Time and Money

In either instance (tour or walkout) there is a cost to you the business owner of both time and money.

Time in that in order to provide a tour much of your facility will grind to a halt for a few minutes. A somewhat laborious and difficult task during high traffic portions of the day when daycare dogs may be checking in or out, or if you bring in multiple dogs at a single time for grooming, other customers will have to wait while you provide the required tour. Additionally for the sake of safety, in order to give this simple tour you will have to alert both the kennel staff and groomer(s) in the rear of the building that a customer will be coming back. The kennel staff will have to stop whatever they may doing and ensure that all the play areas are clean, that all dogs are put away securely and that no dogs are moving through the facility ie. going to and from a potty break, to and from a boarding suite etc. 

Likewise the grooming staff will have to stop what they are doing so that the dog that they may be working on at the moment is not suddenly startled and excited by the new face in the back of the facility. The loss in money comes from decreased production as your grooming staff is put on pause while you complete the tour. It is also not uncommon for a customer touring a grooming room in the back of the facility to decide to have a long conversation with the groomer about what he/she would like, what they thought of their last groomer, and everything in between to include a complete life history on the dog in question; all the while your staff will be in standby mode. 

Lastly in terms of monetary loss, by setting up the grooming area in an out of the way location there will be a loss in economy of motion. Many customers (I would say the majority) have a desire to speak with the person that will actually be working on their dog; a not unreasonable request. As a result your grooming staff will be forced to leave their work area multiple times during the day to come up and speak with customers costing you time and money. This also creates safety issues. Perhaps it is an extremely busy day and there are dogs being cage dried, in order to be safe the groomer should shut off all dryers and ensure that all animals are secured in a locked cage and not left unattended on the grooming table, in the tub or in a dryer prior to leaving their station.  But being that he or she is human and is being run ragged by having to stop what they may being doing multiple times during the day to speak with customers in another part of the store perhaps they forget.

This sets the stage for an unattended dog to become overheated by a cage dryer, or potentially hang or otherwise injure itself if it decides to make an attempt to leap from the tub or table while unsupervised. It is not uncommon for a groomer to spend five or ten minutes speaking with a customer, which is more than enough time for a dog that was left unattended to die.

There is also the issue of stress and fatigue. In a facility we helped remodel, we placed a pedometer on the groomer prior to and after relocating the grooming room from the rear of the building to an area adjacent to the lobby. What we found when we compared the results was that on average, the groomer walked an additional mile and a half every day just going to and from the front to the rear of the building. We also observed that prior to relocating the grooming room there was an average loss of 15 minutes of work time for each trip; as she was forced to stop what she was doing, cage the dog she was working on and go up to talk to the customer. She then came back and had to take the dog she was working on back out and start again.

In almost every case she was never able to work from start to finish on a dog (typically a two hour process) without at least one interruption. It became quite apparent that this was not only grossly inefficient, but extremely aggravating and tiresome for the groomer. It also added around 18 minutes to the time needed to complete each dog. To put this in perspective, grooming 8 dogs per day, with 18 minutes extra spent on each one due to travel time, 144 minutes or 2.4 hours is wasted. In a six day work week that is a 14.4 hour loss. By simply relocating the grooming room we were able to save these hours and utilize them to groom an additional dog which in turn generated the necessary revenue to hire a bather. At an average price of $46.00 per groom, that's an additional $276 per week, or $14,352 per year.

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