Scooping up dog waste for pet owners is emerging as a profitable business in the United States, as consumers increasingly outsource household chores and the market expands rapidly.
Waste Pickup Firms Gain Traction, With One Reporting $9 Million in Cumulative Sales
Companies specializing in dog waste removal are drawing growing interest in the U.S., CNBC reported recently. They visit customers' homes on a regular schedule to collect waste from yards and disinfect their equipment.
Demand is rising in particular among customers who are short on time or have limited mobility, in a country where many households keep dogs in the yard.
Card payments processed through Sweep & Go, which provides customer management software to pet waste removal companies, totaled only about $6,900 (9.14 million won) in 2019, according to the company.
That figure jumped to $56.2 million last year. The company expects payment volume to reach $100 million this year.
Sweep & Go founder Oggie Nikolic recalled worrying that the business could disappear in 2020, when COVID-19 spread. With more people staying home, he expected customers to clean up the waste themselves, but demand for the service instead kept climbing.
Low startup costs are another feature of the business. William Millican, who runs Swoop Scoop in Idaho, launched the company with a friend in late 2020. The idea came after his pregnant wife used a dog waste pickup service.
"I thought this was one of the easiest businesses to start," Millican said.
In the early days, he found customers by knocking on doors and posting in online communities. After he began running online ads, his customer count grew from about 20 to more than 300 in three months.
The company now operates seven locations in the northwestern U.S. Cumulative revenue from October 2020 through August this year reached about $9 million, according to CNBC. Revenue this year alone is projected at about $3 million.
Service Starts at About $20 a Week, and AI Cannot Easily Replace It
Fees vary by the number of dogs, yard size and frequency of visits. Scoop Soldiers, another U.S. waste removal company, offers once-a-week visits starting at $19.99 for households with up to four dogs. One-time cleanups start at $79.99.
The equipment required is relatively simple as well — a rake, a dustpan, plastic bags and a disinfectant sprayer. No special certification or expensive gear is needed, and because a worker must visit the site in person, the job is not easily replaced by artificial intelligence.
Scaling up, however, brings its own challenges, including winning customers, managing staff and planning routes. Timothy Stone, who has run a waste removal company in Los Angeles since 1988, said: "We took a chore a 10-year-old would do and turned it into a business. The work itself isn't hard, but running it as a business takes much more."