Everyone Wants a Subscription. Now Even Your Dog Has One.

By Tam Goldsmith

Dog grooming and car washing are joining the subscription economy as franchisees discover the value of starting the month with customers already paying.

We already pay monthly for television, music, software and the gym. Now franchise brands are applying the same thinking to dog grooming and car washes, because knowing some of next month's revenue before the month starts can change the economics for an operator.

At some point, we stopped buying quite so many things and started subscribing to them. Television, music and software all moved towards monthly payments, while gyms have been charging members whether they turn up or not for decades. Now the same idea is finding its way into businesses where a subscription would once have sounded slightly odd.

Your dog can effectively have a monthly membership at the groomer, while millions of American drivers pay every month to wash their cars. For the customer, it is another regular payment leaving the bank account. For a franchisee, however, it can mean arriving on the first day of the month with a portion of revenue already expected rather than starting from zero.

That is a powerful attraction when many of the bills have been predictable all along.

Your Dog Has a Membership

Pet care makes sense for subscriptions because the customer already needs to come back. Dogs need bathing, nail clipping and grooming repeatedly, yet the traditional model requires the owner to remember to book another appointment and the business to win the sale again.

Scenthound has taken a different approach. Its dog-wellness franchise is built around monthly memberships covering routine care, and its 2026 franchise disclosure information shows how important those members have become. Among the locations included in its performance data, 84% of gross revenue came from members.

Sparkle Grooming is pursuing a similar strategy. The young franchise reported a 73% membership conversion rate in 2025 and annual member attrition of 7%, while selling development rights rapidly across the US.

Those figures need context, particularly because Sparkle is still a young system and many of its awarded locations have yet to open. The attraction of the model is nevertheless easy to understand. A groomer relying on individual appointments needs to keep filling next week's diary, while a business with a substantial membership base has already established an ongoing relationship with many of those customers.

For a franchisee trying to plan payroll, marketing and future investment, that difference matters.

Car Washes Worked It Out Too

Car washing might be an even more surprising example because people traditionally paid when the car looked dirty enough to justify doing something about it.

Unlimited monthly wash plans have changed that. Industry data covering more than 3,000 US car-wash locations showed membership revenue increasing 11.3% year on year during the fourth quarter of 2025. Retail revenue fell 8.4% over the same period, yet total same-store sales still increased 4.8%.

The appeal to operators is straightforward. Weather changes, traffic changes and customers decide the car can survive another week without being washed. A membership cannot remove those variables, but it can reduce the amount of revenue that needs to be generated from individual visits each day.

It also changes what the operator has to be good at. The traditional challenge was persuading the customer to come back and buy another wash. With a membership, keeping that customer happy enough not to cancel becomes just as important.

Getting the Sign-Up Is the Easy Bit

This is where the subscription story becomes more complicated.

Most of us have looked at a bank statement and discovered a monthly payment for something we barely use. Consumers are getting better at finding those forgotten subscriptions, and dog grooming or car washing will not be exempt when household budgets get squeezed.

A franchise can offer an attractive introductory deal and generate an impressive membership conversion figure. The more revealing number is how many of those people are still paying a year later.

That is why churn matters so much. If a location signs 100 new members while constantly replacing customers who have cancelled, the recurring-revenue base is not becoming much stronger. If it can add members while retaining most of the people already paying, the economics begin to look very different.

Sparkle's reported 7% annual member attrition is interesting for precisely that reason. If the company can maintain strong retention as more of its awarded locations open and mature, it will tell investors much more about the strength of the membership proposition than the initial sign-up rate alone.

For franchisors, the temptation will be to celebrate membership numbers. Franchisees should be just as interested in how long those memberships last.

Why Franchisees Like Monthly Revenue

The attraction becomes obvious when you look at the other side of a franchisee's bank account. Rent, insurance, loan repayments and many payroll costs arrive regularly whether customers have been busy or not.

Recurring revenue puts at least some income onto a similar timetable.

That can make staffing easier to plan and give an operator a clearer idea of how much additional business needs to be generated each month. It can also change the way local marketing is judged. Spending money to acquire a customer who stays for two years is a very different proposition from spending the same amount to win one transaction.

For multi-unit franchisees, that visibility can become particularly useful when deciding whether to open again. A stable membership base does not guarantee a profitable location, but it gives an experienced operator more information about future demand before committing capital to another site.

This is also where franchising has an advantage over an independent subscription business. A franchisor can compare membership conversion and cancellation rates across dozens or hundreds of locations. If one group of operators consistently keeps members longer, the system can find out what they are doing and share those practices with the rest of the network.

Not Everything Needs a Subscription

The danger is assuming that customers want to subscribe simply because recurring revenue looks attractive on a spreadsheet.

They don't.

Membership works best when it removes friction from something the customer already does regularly. People already exercise repeatedly, dogs already need ongoing care and cars already need washing. The subscription changes the way those services are purchased rather than inventing a need that wasn't there.

A business that tries to force monthly payments onto an occasional service could quickly discover that predictable revenue is only predictable until customers find the cancel button.

That is why the best subscription franchises will need to earn the payment every month, even when the money is collected automatically. Convenience, value and service still matter. In fact, they may matter more because keeping an existing member becomes part of the economics of the location.

The opportunity for franchising is significant. Brands with genuinely recurring customer needs can combine local franchisee ownership with centralised data on what makes members join, stay and leave. Used properly, that information can help operators build stronger customer bases and make better decisions about where to invest next.

What We Can Learn From This

Franchisors should not add memberships simply because investors like recurring revenue. The model works when customers already need the service regularly and paying monthly makes that relationship easier or more valuable. For franchisees, a strong membership base can improve revenue visibility, make marketing and staffing decisions easier and provide greater confidence when considering another location. Franchising adds another advantage because retention data can be compared across the network, allowing successful practices to be identified and shared. The brands that get this right will not simply sign up the most members; they will build services customers are happy to keep paying for.

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