Bitcoin News Australia

Every dog has its day, but what about a spa day?

California-based Barkbus brings the spa, contained inside a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van, to the dog. There’s also a mid-groom photoshoot — perhaps with a soapy mohawk or Princess Leia towel-buns — and yeah, it’s adorable.

Part of Bay Area startup studio Wilbur Labs, Barkbus expanded from just two vans in LA to 55 across SoCal and Dallas since its founding in 2017.

Out of the salon, into your driveway

Barkbus CEO Jeff Safenowitz, formerly of WeWork, said he and founder Patrick Riley, entrepreneur and former guitarist for The Ataris, identified the pain points of brick-and-mortar salons:

For customers: Leaving their dog at a busy shop where they may be caged and surrounded by other noisy dogs, which can stress them out.

For groomers: Feeling rushed at a hectic big-box retailer, or navigating the challenges of running their own business.

Barkbus groomers are full-time employees with benefits, who average just four dogs per day. They go straight to customers’ homes, where dogs receive detailed, one-on-one attention; one groomer even discovered a cancerous tumor on a pet’s leg.

“Our favorite thing is when customers say, ‘My dog’s never been able to get groomed, and all of a sudden Barkbus shows up now and he’s running to the van licking your groomer’s face,’” Safenowitz told us.

Mobile grooming isn’t new…

… but Barkbus elevates the experience with tech and personalized touches, like an online booking system and reminder postcards featuring images of customers’ pets.

More broadly, consumers are spending more on both online, to-your-door services (e.g., grocery delivery) and their pets.

“I like to joke, in this day and age, dogs and cats are now our kids, and plants are now our pets,” Safenowitz said.

As of 2022, spending on pets had increased 450% since 1994. The US grooming industry alone is currently worth an estimated $5B+ and expected to exceed $10B by 2032.

You want to know if they do other animals, too, huh? It’s up to the groomer, but yes.

For over a decade, businesses have sold them as living gravestones. In 2016, Japanese officials supplied them to families to paste on elderly relatives in case they got lost. In 2021, in China, where they’re the most common payment method for 95% of mobile users, we learned they could appear in the sky via drone swarm.

But for the love child of Tetris and bar codes, perhaps no industry has shown them more love, in recent years, than restaurants.

At least, so we thought…

The argument for restaurants making menus with Quick Response codes — yes, that’s what it stands for — is simple: Diners can order and pay without waiting on waiters like Larry David, while businesses, according to some estimates, can save 30%-50% on labor costs.

• Of course, it also offered one less touch point during covid, when QR usage ballooned.

But “I never asked for this shit” appears to be a sentiment now shared by many.

In March, QR menus led an Axios list of “covid changes people hate.” This week, The New York Times reported QR menus are “being shown the door.”

• The data is mixed. One company, Menu Tiger, saw its customer base grow 37.6% in Q4 2022; while another, MustHaveMenus, has seen total scans drop 27% since 2021 in recent weeks.

One reason? They’re “the antithesis to romance,” a restaurant owner told NYT. “A menu is a window to the soul of the restaurant, and a QR code has no soul.”