Do you have gas?

Have you got gas? No, not that kind of gas. I’m talking about gasoline. With the current gas crisis, the price per gallon has reached ridiculous levels. Prices vary across the country but most are far north of $4 per gallon. Service industries are being particularly hard hit during this crisis. Businesses like Uber or Grubhub or any service that requires a lot of driving are struggling.

Pet sitting and dog walking involves travel, often lots of travel. Sitters spend a good deal of time during their day driving from client to client. You may work in an urban area where your clients are closer together but you have to deal with traffic and road delays leading to increased gas usage. Or you may work in a more rural area where traffic is light but distances from client to client are increased. Either way time spent in the car is a big part of a pet sitter’s day.

If you’re a solo pet sitter, meaning you don’t have employees, the current gas prices are a burden on you. If you employ sitters the burden on them could be leading to a cascade of personnel issues in an already difficult hiring economy.

Let’s talk for a moment about what pet sitting and dog walking company’s normally do to compensate their employees for travel. Each state is a bit different regarding compensation for travel but in general the regulations require the employer to pay for the employee’s time at a rate at least meeting state minimum wage. You may fall into one of these camps;

Employers who pay their sitters by the hour generally pay the sitters for time spent traveling between visits. As a side note, in most states, travel to the first pet sitting visit of the day and travel home from the last pet sitting visit of the day are considered commute time and are not paid

Employers who pay their sitters by the visit generally compensate the sitter for the mileage they’ve driven, the time they’ve spent driving and/or possibly for wear and tear on their vehicle.

Depending on how your business is set up you may use some combination of these two scenarios. If you ask ten people how they approach this, you’re likely to get ten different answers. What all of these answers will have in common is that the current gas crisis is negatively affecting their businesses, some to the point of extinction.

The negative spiral

We find ourselves in a vicious circle. You hire sitters. They start with good intentions but realize quickly that the travel is expensive and undesirable for them and they quit. The loss of personnel puts even more strain on the remaining sitters on your team who now have to spend even more time traveling to clients to fill in the gaps. This drives even more sitters to quit due to the travel hardship. It’s all you can do to hire fast enough to replace the outpouring of sitters that are leaving. The additional sourcing, hiring and training costs skyrocket and money flows out the door.

The solution

Because of this crisis pet care business owners have had to get creative to combat this issue. They’re doing one or a combination of;

Increasing compensation to the sitters – Some have raised the overall hourly or per visit pay rate for their sitters. Some are giving their sitters a little extra in each paycheck or providing them with a prepaid gas card.

Increasing revenue – Service prices are going up for everything and inflation seems out of control. Most pet sitting companies have raised their service prices significantly to help cover expenses. This may also come in the form of extra fees imposed on clients for travel costs. The trouble with this is that you can only raise your prices so much or impose so many fees before you price yourself out of the market. It’s a balancing act and finding that sweet spot where you can compensate and keep sitters while still building a client base is challenging.

Changing their service area – Some companies are reducing their service areas to reduce the distance that sitters have to travel from client to client. The downside of this is that the business is now pulling from a smaller area and a smaller customer base. Extra and more targeted marketing efforts may be needed in this case to build back up the number of clients in the now reduced service area.

Overhiring staff – Many pet sitting companies are hiring more staff than they actually need to support their current client load. They do this to insure they have staff available and in the right geographical area to cover clients and minimize travel time for the sitter.

My own approach has been a combination of factors. I’ve raised my service prices for my customers and I’ve also raised the per hour rate I pay my sitters. Additionally, I’ve put in place a temporary gas surcharge of $1 per visit for clients. This money goes 100% to the sitter to offset gas costs. I’m generally not one for a bunch of extra fees as transparency in pricing is important to me. In this case though, I felt a temporary charge was needed.

In any case, the current gas prices are one if not the biggest hurdle to running a profitable pet sitting and dog walking business. We can only pray that relief is coming soon and in the meantime, continue to look for creative solutions!

Another article you might like;

How to protect your business…From your employees

https://www.thepetbusinesscoach.dog/protect-your-business/

About Eliza

Eliza is the owner of two successful pet related businesses; Preferred Pet Partners, a pet sitting and dog walking company, and The Pet Business Coach, offering coaching and resources to aspiring or current pet related business entrepreneurs. She maintains two awesome blogs. One for pet parents https://preferredpetpartners.com/blog/ and one for pet business owners https://thepetbusinesscoach.dog/blog-page/.  Eliza also supports various animal rescue and shelter organizations. Eliza and her husband have a growing pet family. Visit her websites: www.preferredpetpartners.com or www.thepetbusinesscoach.dog.