Boutique vet clinics look to revamp pet care by focusing on service

When Kathleen Whitman’s daughter’s Bernadoodle, Cody, swallowed a Kong toy, the family faced a veterinary emergency requiring immediate surgery.

X-rays at their local suburban clinic suggested what looked like a hair tie tangled in Cody’s intestines. When referred to a corporate emergency hospital, the family was quoted $10,000 for the procedure.

“They literally told me in the waiting room with a clipboard, thinking I was just coming in and we were doing $10,000,” Whitman said. “I said, ‘No, I’m just coming in to hear the price.”

Desperate for an alternative, Whitman reached out to Vetique, a boutique veterinary clinic in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood. There, Dr. Jessica Trice and Dr. Jennifer Remnes performed the surgery for what Whitman called “an appropriate fee” that was significantly less than $10,000.

During the surgery, she and her daughter waited in the clinic’s lobby with glasses of Prosecco while receiving regular updates. 

“The humans were taken care of just as much as the puppy in distress was,” Whitman said.

This experience mirrors what many pet owners report when comparing corporate-owned emergency animal hospitals to independent practices. Kara Adams, whose 16-year-old rescue dog Shadow needed emergency eye surgery, also chose Vetique over corporate alternatives.

When Adams called Vetique explaining she had only $1,000 available, staff accommodated her financial constraints.

“The planning manager came out with a payment plan for me,” Adams said. “I was crying because otherwise, what would I do? I didn’t have any other options.”

“You literally burn people out”

Drs. Trice and Remnes founded Vetique after witnessing firsthand how corporate consolidation was transforming veterinary medicine — often for the worse.

“Just coming from a corporation for many years, the whole thing is about quantity, getting all those pets,” Trice explained after spending 10 years at Banfield Pet Hospital, followed by five years as a medical director at VCA Animal Hospitals. “We feel the best way is not pushing about the number of quantity, because it gets very sloppy and you lose that interaction and relationship with the clients.”

Remnes’ experience echoed her partner’s concerns. At Banfield as a new graduate, she found herself overwhelmed by volume demands.

“As a new grad, you’re still learning and trying to break into this brand-new world. I was seeing like 30 pets a day,” Remnes said.

She later moved to VCA before its Mars acquisition, initially enjoying the autonomy because “each hospital was able to operate as they liked to.” After the corporate takeover, however, the pressure intensified.

“It was like, ‘Oh, you need to see this number of pets, or we’re decreasing your salary.’ That’s what’s burning out the industry,” Remnes said. “You literally burn people out doing that. You can’t possibly offer your best when you’re crammed with all of these patients.”

These pressures contribute to a profession in crisis. A 2024 study in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association found that U.S. veterinarians are more likely to experience serious mental health struggles than most people.

“We have forums on Facebook where our industry has one of the highest suicide rates,” Remnes noted. “It’s because of things like this, when you’re given spreadsheets and quotas rather than focusing on patient care.”

Their solution was to create a different business model. Instead of maximizing patient volume, Vetique prioritizes extended appointment times and a calming environment with luxury touches like sparkling epoxy floors, examination tables with faux fur coverings and exam rooms named after the founders’ pets.

“I’d rather see four pets a day. That meant that family was getting my full attention, that pet was getting everything that I do,” Remnes explained.

Alongside traditional veterinary medicine, Trice offers acupuncture, herbal remedies and chiropractic treatments — holistic approaches she had wanted to pursue at corporate practices but was discouraged from using. 

Surging pet care prices

Setting prices at Vetique involves balancing fair market rates with the clinic’s added value. What Remnes found surprising was how significantly corporate prices have increased in recent years. “Prices are so drastically different from when I was at VCA seven years ago. They’re charging actually close to what we’re charging as a general practice for an exam,” she noted.

This observation led her to reconsider Vetique’s own pricing strategy. 

“It’s like, ‘Well, we can actually probably charge more, because we offer all these experiences along with it.’ It’s trying to find a happy medium, trying to be fair, but also knowing our value.”

Despite the appeal of the boutique model, both Remnes and Trice acknowledge significant business challenges. The clinic is in its third year of operation, still within the typical three-to-five-year window before seeing substantial returns. Unlike corporate-backed veterinary chains, Vetique is entirely funded through a bank loan.

Vetique’s founders see their clinic not as a competitor to corporate chains but as an alternative model for the industry. “We’re not competing,” Trice said. “We’re creating a new veterinary culture.”

Corporate giants reshape vet landscape

John Volk, senior consultant with Brakke Consulting, said veterinary practices historically grow 4-5% annually and carry minimal accounts receivable, making them attractive to investors.

“Pet care in general is very attractive to the financial community,” Volk said. “It’s a very steady growth industry, and it’s a cash business, so they carry very little accounts receivable because pet owners pay for their services at time of service.”

Mars Inc., best known for candy brands like M&M’s and Snickers, has quietly become the largest owner of veterinary hospitals in the U.S. through a series of major acquisitions.

The privately held company owns three of the nation’s largest veterinary chains: Banfield Pet Hospital, VCA Animal Hospitals, and BluePearl Specialty and Emergency Pet Hospital — giving it control of more than 2,000 clinics across North America.

Mars entered the pet care industry in 2007 by acquiring Banfield, which primarily operates inside PetSmart locations. In 2017, it significantly expanded its footprint by purchasing VCA for $9.1 billion — one of the largest acquisitions in veterinary history, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association.

VCA operates more than 900 hospitals in the U.S. and Canada, while Banfield has over 1,000 clinics nationwide. Unlike VCA, which grew by acquiring independent practices, Banfield has mostly launched new locations within retail stores.

Mars’s scale allows for standardized protocols, shared technology platforms and subscription-based wellness plans across its network. According to the company website, Mars Veterinary Health serves more than 25 million pets annually. 

While private equity firms have been acquiring veterinary practices since the late 1980s, the trend has accelerated significantly over the past 15 years. Volk estimates approximately 30% of veterinary practices are now corporate-owned.

Despite the growth in corporate ownership, Volk sees no evidence that care quality differs significantly between corporate and independent practices. 

“I’ve not seen any data to suggest that the services provided by corporately owned practices are materially different than services provided by independently owned practices,” he said.

However, some policymakers have raised concerns about the impact of consolidation on pricing. In January 2023, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, specifically called out Mars Veterinary Health and other large veterinary corporations in a letter to the Federal Trade Commission. Warren cited “troubling reports of anti-competitive consolidation” and suggested these corporate entities were using market power to “raise prices for consumers and lower wages for veterinarians.”

Even as consolidation continues, Volk finds that independent practices remain viable. “If you have a DVM degree and don’t have a bad personal history, you can get money to buy or start a practice,” he said. “Veterinarians are one of the lowest-risk borrowers of any category.”

For new veterinarians, the industry offers growing opportunities. The American Veterinary Medical Association reports the average starting salary in companion animal medicine reached approximately $137,000 in 2024.

Design, investment, and a human touch

When clients walk into a Bond Vet clinic, they won’t find the sterile environment or cluttered waiting rooms traditionally associated with veterinary offices. Instead, they’ll encounter soft pastel colors, comfortable seating and an atmosphere deliberately designed to feel more like a high-end hospitality experience than a medical facility.

“The industry has two categories of clinics historically — many designed very clinical, cold and sterile, and then others called mom and pop, which could be cluttered or dirty,” said Garrett Lewis, CEO of Bond Vet. “The question is how to solve both problems.”

That solution – creating premium veterinary experiences with transparent pricing and greater accessibility – has attracted significant private equity investment.

While these premium services might suggest significantly higher costs, Lewis emphasizes transparency in Bond Vet’s pricing model. “When someone comes in, you can look at the laptop and see exactly what the pricing is,” he said. “Our prices are just a little bit above average, but the experience is what differentiates us.”

This transparency extends to digital platforms, where clients can check prices online or via text before visiting. During appointments, veterinarians show pricing information directly to clients on laptops, allowing for discussion about options.

Bond Vet, backed by a $170 million investment from Warburg Pincus, has expanded to 57 locations across the Northeast and Midwest since its founding in 2019. The company was inspired by human-focused healthcare models like One Medical, focusing on convenience, design, and a better experience for both pets and owners.

“They saw the same issue, which was that the industry wasn’t serving clients and pets at a much higher level,” Lewis said of Bond Vet’s founders, who included a veterinarian and her husband. “They quickly found it was very different to change culture and design in existing practices, so they rebooted from the ground up.”

Bond Vet’s approach represents a broader trend in veterinary medicine, where traditional practices are being reinvented with a focus on client experience alongside medical care.

Bond Vet’s model bridges the gap between traditional veterinary practices and emergency hospitals, offering urgent care alongside preventative services – all with a hospitality-focused approach.

“In the 90s, if you needed sick care, your veterinarian would say, ‘Come on in.’ If you needed preventive care, they’d say, ‘Come on in,'” Lewis explained. “What happened in the 2000s is a lot of specialization occurred where practices became just preventative and started referring out anything that looked urgent or sick.”

Bond Vet handles non-emergency urgent cases that might otherwise end up in expensive emergency rooms. “ER practices see about 40% of their volume as urgent rather than emergent cases. Clients go to ER and spend twice as much, often having to wait longer,” Lewis noted.

These clinics feature design elements specifically created to reduce stress for pets — an approach that appears to be working. “I always see dogs dragging their owners into the clinic, which is not a common thing,” Lewis said.

The “no walls” philosophy breaking ground

Imagine walking into a veterinary emergency room and instead of being separated from your pet during a crisis, you’re welcomed directly onto the treatment floor. At Veterinary Emergency Group (VEG), this isn’t just possible — it’s mandatory.

“We built an entire business around it,” said Dr. David Bessler, founder and CEO of VEG. “It’s much easier doing something 100% of the time than trying to do it 90% of the time.”

With 102 locations across 28 states, VEG represents an approach to emergency veterinary medicine that stands apart from both traditional practices and newer primary care models.

Unlike other veterinary innovators that blend primary and urgent care, VEG focuses exclusively on emergency medicine – a deliberate strategy that Bessler calls “a bit of a crazy bet.”

“We took the hardest part of an industry, emergency, and created an entire business around that,” said David Gladstein, co-founder and president of VEG. “It’s hard to make money, it’s hard to get the team, it’s hard to recruit, it’s hard to train.”

VEG’s most distinctive feature is its commitment to keeping pets with their owners throughout the entire treatment process, even during emergencies — an approach not found in traditional emergency hospitals where pets are typically treated in back rooms away from owners.

This transparency extends to the physical design of newer VEG hospitals, which have eliminated traditional waiting rooms entirely. “Our newer hospitals don’t even have a lobby,” Gladstein explained. “You literally walk in and you’re in the middle of the treatment floor.”

In a notable departure from many veterinary innovators, VEG has achieved financial independence from its initial investors and now funds its expansion through its own operations.

“VEG is now independently able to do that,” Gladstein stated. “We don’t need anyone else to advocate for us or to pay for us. We’re not beholden to anybody. We’re beholden to our customers, and we’re beholden to our veggies.”

This independence allows the company to maintain its distinctive approach while continuing to open 25-30 new locations annually.

The company’s exclusive focus on emergency care, while limiting in some ways, has allowed it to “crack the code” on veterinary emergencies according to Gladstein. “We’ve kind of cracked the code on one way of doing things in emergency that results in a better experience for all of the souls that are there experiencing that at the same time.”