Are you sure they’re independent? A lot of these chains (Thrive, Lakefield, etc) have gotten clever and let the hospitals keep their historic name after purchase. These private equity groups own every hospital but 2 or 3 in my immediate area.
I don’t know every chain off the top of my head to double check, but I assume that those two and the 3 I mentioned are probably more-or-less the top 5
And using the locators on their websites, I can find 1 VCA-affiliated vet, and a handful of Banfield (mostly out of PetSmart) and blue Pearl locations operating under their own names. Nothing else came up around me
I suppose it’s possible some of them may be part of some smaller chains, and I’m not going to comb through every last vet in my area, but a cursory glance at a handful of them that I’ve used doesn’t look like any of them are affiliated with any kind of chain.
I very well may live in a bubble, but this is actually the first time I’ve heard of them, are they really that widespread?
I can think of about a half-dozen independent veterinarians off the top of my head within maybe about 20 minutes of me
We do have a handful of Banfield and Blue Pearl locations around, which now that I’m looking into it also seem to be owned by Mars, which is wild
But even still, they’re still dwarfed by the number of independent vets.
Are you sure they’re independent? A lot of these chains (Thrive, Lakefield, etc) have gotten clever and let the hospitals keep their historic name after purchase. These private equity groups own every hospital but 2 or 3 in my immediate area.
I don’t know every chain off the top of my head to double check, but I assume that those two and the 3 I mentioned are probably more-or-less the top 5
And using the locators on their websites, I can find 1 VCA-affiliated vet, and a handful of Banfield (mostly out of PetSmart) and blue Pearl locations operating under their own names. Nothing else came up around me
I suppose it’s possible some of them may be part of some smaller chains, and I’m not going to comb through every last vet in my area, but a cursory glance at a handful of them that I’ve used doesn’t look like any of them are affiliated with any kind of chain.