eTailPet survey finds 60% of independents added foot traffic with in-store services

Independent pet retailers are asking whether adding services brings people back through the door. New survey data from eTailPet, a cloud-based POS provider built for pet specialty, says yes for most stores that tried it: more than 60% of independents who added services in the past year reported increased foot traffic, and half cited improved customer loyalty.

The sample and what it measures

The survey drew from eTailPet's own customer base, meaning the results come from stores already using the company's POS system. The announcement does not specify sample size, methodology, or what types of services the stores added. Grooming, self-wash, training, and veterinary wellness all count as services, and each carries different startup costs and margin profiles. The data also does not include revenue impact, basket size changes, or whether the traffic gains offset the cost of adding the service.

eTailPet framed the findings as evidence that services drive retention in a channel under omnichannel pressure. The company positions its POS as built to handle service scheduling, inventory, and customer data in one system, so the survey supports the product's value proposition. That does not make the 60% figure false, but it does mean the sample skews toward stores that invested in infrastructure to support services in the first place.

The decision the data does not make for you

Sixty percent reporting traffic gains is a meaningful signal, but it leaves 40% who added services and did not see the same result. The survey does not say what separated the two groups, whether it was the type of service, the market, the execution, or the baseline traffic level before the service launched. A grooming station in a neighborhood with no other groomers within three miles is a different play than adding self-wash in a strip mall next to a Petco with six tubs.

The loyalty claim is harder to act on without knowing how eTailPet defined it. Repeat visit frequency, average transaction count, and customer lifetime value all measure loyalty, and they do not always move together. A customer who books grooming every six weeks and buys nothing else that day is loyal to the service but not necessarily to the shelf.

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Our read on the service-as-traffic play

We are hearing the same question from store owners across markets: does adding a service pay for itself, or does it just create a second business inside the first one that competes for labor and floor space? The 60% figure suggests it works more often than it does not, but the stores that see traffic gains are likely the ones that treated the service as a customer acquisition channel rather than a standalone profit center. The grooming appointment is the reason to come in, and the consumables sale on the way out is where the margin sits.

The risk is in the 40% who added services and did not see traffic move. That group likely includes stores that underpriced the service to compete with big-box rates, or added a service their customer base was not asking for, or launched it without the staffing to deliver consistently. A self-wash station that is closed half the week because no one is scheduled to monitor it does not drive loyalty. It trains the customer to go somewhere else.

The play for independents is not whether to add services but which service to add, at what price, and whether the store has the labor and the customer density to make it repeatable. A survey from a POS provider cannot answer that, but it does confirm that the stores getting it right are seeing people walk in more often, and that is the metric that matters when the alternative is watching them order from home.

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