Top 7 Operational Challenges Facing Pet Care Franchises—and How to Fix Them

The pet care market is experiencing unprecedented growth, with the global industry valued at $324.19 billion in 2024 and projected to reach $597.51 billion by 2033. Yet, despite this booming demand, many pet care franchises are falling behind when it comes to delivering the kind of modern, tech-enabled experiences today’s consumers expect.

Modern pet parents are mobile-first, convenience-driven, and want digital experiences that align with what they’re used to in other service industries. However, many franchises still rely on legacy or off-the-shelf pet care software that was never designed to support the complexity of franchise or multi-location operations. This creates significant challenges for both customers and staff. Booking complexity is a common source of frustration, especially for multi-pet families who face difficulty scheduling multiple pets in a single session. Inconsistent communication, such as missed updates or lack of progress notifications, leaves pet owners feeling disconnected from their pets’ care. Additionally, the lack of real-time visibility across multiple locations makes it difficult for franchisors to track performance or support operational decisions, and staff struggle with disconnected systems that lead to inefficiencies, errors, and burnout.

In addition, many pet care franchises struggle with disconnected marketing and engagement tools, which undermine brand growth by creating fragmented customer experiences. Inventory management and POS systems are also a significant challenge, as outdated or disconnected systems lead to lost revenue and time. Finally, rigid systems and siloed data limit a franchise's agility, as many legacy platforms fail to integrate with other essential tools, creating barriers to operational efficiency and growth.

In this article, we’ll explore the top 7 challenges facing pet care franchises today and explain how modern, franchise-ready software can help address them.

Top Challenges for Pet Care Franchises and the Need for Modern Software

1. Booking Complexity for Multi-Pet Families

Pet care franchises with multiple locations often struggle to deliver a flawless and productive booking experience. Many booking systems in use today aren't designed to accommodate the needs of modern pet owners—especially those managing care for multiple pets or scheduling recurring services. As a result, clients are frequently forced to navigate an arduous, drawn-out booking process, often requiring multiple steps just to complete a single appointment. This not only frustrates the customer but also increases the likelihood of incomplete bookings or drop-offs. Meanwhile, staff are left without the insights they need to anticipate preferences or spot scheduling inefficiencies, making it harder to deliver the kind of personalized, impeccable experience today’s clients expect.

Specific Booking Issues:

• Coordinating Complex, High-Volume Bookings Across Services: Managing long-term boarding with scheduled add-ons, short-term grooming appointments, and multi-pet bookings can overwhelm traditional booking systems, leading to resource conflicts, missed upsell opportunities, and overbooked staff. Without integrated tools for handling these diverse booking needs, pet care franchises risk inconsistent service and operational inefficiencies.
• Limited Multi-Pet Booking Options: Many platforms do not support booking multiple pets with different groomers or services in one session, requiring separate transactions.
• Appointment Conflicts from Staff or Schedule Changes: Changing stylists or schedules on recurring appointments may unintentionally create overlapping bookings or require tedious manual edits.
• Fragmented Booking Experiences Across Channels: Many platforms struggle to provide a consistent booking experience across web, mobile, social, and search, leading to missed appointments and frustrated clients who expect seamless access through their preferred channels.

Implementing franchise management software designed for pet care businesses ensures real-time scheduling, simplifies multi-pet appointments, and keeps operations coordinated across locations. It also makes it easier than ever to stay front and center with your customers by offering multiple reliable, low-friction booking pathways—so when they’re ready to book, they turn to you, not a competitor with easier access.

MyTime offers several tools to easily manage complex booking needs:

• Long-Term Boarding with Scheduled Add-Ons: Easily manage extended stays with a system that fully supports add-ons being scheduled within a boarding period. Incorporating services like walks, grooming, or training sessions can enhance the pet’s experience while increasing average order values and overall location profitability.

  

• Multi-Pet Booking with Consolidated Confirmations: Clients can book multiple pets in one streamlined session, receiving a single, organized confirmation that reduces communication errors and simplifies check-in.

• Digital Intake Forms and Vaccine Reminders: Capture critical pet information, like feeding instructions and vaccination history, ahead of appointments to reduce last-minute surprises and improve the booking experience.

• Unified Omnichannel Booking: Provide a seamless booking experience across your website, mobile app, booking widget, social media, and direct search results, allowing clients to book how and when they prefer without friction.

2. Inconsistent Pet Parent Communications

Pet care businesses often face complaints from pet owners about poor communication. Many customers express frustration when they don’t receive updates on their pets' status after dropping them off for services. Without notifications or progress updates, pet owners feel left in the dark, leading to dissatisfaction and negative feedback. Additionally, businesses using disconnected systems can’t easily send timely updates, further contributing to client frustration.

Specific Communication Issues:

• No Updates During Grooming: Pet owners don’t receive notifications about their pet's grooming status or progress.
• Lack of Check-In Alerts: Customers aren't notified when their pet arrives, when grooming starts, or when it's completed.
• Missed Pickup Reminders: Clients aren’t reminded about pickup times, leading to confusion or delays.
• Manual Communication Bottlenecks: Staff are unable to send updates quickly due to fragmented communication tools and systems.
• Inconsistent Text/Email Notifications: Clients receive no consistent updates via text or email during boarding or other services.
• Lack of Effective Appointment Reminders: Many pet care platforms fail to offer robust reminder systems, leading to high no-show rates. Without automated reminders sent via text, email, or app notifications, businesses risk losing up to 80% of appointments that could have been saved with better communication.

By leveraging pet care business software, you can automate text or email notifications to keep clients informed throughout the day. This ensures consistent, timely communication, leading to higher customer satisfaction and a better overall experience for both pet owners and businesses.

MyTime ensures strategic and consistent communication with pet parents through:

• Real-Time Communication and Photo Sharing: Keep pet parents engaged with instant text or photo updates during their pet’s stay, building trust and reducing check-in inquiries.

• Automated Appointment Reminders: Reduce missed pickups and no-shows by sending automated texts or emails that keep clients informed about their pet’s status.

• Personalized Messaging for High-Value Clients: Automatically target VIP clients based on visit frequency, loyalty status, or pet-specific data—like upcoming vaccine expirations—with tailored messages that drive retention and engagement, all without adding to staff workload.

3. Lack of Real-Time Visibility Across Locations

Staff at pet care businesses with multiple locations often don’t have real-time access to client and pet data. They can’t view feeding instructions, allergy notes, or vaccination status from other locations. Appointments, room availability, and shift coverage must be confirmed manually. These gaps slow down service, increase errors, and require unnecessary back-and-forth between locations.

Specific Visibility Issues:

• No Cross-Location Access to Pet Records: Staff at one location can't view a pet’s feeding instructions, allergy notes, or previous services completed at another location. For franchise brands, having accessible records across all locations is critical for ensuring providers can deliver a consistent brand experiences wherever your clients go.
• Manual Appointment Verification: Employees have to manually call, email, or text customers just to confirm a booking.
• Delayed Access to Vaccination Status: Without automated vaccination reminder notifications for both staff and clients, neither know if scheduled pet’s are up-to-date with required vaccinations, leading to last-minute calls or denied services.
• Inability to View Real-Time Room Availability: Teams must walk the facility or use paper charts to check if boarding rooms or crates are available.
• No Central View of Staff Schedules: Managers can’t quickly adjust shift coverage or reassign team members during call-outs or high-volume periods.
• Multi-location Reporting: Provide centralized reporting that aggregates data from all locations, allowing franchisors to track key metrics like revenue, appointment volume, and staff performance, with filters for individual or regional views to support informed decision-making.
• Lack of Cross Location Redemption: Most pet care software isn’t built to support the complexities of multi-location operations, often forcing businesses to manage gift cards, memberships, loyalty points, and referral rewards manually or location by location.

By using franchise management software for pet businesses, staff can access client data, appointments, and pet histories in real time. This improves service speed, increases productivity, and ensures pet parents get faster, more informed support, and consistent service.

MyTime gives you perfect visibility with these powerful tools:

• Check-In Dashboard and Facility Visibility: Easily track pets and resources in real-time, from arrivals to departures, without manual effort or multiple and disconnected systems.

  

• Pet and Client Profiles Across Locations: Keep pet care notes, up-to-date vaccination records, and behavior information centralized and available with a click, so staff can deliver personalized care at any location without delay.

• Real-Time Staff & Resource Scheduling: Manage staff shifts, resource availability, and coverage across locations from a single platform that automatically syncs staff and resources with booked appointments, reducing miscommunication and scheduling conflicts while ensuring exceptional care for every pet.

• Automated Notifications: Enable franchises to set up customized, automated messages for appointment confirmations, reminders, cancellations, and rebooking prompts across SMS, email, and push notifications to reduce manual follow-ups.

• Multi-Location Reporting: Provide centralized reporting that aggregates data from all locations, allowing franchisors to track key metrics like revenue, appointment volume, and staff performance, with filters for individual or regional views to support informed decision-making.

  

• Cross Location Redemption: Allow clients to redeem memberships, packages, and gift cards at any participating location, with usage automatically tracked and synced across the system, eliminating the need for manual reconciliation.

4. Staff Burnout and Turnover from Inefficient Systems

Pet care franchises often struggle with staff burnout and turnover due to software platforms that lack modern automation and multi-location support. When staff are bogged down by manual scheduling, billing, and customer communication they struggle to deliver a consistent and delightful experience. This leads to high customer churn due to inconsistent and unsatisfactory service.

Specific Burnout Issues:

• Manual Data Entry for Client Services: Staff waste time manually entering services, visit histories, and notes into disconnected systems, leading to errors and delays.
• Missed Upselling Opportunities: Employees often forget to offer relevant add-ons, such as nail trims or teeth cleaning, because the software lacks prompts or automated suggestions.
• No Service or Appointment Reminders: Without automated reminders, staff miss opportunities to notify clients about recurring services or updates, leading to missed appointments or unscheduled services.
• Disjointed Client Communication: Staff struggle to keep track of client preferences or past services due to fragmented data across multiple systems, leading to inconsistent or missed follow-ups.
• Overburdened Staff with Scheduling Conflicts: Employees experience high stress trying to manage overlapping appointments or last-minute changes due to the lack of automated scheduling.
• Frustrating or inefficient software can wear down your team, leading to lower service quality and unhappy pet parents. Over time, this drives customer churn, which is a common issue in the pet care industry and other service-based businesses.

By using pet grooming business software, pet care franchises can automate reminders, track services, and reduce manual workloads.

MyTime helps reduce staff burnout with:

• Integrated POS and Inventory Management: Automate back-office tasks like supply tracking and payment processing, freeing staff to focus on client care.

• Labor Forecasting and Staff Scheduling: Use data-driven insights to predict demand and adjust staffing levels, reducing overwork and burnout.

• Automated Multi-Channel Campaigns: Reduce the manual effort of client outreach and upselling, allowing staff to focus on high-impact tasks.

• Intuitive, Easy-to-Use Platform: Minimize staff stress and simplify tasks like appointment booking, client check-in, and payment processing, helping create a calmer and more productive work environment.

5. Fragmented Marketing Tools Limit Client Retention and Brand Reach

Pet care franchises often struggle to deliver cohesive and personalized marketing across all locations due to siloed systems and outdated software. As brands scale, this fragmentation makes it difficult to run consistent loyalty programs, personalize client outreach, and manage online reputation effectively.

Specific Marketing and Engagement Issues:

• Inconsistent Loyalty, Membership, and Referral Programs: Most platforms lack true multi-location support for loyalty programs, meaning rewards and credits are only available at the original location. This frustrates clients who expect benefits to follow them and leads to low program participation and fewer return visits.
• Limited Personalization at Scale: Many systems don’t offer centralized CRM data or behavior-based campaign automation, making it difficult to segment audiences by demographics, pet type, visit frequency, or service preferences. This leads to generic messaging outreach that fails to connect with clients and misses key opportunities—like encouraging early rebooking before peak seasons, promoting flea and tick treatments in the spring, or upselling services tailored to senior pets.
• Manual Listing and Reputation Management: As franchise networks grow, managing online listings and reviews becomes increasingly complex. Without automated tools, each location is responsible for updating hours, services, and responses across platforms like Google and Yelp. This creates a heavy operational burden, increases the likelihood of errors, and makes it difficult to maintain accurate, up-to-date information. The lack of centralized control also slows down reputation management efforts, making it harder to build trust, improve local SEO, and expand the brand’s online visibility.

By using franchise marketing software built for pet care, brands can unify customer engagement, automate loyalty programs, and protect their reputation across every location.

MyTime Increases Client Retention and Brand Reach with:

• Cross-Location Loyalty, Membership, and Referral Programs: Run unified programs across all locations so clients can earn and redeem rewards, access benefits, and refer others regardless of where they visit. This improves retention, increases engagement, and simplifies program management at scale.

  

• Centralized, Automated Campaign Management: Launch personalized SMS, email, and push notification campaigns using relevant data about clients and their pets. Build and launch global campaigns while still offering location-level flexibility. MyTime’s built-in automation tools ensure campaigns are timely, targeted, and effective—without adding work for location staff.

• Integrated Review and Listing Management: Manage listings and reviews across every location from a single dashboard. Update hours, respond to reviews, and ensure accurate, consistent business information across Google, Yelp, and other popular platforms. This ensures brand consistency, saves time, and protects local SEO across every location.

6. Disconnected POS and Inventory Tools Reduce Profit and Efficiency

Pet care franchises often lose time and revenue due to outdated or disconnected POS and inventory systems that aren’t built for multi-location operations. Without real-time visibility, centralized reporting, or automation, teams face inefficiencies at every step, from tracking product usage to reconciling sales and managing stock across stores.

Specific POS and Inventory Issues:

• Manual Reconciliation and Tracking: Manually reconciling sales and inventory across disconnected systems eats up hours each week. Franchise teams are forced to compare spreadsheets, POS exports, and stock logs from each location just to verify accuracy. This slows down operations, increases the risk of costly errors, and makes it difficult to keep records reliable—especially during high-volume periods or month-end closeouts.
• Limited Payment Flexibility: Many franchise systems struggle to keep up with modern payment expectations. Platforms often lack support for tap-to-pay, mobile wallets, or split payments, creating friction during checkout—especially in mobile grooming or curbside settings. It's also difficult to manage recurring charges for memberships or ongoing services without configurable auto-billing.
• Inventory Mismanagement: When staff don’t have real-time visibility or low-stock alerts, essential products like flea treatments, grooming shampoos, or seasonal retail items often run out without warning. At the same time, overordering slow-moving items ties up shelf space and working capital. These gaps lead to missed sales, disappointed clients, and unnecessary waste—especially during busy periods when demand spikes.
• Lack of Centralized Inventory Oversight: Multi-location businesses often lack a clear, centralized view of inventory. Without the ability to see stock levels of both global and local product offerings, franchises end up placing duplicate orders, missing local demand shifts, and wasting seasonal or perishable items. It also becomes harder to make informed purchasing decisions or identify which products are actually performing.

By using salon POS software built for pet care franchises, brands can automate inventory control, gain real-time visibility, and make smarter, faster decisions across every location.

MyTime Unifies POS and Inventory Management at Scale With:

• Integrated POS With Real-Time Sales Tracking & Cross Location Reconciliation: Process transactions instantly and sync them with service, staff, and pet records across every location. MyTime eliminates manual reconciliation, improves data accuracy, and gives franchise operators a real-time view of sales activity.

  

• Modern Checkout and Recurring Billing Tools: Support all modern payment methods—including tap-to-pay, mobile wallets, split payments, and card on file—both in-store and on the go. MyTime also supports automated, flexible billing for memberships and recurring services, giving franchises full control over payment timing and terms.

  

• Automated, Multi-Location Inventory Management: Track product levels in real time, receive low-stock alerts, and manage stock transfers between stores. This helps optimize inventory across the network and reduces waste and lost sales with inventory management for multi-location businesses.

• Centralized Financial and Inventory Reporting: Track inventory in real time across every store. MyTime makes it easy to view stock levels for both global and local products and monitor demand trends. This helps franchises avoid waste, reduce duplicate orders, and ensure the right products are available where and when they’re needed most.

7. Lack of Integrations and Real-Time Data Limits Franchise Growth

Pet care franchises often rely on a patchwork of tools for scheduling, CRM, payroll, marketing, and reporting. When these systems don’t integrate, teams are stuck with manual work, outdated data, and limited visibility. Without flexible infrastructure or open APIs, franchises can’t scale operations or adapt quickly to changing business needs.

Specific Integration Issues:

• Disconnected Platforms and Data Silos: Running a franchise without unified software means dealing with scattered data, inconsistent customer experiences, and hours wasted stitching together reports from separate systems. Without connected franchise tools, operators struggle to gain a single source of truth for decision-making.
• Poor Integration with External Systems: Legacy systems often lack built-in connectivity or an open API to support integration with payroll, CRM, or third-party platforms. This prevents multi-location operators from streamlining workflows, syncing customer data, or automating routine processes across tools.
• Lack of Real-Time Data Access: Without live data syncing, franchisees and corporate teams can’t track performance KPIs, appointment volume, or location-level sales in real time. The absence of software integration for multi-location businesses slows down responses to staffing needs, inventory shortages, and client trends.

By using open API franchise software, pet care brands can integrate scheduling, CRM, payroll, and inventory systems to eliminate double entry, trigger automated workflows like follow-up emails or reorder alerts, and access real-time performance data across every location

MyTime Unifies Franchise Technology Platforms and Real-Time Data Access With:

• Open API and Developer-Friendly Integrations: Directly connect your CRM, payroll system, accounting software, and marketing platform using flexible, modern APIs. This enables full franchise system integration, allowing customer profiles, payroll data, financial reports, and campaign metrics to sync automatically—supporting both custom-built workflows and third-party tools without manual entry or data silos.

  

• Real-Time Data Sync and Automation: Keep appointment, sales, client, and inventory data updated automatically across all systems. Eliminate manual entry and reduce errors by using connected franchise tools that share information instantly and reliably.

• Scalable Infrastructure Built for Growth: Designed to support growth across dozens or hundreds of locations, this scalable franchise tech adapts to evolving operations and technology stacks—making it easy to add new tools or services without disrupting the business.

Conclusion

Pet care franchises face growing pressure to deliver modern, tech-driven experiences, but many are still stuck with outdated systems that create complex multi-pet booking, inconsistent communication, and disconnected POS and inventory tools. These challenges are compounded by fragmented marketing efforts and the inability to integrate key systems due to a lack of open API access.

MyTime’s all-in-one, franchise-ready platform solves these issues with real-time scheduling, unified multi-location visibility, powerful marketing automation, and developer-friendly APIs that connect effortlessly with your CRM, payroll, and other tools.

See how MyTime can transform your pet care franchise.