How much is a pet grooming business worth?

Short answer: 2.30× SDE in realized sales — because in most grooming shops the skill, and the client trust that comes with it, lives in the groomers' hands, and hands can resign. Shops that turn personal skill into booked, recurring, documented appointments are the ones that beat the average. Run your figures in the valuation calculator and see the pet groomers page.

The number

BizBuySell's trailing-five-year closed sales (through Q2 2026) put Pet Grooming Businesses at 2.30× SDE and 0.63× revenue, median sale price $152,500. Size ladder for context — IBBA Market Pulse, Q2 2026: 2.0× SDE under a $500K price; 2.8× at $500K–$1M; 3.1× at $1M–$2M; 4.8× EBITDA at $2–5M; 5.8× EBITDA at $5–50M — with most single shops in the first band.

Public comparison: Damodaran Online's Business & Consumer Services bucket (a proxy, January 2026) trades at 14.26× EV/EBITDA. That sector includes scaled, contracted service platforms; a grooming salon's discount from it is mostly a people-risk discount, and the sections below are about shrinking it.

Worked example — shown math, assumptions labeled:

• Revenue (assumption, a busy 3-groomer salon): $300,000
• SDE margin (assumption): 25% → SDE = $300,000 × 0.25 = $75,000
• Multiple (BizBuySell realized, pet grooming): 2.30×
• $75,000 × 2.30 = $172,500

Mobile grooming operations price differently — the van is a large share of the deal — and honest pricing separates vehicle from book of clients.

How buyers actually value a pet grooming business

The audit starts with the appointment book. Buyers read rebooking rate — what share of dogs leave with their next appointment already set, typically on a 4–8 week cycle — because a grooming client is a small annuity: a dog groomed every six weeks at a typical ticket is predictable revenue for years. Software data beats a paper book: client count, visit frequency, ticket by service (bath, full groom, add-ons like de-shedding and teeth), and no-show rates.

Then the people question, which decides the multiple: how many groomers, how are they paid (commission splits versus hourly — it changes both margin and who can be poached), and how much revenue follows one star groomer out the door if she opens down the street. Buyers also separate salon economics from mobile: salon value rides on lease, location and chair capacity; mobile value rides on route density — stops per day in a tight geography — and van condition. Retail attach (food, treats, toys sold at pickup) and self-wash bays, where present, get valued as separate, steadier lines.

What raises the price — and what kills it

Raises it: rebooking above ~70% with reminders automated; revenue spread across three or more groomers, none carrying the shop; a waitlist — unmet demand is the cleanest growth story a buyer can verify; membership or standing-appointment plans smoothing the calendar; grooming software records that prove frequency and ticket, years deep.

Kills it: the owner grooms half the dogs and manages the other half — the SDE is real but the buyer has to hire their way out of it; groomers misclassified (1099 versus employee is a live issue in this trade) with the liability unpriced; clients loyal to a groomer who has no non-compete and a cousin with an empty storefront; cash appointments off the software, invisible to diligence; incident history — injuries, escapes — undocumented and discovered late.

Move your number

Payments: grooming lives on repeat cards — deposits for new-client bookings cut no-shows, card-on-file makes pickup a wave instead of a transaction, and retail attach pays better when checkout is one tap. Tight, low-friction processing is the Finix payments team's contribution. Recurring revenue: the whole game here is the rebook — automated reminders, lapsed-client win-backs and standing-appointment offers, run by AI and workflow tools rather than whoever is at the desk, are ClaroPro's play, and they show up directly in the frequency data a buyer prices. Systems: booking, client notes (temperament, coat, vet, preferences) and payments in one system mean the knowledge leaves the groomer's memory and becomes the business's asset — a Nova engineering team can connect those pieces for a growing salon or mobile fleet.

Start with your rebooking rate, then run the calculator for pet grooming.

This is an educational framework with shown math, not an appraisal; a real price is set by a real buyer on a specific day, usually after a week of watching the appointment book fill up without you. The caveats are owner protection in plain form — they keep you from overpaying for a book of clients who follow one groomer, and from underselling a rebooking machine that runs on system, not on you. Never invent. Show the math. We're on the side of the business owner.