This is Maricel’s story.
How to sell a pet services business at the right time, to the right buyer, for the right price is the question Maricel Bautista had been turning over for almost a year before she finally picked up the phone. When the right time came, she called CGK Business Sales. Maricel ran a three-location pet resort across the north Austin suburbs, with two flagship campuses in Cedar Park and Round Rock and a third smaller satellite location in Pflugerville. The three locations together did $2.4 million in annual revenue and roughly $700,000 in Seller’s Discretionary Earnings, with thirty-eight W-2 employees moving across the kennels each week: Maricel plus three general managers, twelve climate-controlled boarding and structured-play daycare kennel techs, six full-service groomers (three of them breed-specific certified), four front-desk customer service leads, two retail and inventory leads who ran the premium-food and supplies counter at each campus, two mobile grooming van technicians who ran the Cedar Park route, and a single shared bookkeeper. The business ran 40 percent on overnight boarding (sixty-plus combined climate-controlled kennel runs across the three locations), 25 percent on structured-play daycare with a recurring monthly-membership program, 20 percent on full-service grooming including breed-specific cuts and the Cedar Park mobile grooming van route, and the remaining 15 percent on retail (premium dog and cat food, raw and freeze-dried diets, supplies, treats, and a small toy and apparel selection). Approximately fifty-two hundred active client households across Cedar Park, Round Rock, Pflugerville, Leander, Georgetown, and the broader Williamson County corridor were on the active customer roster, with a daycare member roster of roughly six hundred fifty households on monthly recurring plans. Thirty-four percent of revenue was recurring monthly daycare-membership revenue. Google rated the resort 4.8 stars across more than 1,400 reviews. Maricel was 52. She had been building the business for thirteen years on a deposit her father (a Filipino-American veterinarian who had retired from a clinic in Round Rock) had gifted her in 2013, all three locations carried current City of Cedar Park, City of Round Rock, and City of Pflugerville kennel licenses, the resort ran on Gingr boarding-and-daycare software with PetExec for the grooming side, and her three general managers and longest-tenured kennel techs were ready to stay through the transition. Her spouse Joaquin (a nurse anesthetist who had just accepted an early-retirement package from a major Austin hospital system) wanted to spend a year traveling to see their adult daughter Liza, who was in a graduate program in Manila with her partner Diego. Maricel did not know who else to talk to about how to sell a pet services business at this size, with this daycare-membership recurring revenue base, with the mobile grooming van route, and with the kennel-licensing exposure across three Texas municipalities. This page is what happened next, and what could happen for you. Maricel is a composite, not a single real CGK seller, but the patterns and details are pulled from real pet services engagements.
The night before Maricel decided to sell a pet services business.
Most owners who decide to sell a pet services business have been carrying the question quietly for a year or more before they reach for the phone. Maricel was no different. She was 52. For thirteen years she had been the licensed operator of record across all three north-Austin pet resorts, the founder who had personally signed each of the three building leases between 2013 (Round Rock, the original campus) and 2021 (Pflugerville, the third location), the lead operator on every Gingr and PetExec system rollout, the relationship lead on the City of Cedar Park, City of Round Rock, and City of Pflugerville kennel-license renewals, and the after-hours phone line for any client whose dog spiked a kennel-cough cough at 11:00 p.m. on a Saturday before a Monday boarding pickup. The three-location resort did $2.4 million in annual revenue across the campuses, roughly $700,000 in SDE at the upper end of multi-location pet resort norms (driven by the climate-controlled boarding bench, the structured-play daycare member roster, the breed-specific grooming team, and the Cedar Park mobile grooming van route), and thirty-eight W-2 employees including three general managers (Daniela Reyes, age 39, lead general manager and Cedar Park campus head; Brandon Holloway, age 37, Round Rock campus head; Aniyah Webster, age 34, shared Pflugerville campus and mobile-grooming-van GM), twelve kennel techs running structured-play daycare and overnight boarding rotations, six full-service groomers (three of whom held breed-specific certification including National Dog Groomers Association of America and International Professional Groomers credentials), four front-desk customer service leads running client intake across the three campuses, two retail and inventory leads who ran the premium-food and supplies counter at the Cedar Park and Round Rock locations, two mobile grooming van technicians who ran the Cedar Park van route, a shared bookkeeper, and a single shared phone-tree receptionist routing across the resort lines.
Why owners decide to sell a pet services business
The Friday Maricel finally submitted the form, her spouse Joaquin had been at her shoulder reading her the printed search results from his iPad. Joaquin was a nurse anesthetist who had just accepted an early-retirement package from a major Austin hospital system after twenty-eight years on the surgical schedule. He had grown up in Round Rock, the son of a 1990s wave of Filipino-American medical-professional families that had settled in the corridor, and he had been the one keeping the household running for thirteen years while Maricel was at one campus or another six days a week. Their daughter Liza was 26, a Filipino-American who had moved to Manila in 2024 for a graduate program in public health at the University of the Philippines, and her partner Diego was wrapping up a parallel program. Maricel and Joaquin wanted to spend a year traveling to see Liza and Diego in Manila, take Joaquin’s mother to her childhood province in Pangasinan, and slow the pace down before Liza and Diego started talking about a wedding. Daniela Reyes, the lead general manager and Cedar Park campus head, had been with Maricel for eleven years and was committed to staying on post-close if the buyer ran the resort in a way that kept the three-campus bench together. Brandon Holloway had been seven years and ran Round Rock. Aniyah Webster had been four years and ran Pflugerville plus the Cedar Park mobile grooming van route. All three of the general managers were ready to keep operating. Maricel had been approached eleven times in the prior eighteen months: five times by PE-backed pet care platform consolidators headquartered out of Texas, Colorado, and a few national platforms, three times by regional pet resort chains expanding into the central Texas corridor, twice by national pet care franchise development reps trying to bring her resort under their banner, and once by a vertically-integrated veterinary acquirer building out a wellness-plus-boarding portfolio. Maricel did not know what her resort was actually worth at $2.4 million revenue and $700,000 SDE, with the structured-play daycare member roster, the breed-specific grooming team, the mobile grooming van route, the kennel-license footprint across three Texas municipalities, the 4.8-star Google rating across 1,400-plus reviews, the 34 percent recurring monthly daycare-membership revenue, and the thirteen-year operating history. She did not know whether the firms calling her were the right buyers for Daniela, Brandon, Aniyah, her twelve kennel techs, her six groomers, or her two mobile-van technicians. She did not have a single peer in her life who had ever sold a pet services business at this size, with this daycare-membership exposure, with a mobile grooming van route.
That is the night she found CGK and submitted the form. We called her back at 7:38 the next morning, while Maricel was at the Cedar Park campus opening the play yards for the 7:00 a.m. daycare drop-off rush.
The first call about how to sell a pet services business.
The first call was 47 minutes. We did most of the listening.
Owners who think about how to sell a pet services business in their early fifties, like Maricel, usually carry the same handful of pressures into the first call. Maricel talked about Daniela Reyes and the way Daniela had been the practical operator of the Cedar Park flagship since 2017. She talked about Brandon Holloway running Round Rock since 2018 and the way Brandon had been the one to push the resort into structured-play daycare with formal monthly-membership tiers after the second-year boarding revenue plateaued. She talked about Aniyah Webster running the Pflugerville campus and the Cedar Park mobile grooming van since 2021 and the way Aniyah carried both the van route logistics and the Pflugerville day-to-day. She talked about the twelve kennel techs (four of whom held Fear Free certification through the Fear Free Pets handler program), the six groomers (three of whom held breed-specific certification through the National Dog Groomers Association of America and the International Professional Groomers credentialing path). She talked about the four front-desk leads and the way the client-counter rhythm at each of the three campuses was different. She talked about the kennel licenses on file with the City of Cedar Park, the City of Round Rock, and the City of Pflugerville, the absence of any USDA APHIS exposure (because the resort did no breeding and no wholesale supply, only retail), the Gingr software platform the resort had been on since 2017, the PetExec subscription that the grooming side ran on, and the multi-year insurance file that covered animal-injury liability, kennel-cough escape and bite-incident claim history, and premises and product liability on the retail counter. She talked about Joaquin’s early-retirement package from the Austin hospital system, the year of travel they wanted to take to see their daughter Liza and Diego in Manila, and the way that travel year was the soft ceiling on her timeline. She talked about her father, the retired Round Rock veterinarian who had gifted her the deposit on the original Round Rock campus in 2013, and the way she wanted to spend more time with him while he was still healthy enough to travel. We asked about the resort the way you would ask if you were trying to understand it, not the way you would ask if you were trying to win the engagement. What we were listening for was not just the financials. We were listening for whether Maricel was actually ready to sell, what she was working toward, and whether her expectations on price were grounded in what the multi-location pet resort M&A market would actually support.
At the end of that call, we set up a working session: an in-person conversation where one of our Managing Directors would walk Maricel through our valuation model and tell her honestly what her pet services business was likely to command. We did not promise her a written report. Written valuations involve substantially more work, and we charge for those when a seller actually needs one for partnership buyout, estate planning, a divorce, or another documentary purpose. The walkthrough was free because Maricel was clearly thinking seriously about how to sell a pet services business, the way someone thinks about it before they actually do it. Whether that ends up being in a year, five years, or longer, we make the same call.
The valuation session was the following Tuesday at 6:30 a.m. at the Cedar Park campus, before the daycare drop-off rush opened and after Daniela had finished her morning kennel walk-through across the climate-controlled boarding rooms.
Maricel was not ready to sell a pet services business yet. She went home and waited three months.
The valuation session showed Maricel that her pet services business was worth meaningfully more than she had been hoping in some areas and meaningfully less in others, which is how these conversations usually go. The structured-play daycare member roster (roughly six hundred fifty households on monthly recurring plans driving 34 percent of revenue), the breed-specific grooming team with formal NDGAA and IPG credentialing, the climate-controlled boarding capacity (sixty-plus combined kennel runs across three campuses), the Cedar Park mobile grooming van route, the 4.8-star Google rating across 1,400-plus reviews, the thirteen-year operating history under a single founder, the diversified three-campus footprint across Williamson County, and the absence of any USDA APHIS exposure were all premium-multiple drivers a sophisticated PE-backed pet care platform consolidator would pay up for. Three issues, though, were dragging the number down. The first was the kennel-tech and groomer retention story. Maricel had verbal stay arrangements with Daniela, Brandon, Aniyah, and her three breed-specific groomers but nothing on paper, and a sophisticated buyer’s diligence team was going to underwrite the bench (especially the three GMs, the breed-specific groomers, and the two mobile-van technicians) as a transition-risk factor unless the resort went to market with formal multi-year retention agreements in place. The second was the animal-welfare and licensing-claim documentation. The kennel-cough, escape, and bite-incident claim history was clean, but the buyer’s diligence team would want a formal multi-year claim register laid out by campus, by claim type, and by resolution status, plus updated change-of-control acknowledgements from the City of Cedar Park, the City of Round Rock, and the City of Pflugerville on the kennel-license transfers. The third was the per-campus financial breakout. The resort ran a single consolidated P&L through the bookkeeper, but a sophisticated multi-location pet resort consolidator buyer would want campus-by-campus revenue, gross margin, daycare member retention, boarding occupancy, and grooming productivity breakouts so the underwriter could see which of the three campuses was carrying which of the others.
We told Maricel honestly: she could go to market now and accept the discount, or she could spend three to four months getting Daniela, Brandon, Aniyah, and her three breed-specific groomers on documented multi-year retention agreements, formalizing the animal-welfare and licensing-claim register and the change-of-control acknowledgements with all three Texas municipalities, and pulling the bookkeeper into campus-by-campus financial breakouts for the trailing thirty-six months. We said the second path would likely command a meaningfully better number from a wider range of buyers, especially a top-tier PE-backed pet care platform consolidator running a long-hold thesis with central support and a satellite-brand preservation strategy. The realistic buyer pool for a $2.4 million revenue, $700,000 SDE, three-campus pet resort with structured-play daycare, breed-specific grooming, a mobile grooming van route, and Texas municipal kennel licensing across three jurisdictions is wider than people think, but each band of buyer prices the same resort differently, and the cleaner the diligence file is the more buyers can compete. CGK is an active member of the International Business Brokers Association and the M&A Source, both of which give us deep visibility into the active pet services buyer landscape, and we follow the trade through the International Boarding and Pet Services Association and the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council.
This is the part most brokers skip. Most brokers would have signed Maricel that day, taken her to market, and made the commission whether or not the deal was the best one for her. We told her to wait, even though it meant we did not get paid for three months and might never get paid at all if she changed her mind.
Maricel went home and waited. She spent the next three months getting Daniela, Brandon, and Aniyah on three-year retention agreements with formal stay arrangements, getting each of the three breed-specific groomers on two-year retention agreements with comp-step protections, walking the City of Cedar Park, City of Round Rock, and City of Pflugerville kennel-licensing administrators through change-of-control acknowledgement letters, formalizing the animal-welfare and licensing-claim register laid out campus by campus and claim type by claim type for the trailing five years, and pulling the bookkeeper into campus-by-campus revenue, gross margin, daycare member retention, boarding occupancy, and grooming productivity breakouts for the trailing thirty-six months across all three locations. She read background material on pet services M&A through the IBPSA and the Pet Industry Distributors Association while watching pet care consolidator acquisition announcements in the trade press. She called us back in early 2026 and said she was ready to sell a pet services business that was finally in the shape it needed to be in.
What we did when Maricel came back.
What it takes to sell a pet services business properly
When an owner is ready to sell a pet services business with CGK, the speed of the on-ramp surprises them. We took Maricel’s resort to market in just over four weeks once she got us her updated financials, the documented retention agreements with Daniela, Brandon, Aniyah, and her three breed-specific groomers, the formalized change-of-control acknowledgement letters from the City of Cedar Park, the City of Round Rock, and the City of Pflugerville, the campus-by-campus revenue and gross margin and daycare member retention and boarding occupancy and grooming productivity breakouts for the trailing thirty-six months, the sub-mix breakouts (overnight boarding, structured-play daycare, full-service grooming including breed-specific cuts and the mobile grooming van route, retail), the customer-cohort analysis on the fifty-two hundred active client households and the six hundred fifty daycare members on monthly recurring plans, the equipment-and-leasehold-improvements schedule across all three campuses (including the mobile grooming van and the climate-controlled boarding HVAC and air-filtration installations), the Gingr and PetExec subscription documentation, the kennel-license documentation across all three Texas municipalities, the multi-year animal-welfare and licensing-claim register laid out by campus and claim type, the lease terms on each campus, and the full P&L breakouts across the four sub-segments. The blind teaser went out to thirty-one buyers we had pre-qualified, a tight funnel because the multi-location pet resort M&A buyer pool is structurally concentrated at this size band. Buyers fell across five buckets we routinely use to think about how to sell a pet services business: PE-backed pet care platform consolidators (active across Texas, Colorado, the Carolinas, and a few national platforms, comparable in scale to platforms like Camp Bow Wow under VCA or NVA, PetSuites under National Veterinary Associates, Hounds Town USA, and K9 Resorts, typically running long-hold theses with central support and acquiring under original brand names), regional independent pet resort chains (privately held, often family-owned, expanding their state or multi-state footprint through targeted acquisitions and typically operating acquired campuses under their original brand names with central support stacks), national pet care franchise platforms (smaller band by deal volume but historically active on stronger-margin independents, typically rebranding under the franchise banner), vertically-integrated veterinary acquirers (regional veterinary platforms building out wellness-plus-boarding portfolios as a recurring-revenue extension of their clinical practice), and individual operator-buyers running SBA-financed acquisitions (the most active buyer pool by count but the smallest by check size, typically focused on single-location independents under $1 million revenue rather than three-campus resorts). Each bucket prices the same resort differently.
Twenty-two of the thirty-one buyers signed NDAs and received the full Confidential Information Memorandum. Fourteen submitted Indications of Interest after data-room review. Seven advanced to Letters of Intent. We narrowed to four for management presentations. Three re-submitted refined LOIs after the management meetings. Two went into a final-final negotiation cycle.
Maricel decided between two of the top LOIs. They were materially different. One was a slightly lower headline price from a regional independent pet resort chain headquartered in Houston with about fourteen locations across central and east Texas, around $24 million in annual revenue, and a satellite-brand preservation strategy where each acquired resort kept its existing brand. Under that LOI, the three north-Austin campuses would keep their existing chain identity, the kennel-tech and grooming bench would stay together, and Maricel would step back to a one-year transition consulting role at one day per week. The other was a higher headline price from a top-tier PE-backed pet care platform consolidator running roughly $640 million in revenue across more than 280 boarding-and-daycare campuses nationally, comparable in scale to a Camp Bow Wow under VCA or a PetSuites under NVA tier of platform, with a long-hold thesis (the platform was in its second PE ownership cycle and had publicly disclosed an intent to hold for at least another five to seven years), and a satellite-brand preservation acquisition model where the consolidator routinely acquired regional resorts under their original brand names with central insurance contracting, central animal-welfare protocol standardization, central IT, and central marketing infrastructure layered underneath. Under that LOI, the three north-Austin campuses would keep their existing chain identity, the thirty-eight-person bench would stay across the three locations, Daniela Reyes would step into a Texas regional operations role with the consolidator while keeping her Cedar Park responsibilities through a phased eighteen-month transition, Brandon Holloway would continue running Round Rock with an expanded structured-play daycare mandate that would route additional regional daycare-program design work to his campus, Aniyah Webster would continue running Pflugerville and the mobile grooming van route, the three breed-specific groomers would continue under their existing comp structure with the consolidator absorbing the NDGAA and IPG continuing-education subsidy, the four front-desk leads and two retail and inventory leads would retain their roles and pay structure, the kennel licenses with the City of Cedar Park, the City of Round Rock, and the City of Pflugerville would transfer cleanly under the consolidator’s central licensing and compliance umbrella with all three municipalities having pre-signed change-of-control acknowledgements, the Gingr and PetExec software platforms would be retained for at least the first eighteen months before any consolidation onto the consolidator’s enterprise stack, and Maricel would step back to a one-year transition consulting role at one day per week with full freedom to spend the rest of her time on her travel year with Joaquin and on the Manila trip to see Liza and Diego. We walked Maricel through what each LOI would actually deliver under realistic and pessimistic scenarios, including what the cultural continuity would look like for Daniela, Brandon, Aniyah, the twelve kennel techs, the six groomers, the four front-desk leads, the two retail leads, and the two mobile-van technicians under each acquisition structure. The PE-backed consolidator deal was the better one for Maricel. The headline number was higher. The brand preservation kept the three campuses the campuses the daycare-member households recognized. The Texas regional operations runway gave Daniela a path forward that none of the other LOIs offered. The mobile grooming van route was treated as a regional asset rather than as a one-off curiosity.
Through the whole process, the same CGK Managing Director who had taken Maricel’s first call three months earlier was the person walking her through every conversation.
The deal Maricel took to sell a pet services business.
How the deal looks when you sell a pet services business with CGK
This is the part of how to sell a pet services business that gets the least attention in the trade press and the most attention from owners who have actually closed a transaction: the structure of the consideration package matters more than the headline number, and the structure for a three-campus pet resort with structured-play daycare, breed-specific grooming, a mobile grooming van route, and kennel licensing across three Texas municipalities is a familiar pattern for a PE-backed pet care platform consolidator running a long-hold thesis with a satellite-brand preservation acquisition model. Maricel’s deal closed roughly five months after we restarted the engagement, the standard CGK pet services window. The buyer was a top-tier PE-backed pet care platform consolidator with roughly $640 million in annual revenue across more than 280 boarding-and-daycare campuses nationally pre-acquisition, in its second PE ownership cycle with a publicly disclosed long-hold thesis through at least the next five to seven years, with a satellite-brand preservation acquisition model that routinely acquired regional resorts under their original brand names with central insurance contracting, central animal-welfare protocol standardization, central IT, and central marketing infrastructure layered underneath. The acquisition structure was an asset purchase rather than a stock purchase: the three campuses folded into the consolidator at close while keeping their existing chain identity, the thirty-eight-person bench stayed across the three locations, Daniela Reyes stepped into a Texas regional operations role with the consolidator while keeping her Cedar Park responsibilities through a phased eighteen-month transition, Brandon Holloway and Aniyah Webster continued running their respective campuses, the three breed-specific groomers continued under their existing comp structure, the four front-desk leads and two retail and inventory leads retained their roles and pay structure, all three municipal kennel licenses transferred cleanly under the consolidator’s central licensing and compliance umbrella, the Gingr and PetExec platforms stayed in place through the integration window, and Maricel transitioned to a one-year consulting role at one day per week.
The total deal economic value was approximately $3.5 million, roughly 5.0 times trailing SDE, a strong multi-location pet resort multiple driven by the structured-play daycare member roster (the consolidator’s own recurring-revenue thesis was a stated strategic priority), the breed-specific grooming team, the mobile grooming van route, the climate-controlled boarding capacity, the clean five-year animal-welfare and licensing-claim register pre-signed by all three Texas municipalities, the 4.8-star Google rating across 1,400-plus reviews, the 34 percent recurring monthly daycare-membership revenue, the thirteen-year operating history under a single founder, and the diversified three-campus footprint across Williamson County. About 82 percent of it came as cash at closing. About 8 percent was held back in escrow for 12 months, an animal-welfare-and-licensing-compliance escrow window because boarding-related claim continuity is verified within twelve months under Texas municipal kennel-licensing rules. The remaining 10 percent was a rollover-as-equity stake into the consolidator’s holding company, with Maricel’s existing equity converting into the consolidator’s holding-company partnership interests on a vesting schedule tied to her continued one-year consulting involvement and the consolidator’s long-hold thesis runway. The numbers add up to one hundred. Wire hit on a Friday morning at 9:47 a.m. while Maricel was at the Cedar Park campus with Daniela.
Maricel called her mother in Tagalog from the Cedar Park parking lot the moment the wire confirmation came through. Salamat sa Diyos, she said. Then she drove to Round Rock, then to Pflugerville, and personally thanked Brandon, Aniyah, and the longest-tenured kennel techs on each campus. She stayed on as a transition consultant for the consolidator’s Texas region for twelve months after closing, dropping to one day per week so she could personally walk the Cedar Park, Round Rock, and Pflugerville kennel-licensing administrators through the change-of-control handoff to the consolidator’s central licensing and compliance team, accompany Daniela on the consolidator’s Texas regional operations meetings, accompany Brandon on the consolidator’s structured-play daycare regional working group, walk the three breed-specific groomers through the consolidator’s national grooming-credential subsidy rollout, and shape the consolidator’s Williamson County expansion strategy across the additional Cedar Park, Leander, and Georgetown corridor sites the consolidator was already underwriting. After twelve months, Maricel stepped back to a quarterly clinical-advisor relationship that gave her room to spend the bulk of her weeks on the year of travel she and Joaquin had been planning since the first call.
What happened to Maricel’s people and her clients.
The people-side of how to sell a pet services business usually weighs heavier on the founding operator than the financial-side, even when the financial-side is what triggers the call to a broker in the first place. Maricel cared most about Daniela Reyes (the lead general manager and Cedar Park campus head who had been with her for eleven years), Brandon Holloway (Round Rock, seven years), Aniyah Webster (Pflugerville and the Cedar Park mobile grooming van route, four years), the twelve kennel techs (four of whom held Fear Free certification), the six groomers (three of whom held breed-specific NDGAA and IPG certification), the four front-desk leads running client intake across the three campuses, the two retail and inventory leads, the two mobile grooming van technicians, the bookkeeper, the receptionist, and the active client roster: about fifty-two hundred active client households across Cedar Park, Round Rock, Pflugerville, Leander, Georgetown, and the broader Williamson County corridor, plus a daycare member roster of roughly six hundred fifty households on monthly recurring plans driving 34 percent of revenue. The PE-backed pet care platform consolidator buyer was a top-tier platform running a satellite-brand preservation acquisition model that routinely acquired regional resorts under their original brand names rather than rebranding under a national identity on a tight ninety-day timeline. That made the people part substantially cleaner than it would have been under a national pet care franchise platform that wanted to absorb the three campuses into a single franchise banner.
The buyer kept all thirty-eight W-2 employees, honored the existing pay structure across general managers, kennel techs, groomers, front-desk leads, retail leads, and mobile-van technicians, and committed to keeping Daniela Reyes running the Cedar Park flagship while stepping into the consolidator’s Texas regional operations role on an eighteen-month phased transition, Brandon Holloway running Round Rock with an expanded structured-play daycare mandate, Aniyah Webster running Pflugerville and the mobile grooming van route, and the three breed-specific groomers under their existing comp structure with the consolidator absorbing the NDGAA and IPG continuing-education subsidy. The retention work Maricel had done during the wait period (formalizing the three-year retention agreements with Daniela, Brandon, and Aniyah, and the two-year retention agreements with the three breed-specific groomers) was preserved with formal employment agreements at or above the existing comp model. The twelve kennel techs retained their roles and existing scheduling structure, including the structured-play daycare and overnight boarding rotations across the three campuses. The four front-desk leads retained their client-intake roles and pay structure across the campuses. The two retail and inventory leads retained their roles. The two mobile grooming van technicians retained their van route and pay structure. The kennel licenses with the City of Cedar Park, the City of Round Rock, and the City of Pflugerville transferred cleanly under the consolidator’s central licensing and compliance umbrella, with all three municipalities having pre-signed change-of-control acknowledgements during the wait period. The Gingr boarding-and-daycare software and the PetExec grooming software were retained for the three campuses through an eighteen-month integration window before any consolidation onto the consolidator’s enterprise stack. The five-year animal-welfare and licensing-claim register transferred cleanly under the consolidator’s central insurance and compliance file. The 4.8-star Google rating across 1,400-plus reviews stayed firmly attached to each campus because the brand and the storefront and the people stayed in place.
Maricel was at the Cedar Park campus on a Friday morning when the wire confirmation came through. Pet services closings often happen at the end of the week to coincide with weekend boarding-volume cycles and the standing Friday afternoon grooming book. Daniela had just finished the morning kennel walk-through across the climate-controlled boarding rooms. Maricel stepped into the Cedar Park parking lot, called her mother in Manila, and said in Tagalog: “Salamat sa Diyos.” Thanks be to God. Her mother was quiet for a few seconds. Then she said in Tagalog something Maricel later told us she would not write down because it was the most personal thing her mother had said to her since her father had retired from the Round Rock veterinary clinic in 2019. Maricel drove to Round Rock and pulled Brandon aside near the front desk. Then she drove to Pflugerville and pulled Aniyah aside near the mobile-grooming-van bay. Both of them already knew the wire was hitting that morning, and neither of them said much because the first daycare drop-off of the morning had just rolled in and somebody needed to scan the membership card at the front desk.
What Maricel told us afterward.
Why owners who sell a pet services business with CGK keep coming back
Most owners who sell a pet services business do not call the broker again in the first year. The ones who do call usually want to talk about the parts of the engagement that, in retrospect, mattered more than they realized at the time. About six months after closing, while Maricel was on the road in Pangasinan with Joaquin and his mother, she called the Managing Director who had run her engagement. She said two things that the Managing Director still tells new sellers about.
The first was about the three-month wait. She said: “Three of the buyers who had been calling me were ready to sign LOIs in thirty days, and two different consolidator scouts I talked to before you told me they could take me to market right then with the kennel-tech retention conversation still on a verbal handshake and the three municipal kennel licenses still on their original renewal mechanics. The reason I sold with you is that you told me the truth about how my structured-play daycare member roster and my breed-specific grooming team and my mobile grooming van route were actually being valued by a sophisticated PE-backed consolidator underwriter, the truth about what the formal Daniela and Brandon and Aniyah retention agreements would buy me in LOI conversations four months later, and the truth about what the change-of-control acknowledgements from Cedar Park, Round Rock, and Pflugerville would buy me in management presentations. You told me what would happen to the price if I went out without fixing those things. I would have left more than half a million dollars on the table, and Daniela and Brandon and Aniyah would have folded into a worse comp tier under a different operator.”
The second was about who she sold to. She said: “I almost signed with the regional Houston chain because the conversation felt familiar and they told me they could close in sixty days. The fact that you walked me through what each buyer would actually do with Daniela’s Texas regional runway, with Brandon’s structured-play daycare mandate, with the three campuses I had run for thirteen years, and with the daycare-member households I had built over thirteen years, what each buyer’s brand-and-bench integration thesis would mean for the mobile grooming van route three and five years out, and how a top-tier PE-backed consolidator with a satellite-brand preservation thesis and a long-hold runway was structurally different from a regional chain with a smaller central support stack, is a conversation I never even thought to have until you raised it. I sold to a buyer who is actually going to keep the three north-Austin campuses the campuses my daycare members walk into and recognize, and who is going to give Daniela a Texas regional runway she could not have built on her own.”
This is what we mean when we say we sit with you in the decision, not just the transaction. Maricel is one composite story, but the pattern is real. The owners we work with who decide to sell a pet services business usually find their way to us through versions of Maricel’s situation, and the relationships start with a long listening session and a free walkthrough, not a pitch.
Ready to sell a pet services business? Where are you in Maricel’s story?
If you are starting to think about how to sell a pet services business, we should talk. There is no commitment and no pressure. The first conversation is free. The valuation walkthrough that follows is free when you are seriously thinking about selling, whether that is in a year, five years, or longer. We only charge for formal written valuations, and only when you actually need one for a partnership buyout, estate planning, or another documentary purpose. Submit the form and a senior CGK Managing Director will reach out within one business day.
If you are Maricel at month 1: just exploring
You are not sure if you want to sell yet. The pet services M&A landscape keeps shifting (PE-backed pet care platform consolidators, regional independent pet resort chains, national pet care franchise platforms, vertically-integrated veterinary acquirers, individual operator-buyers), your general manager and breed-specific groomer retention conversations are still on verbal handshake terms, your municipal kennel licenses are running on their original renewal cadence with no change-of-control language, your daycare-membership recurring revenue is still being treated by your bookkeeper as a single line item rather than as a strategic asset, ten-plus years of running the kennels is starting to tell you something, your kids are not coming back to the resort, you are curious about how a buyer would value your overnight boarding mix versus your structured-play daycare member roster or your full-service grooming and mobile grooming van capacity, or maybe a PE-backed consolidator or a regional chain has been calling you. Most of our best engagements start here. Submit the form and we will schedule a working session. You walk away with a real number and a clear sense of what to do next, with no obligation to do anything.
If you are Maricel at month 3: ready to go
You have done the work to clean up the resort. The financials are tight. Your general manager and breed-specific groomer retention agreements are documented with multi-year stay arrangements. Your kennel-tech Fear Free comp protections are documented. Your municipal kennel licenses are formalized with explicit change-of-control acknowledgement letters from each city. Your campus-by-campus revenue and gross margin and daycare member retention and boarding occupancy and grooming productivity breakouts are pulled into a buyer-grade report for the trailing thirty-six months. Your sub-mix breakouts (overnight boarding, structured-play daycare, full-service grooming, retail) are clean. Your Gingr and PetExec subscription documentation is current. Your multi-year animal-welfare and licensing-claim register is current. Maybe a buyer is already in the conversation. You want to run a real process. Submit the form and we will be in touch within a business day to talk about timing, scope, and what your first 30 days as a CGK seller would look like.
If you are not sure where you are
Most owners are not sure. Submit the form and start with the conversation. We will figure out together where you are. We are equally happy to tell you to wait twelve months as we are to take you to market in four to five weeks.
Or call us directly at (888) 858-7191.
Start your own story
A senior CGK Managing Director will respond within one business day. Strictly confidential. For owners of privately-held pet services businesses doing $1.5M+ in annual revenue, including single-location boarding-and-grooming operators, multi-location pet resorts, doggy daycare specialists, mobile grooming routes, retail-anchored pet supply operators, training-led businesses, and breed-specific specialty operators. The first conversation and the valuation walkthrough that follows are free for any seller seriously thinking about selling, on any horizon.
Confidential. No obligation. Direct routing to a named CGK business broker, not a junior screener.
One of these eight people would lead your engagement.
When you decide to sell a pet services business with CGK, one named senior Managing Director stays with you from the first call through the wire transfer, just like Maricel’s Managing Director stayed with her for three months and then for the engagement that followed. Our Managing Directors come from Wall Street investment banks, hedge funds, Fortune 500 corporate finance, and operating-business leadership. Cornell MBA. U Chicago Booth MBA. CFA. CMT. Naval Academy. Goldman Sachs. Merrill Lynch. Deutsche Bank. AIG. T. Rowe Price.
What sellers say after they sell a pet services business (and other businesses) with CGK
I could not be happier with the experience I had selling my business with CGK. Greg did a detailed analysis of my business and helped me price and position it right for the market. After receiving multiple offers at full asking price, the rest of the process went very smoothly, and we closed in less than two months.
Hanna M.Selling my business was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I’m incredibly grateful to have had Wes by my side throughout the process. He brought perspective, pushed when necessary, and always had my best interests in mind. His experience and strategic approach allowed me to maximize the sale price while minimizing long-term risk and obligations. If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t hesitate to choose him as my broker.
Adam NevilleDerik located multiple interested strategic buyers that produced more than one serious offer. The negotiations were tough but Greg and Derik’s experience helped us overcome. We got a great result for our employees and for the owners. We would recommend them without reservation.
Bob TaylorWe sold a business that was 47 years old and being run by second generation within a year of working with Wes. CGK has a system that attracts serious prospects to review opportunities. Wes was able to make the overwhelming feeling of selling easy and to a certain extent enjoyable. I never felt alone or in the dark throughout the entire process.
Jennifer WilliamsWe decided to sell our company in 2025. Talked to another M&A company in the Houston area. We felt very comfortable with Greg and Matthew at CGK. Could not have made a better choice. From day 1 till final closing and even after 30+ days, they have been here helping us with documents and support during the transition. Thanks can not be said enough.
Rickey ThomasInside the Blueprint, on Bloomberg TV and Fox Business News.
Maricel’s daughter Liza, the graduate student in Manila, was the one who first sent her a clip of CGK on Bloomberg. She had been watching the segment with Diego on a Saturday morning in their Quezon City apartment and recognized the firm name from a multi-location pet resort trade article about how to sell a pet services business she had read a few months earlier. She texted her mother the link with a note that read “Mom, watch this. This looks like the right firm for the conversation you and Dad keep having.” CGK Business Sales is featured on Inside the Blueprint, the syndicated business television series. Our episode aired on Bloomberg TV and Fox Business News. Watch the segment, then start a confidential conversation.
The CGK office Maricel called was the CGK Austin office. Yours might be one of these.
When you sell a pet services business with CGK, whichever office you reach, you get the entire firm. Maricel worked with a CGK Managing Director based out of the firm’s Austin office, but her deal benefited from a buyer pool we sourced firm-wide, including the top-tier PE-backed pet care platform consolidator that ultimately won the engagement. Click any city to learn about our local presence and the named Managing Director leading that market.
Other Questions Maricel and Other Pet Services Sellers Ask Us
Practical answers to what comes up before, during, and after the kind of engagement Maricel went through, when you sell a pet services business with CGK.