Best 12 Profitable Funeral Business Ideas to Know

Funeral-related businesses are among the most lucrative ones. However, they require a lot of investment. You may want to consider starting one if you’re looking for a side hustle.

Funeral services are one of the most important aspects of life.

Later or sooner than expected, death is inevitable. An inseparable part of death, however, is the funerals. Whether it’s burial or cremation, funerals have certain procedures or processes which include a business enterprise.

12 Funeral Business Ideas

Now let’s talk about some profitable funeral-related business ideas. Remember these things:

Be familiar with death-related laws.
If you want to start a new venture, form a legal entity first.
Find out which funeral homes offer the best service for people looking to plan funerals.
Choose an area of business where you feel comfortable. Or choose a type of business where you feel most at ease.
Get advice from lawyers, accountants, and other professionals.

Now let’s take a look at some of the traditional ways to start a mortuary. Then we will move on to innovative ways to start mortuaries.

Conventional Funeral Business Ideas & Opportunities

1. Starting a Funeral Home

You could open up a funeral home and offer different types of funerals and charge people for each service they provide.

You need to register your company properly, get an official address, and secure a good network for buying supplies. You can then charge your clients a fixed fee for the total service provided.

Find out more about starting a profitable funeral home business.

2. Pet Funeral Business

If you’re an animal lover who wants to start a pet funeral service, then you might want to consider starting a pet cemetery. You could sell space at your facility to families who would like to bury their deceased animals.

You have to arrange for a place where pets can be buried or cremated. Apart from that, you must coordinate well with veterinarians and animal stores.

You must be able to empathize with people who own pets because you’ll be dealing with their emotions during the planning stages.

3. Starting a Crematorium

These days, many people prefer to be cremated rather than buried. They choose cremation because it costs less. If you want to start a business where you sell urns, you could do so. It would be a lucrative business.

But if you want to run your crematory successfully, you need to know some important facts like which days are best for cremations, how to use modern equipment, how to train your employees, and how to keep your crematory clean and well maintained.

You can learn more about cremations by reading our guide here.

4. Starting a Mortuary

When starting your own mortuary, you will be responsible for performing the duties of moving the bodies of the deceased persons from their homes to the mortuary. Embalming them, preparing them for viewing, and providing other related services.

You can either run the whole thing yourself or outsource some parts of it to other companies. It’s important to be aware of any legal requirements when operating an online business.

5. Funeral Transportation

Carrying the body of the deceased back to their homeland or transporting the body from one country to another is an excellent way to earn some extra cash. You could add value by offering funeral services or providing the casket.

Your clients may include the owners of the mortuaries, families of the deceased, and airports. You can help them by providing transportation services.

6. Embalming Service

You can make a lot of cash doing these things. You’ll get paid per hour and your hours are flexible. You can work whenever you feel like it. Some people work full-time and others part-time.

You must remember one thing. To provide embalming services, you must know the chemicals needed for bodies. Also, a good deal of sympathy and care for the unknown person is no anymore alive.

Innovative Funeral Business Ideas & Opportunities

7. Designing the Headstone

A memorial headstone is a piece of memorabilia, a token of remembrance for the family of the deceased. It cannot be something pre-fabricated or stereotyped. If there’s any creative flare and aesthetic appeal, you can start up the design company.

You must customize it and you need to know the sentiments and the significance of the messages the family members of the dead person want to convey. It could be a simple rock with just a few words about the person.

It can be an inspirational quote or a decorative piece with messages from famous authors or the message of the deceased. Keep some pre-made designs, but this service is completely dependent on your creativity and knowledge.

8. Online Selling of Funeral Items

With the advancement of technology, most people are no longer contented with readymade products like caskets, coffins, turned, flower rings, etc., which they can buy from funeral parlors, mortuaries, or even private individuals. Instead, they prefer custom-made items like crematoria, mausoleums, or personal memorials.

You need a comprehensive online store if you want to run a successful eCommerce business. Your site will act both as a storefront as well as an advertising medium.

9. Nature-Friendly Funeral Items

Eco-friendly funerals are becoming increasingly popular. You can start a new eco-friendly burial service by offering products such as biodegradable coffins or caskets, urns, etc.

To promote your product effectively, you need a good understanding of biodegradable material and a good digital marketing strategy.

10. Carbon-less Cremation

Though not very common today, still this is a great business idea for environmental protection purposes. In this method, alkaline materials are used instead of fire to burn corpses.

As a result, CO2 emissions are reduced significantly. You can study this method thoroughly and start this business by meeting the legal requirements of your location.

11. AfterDeath Services

You could start a funeral parlor where you provide the services of arranging for the burial of the dead person at the beach or scattering their remains into the ocean.

It’s an exclusive service, so you must abide by the law of your country and may need to hire other agencies. However, the costs for such specialized services are always higher than the regular ones.

12. Preservation Service Business

You can start this kind of company which involves emotions, trust, and the involvement of an expired person. In this type of company, you can keep the valuable belongings of a deceased person while they’re alive and give them to their descendants or beneficiaries after they die. It could involve their valuable stuff, their last will, and so on.

A final thought on the matter of writing effective eulogies. Eulogies should not be overly sentimental; they should focus on what was significant about the life of the deceased.

They should avoid being too wordy and should be kept short. In addition, they should include information about how the deceased lived his or her life, including any accomplishments. Finally, they should include a list of people who were affected positively by the deceased’s presence in their lives.

Funerals are an excellent way for new entrepreneurs to start their own companies. According to Statista (2018), 86% of the funerals-associated services in the United States are served by small and local businesses. And the industry is growing.

Experts expect the U.S. mortuary industry to grow by 5% per year from 2020 through 2025.

So, if you want to get into the funeral business, then plan properly, know everything, and use proper strategies, you’ll be able to succeed.