We received an e-mail last week that announced “Pinnacle Funeral Service and Rollings Funeral Service are proud to announce that Nancy Weil has joined the team as Director of Community Outreach. . . . .Nancy’s career includes serving as the Membership Director for the Order of the Golden Rule (OGR) for the past six years, where she worked closely with funeral homes across the country to promote excellence in service. She is a Certified Grief Management Specialist, Grief Services Provider, and Funeral Celebrant, facilitating virtual grief support groups and providing training to help funeral professionals better serve their communities.”

The announcement also said this about the companies, “Rollings and Pinnacle Funeral Service groups partnered early last year so they could both provide better support for their locations and provide more opportunities for their team members.”  And, you will notice that if you look at the current websites for both companies that Mr. Tony Kumming is listed as the President of both firms.

There is nothing unusual about that arrangement in business, but on a bigger scale, I think it shows that what might have been known in our business as regional consolidators or operating funeral home companies are beginning to scale for more growth. . . . and, I don’t think Rollings and/or Pinnacle are unique in that situation.

We’ve recently written about what Funeral Director Daily sees growing in our business.  That is, anecdotally, we seem to see more announcements about acquisitions of family owned funeral homes in the media than we have seen before.   With the larger publicly-owned funeral home companies we usually receive an e-mail press release about any acquisition, but in the smaller and non-public company arena those acquisitions are usually kept as silent as possible.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

That also is not unusual. . . public companies need to let their shareholders know of the growth whereas smaller private operators try to cause as few waves with potential consumers about a change in ownership in local trade areas.  However, that quiet is balanced with a former owner wanting his friends and neighbors to know of the ownership change. . . . thus, local announcements in local newspapers that Funeral Director Daily scours for this information.

In my opinion, seeing these annoucements more frequently is more proof of what most of us believe is coming to the profession.  That is less family ownership over time as new generations of funeral home descendents choose to enter other lines of work.

A positive aspect of all of these companies seemingly ramping up for acquisitions is that sellers of funeral businesses have more and more options of whom they may want to trust their businesses to in the future.  In addition to the national and regional companies we have listed below, most local funeral home owners know of going-concern businesses in their vicinity that may also want to acquire certain funeral homes. . . . . . At the end of the day for those funeral home owners planning on dis-engaging from the business this seems to give them more options in choice, and possible price.

While not an exhaustive group, here are some of the North American non-public fuenral/cremation/cemetery company operators that we know of:

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