and a worked 5 year comparison against opening your own salon.
A grooming membership can steady your calendar and keep coats out of the matting zone, or it can quietly hand a discount to clients who were coming anyway. Here are the formats salons actually sell, the math that decides which one you get, and terms you can copy.
Three complete job descriptions you can copy for a grooming salon, a groomer, a bather and a groomer trainee, plus how to state commission pay honestly, which states require pay ranges in postings, screening questions, a paid working interview rubric and what belongs on a groomer resume.
A self serve dog wash can be a standalone shop, a tub inside a grooming salon, or a coin operated unit at a car wash. Here is what each model costs, what washes really sell for, what the plumbing needs, and the math on when it pays back.
Fresh dog food is priced per dog, not per bag, which is why nobody publishes a simple price list. Here is what the published figures say a plan costs by dog weight, what makes one dog cost triple another, and the levers that bring the number down.
The Farmer's Dog does not publish a price list because every plan is portioned to one dog. Here are the published figures by dog weight, what drives the number up, and the two settings that bring it down.
The food is not the controversial part. The freezer space, the delivery cadence and the sticker shock at the second box are what owners actually talk about. Here is the full picture before you subscribe.
Ollie sells fresh food at roughly the same price as its bigger rival, with one meaningful difference: it will happily sell you half a plan. That single option is what makes it the more flexible of the two.
Nom Nom competes on simplicity rather than scale. Short recipes and tight portioning make it the fresh brand most worth a look when digestion is the problem you are solving.
Fresh food delivers two things reliably and several things it gets credit for by accident. Worth knowing which is which before committing several hundred dollars a month.
Most groomers try to grow by booking more dogs, and burn out before the business gets bigger. Real scaling means adding capacity profitably. This guide covers the order to do it in: max out your solo numbers first, know your unit economics, then add staff and chairs without losing money.
How dog groomers handle taxes and bookkeeping in 2026, self employment tax, quarterly estimated payments, the deductions groomers miss, Schedule C, the 72.5¢ mileage rate, Section 179 equipment write offs, the 1099-K rules, and a simple monthly bookkeeping system. Every figure source cited to the IRS.
Mobile grooming offers higher margins, loyal clients, and no salon rent, but the van is a serious investment. This source cited guide covers real startup costs, licensing, pricing, and how to fill your route.
Your first hire is the scariest and most important step in scaling a salon. This source cited guide covers the IRS classification rules that catch owners every year, how to structure pay, and how to find and keep good groomers.
A complete guide to setting up automated SMS reminders, with copy/paste templates, no show stats, and A2P 10DLC compliance basics every US groomer needs to know.
Most U.S. states do not require a license to work as a dog groomer, but a small number regulate grooming facilities (and a few cities require a permit). Here is the state by state picture, plus the business licenses every groomer needs.
A legally sound, source cited playbook for dog groomers leaving PetSmart, Petco, or another corporate chain, noncompete clauses, training debt (TRAP) contracts, what you can and can't take with you, and the 30/60/90 day transition plan.
Calculators and data tools that work alongside these guides.
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