Cemeteries and crematoria
This industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in operating sites or structures reserved for the interment of human or animal remains, and cremating the dead. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A
- Establishments · CanadaA
- 312
- Under 10 employeesA
- 63%
Size and shape
How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.
Canadian establishments by number of employeesA
Of 312 Canadian establishments with employees, 63% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.
Where they areA
Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.
Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.
No US figure is shown. County Business Patterns is coded to the 2017 US edition of NAICS; this code either does not exist there, names a different industry, or is outside the programme's coverage (most of agriculture, rail, postal and public administration are). A figure is attached only where both the code and the title agree.
How businesses here compete
The structural profile of subsector 812, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.
Salons, laundries, funeral homes and pet care: personal, local and repeat. Most are small by nature; funeral homes and dry cleaning are the capital-heavier exceptions, the first consolidating and the second shrinking.
- Who sets the price
- The operator, within a neighbourhood's going rate.
- The software it runs on
- Appointment booking, point of sale and payments — a crowded category sold on payment processing margin.
Market screens and studies
Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.
Screened one level up. Nothing is filed at this exact code; the screen for 8122 Funeral services covers it.
The demographic tailwind is real and revenue per call is the number that decides whether it reaches the owner. Cremation is now the majority disposition — Service Corporation International, the largest operator in North America, reported a core cremation rate of 57.8% in the fourth quarter of 2025 and a comparable rate of 64.9% — and a cremation carries a fraction of the traditional burial ticket. SCI's own average revenue per funeral service was US$5,818 in 2025 against US$5,651 in 2024, a 3% rise that a company with national purchasing, pre-need portfolios and 1,485 locations extracted from a mix moving against it; an independent home has none of those levers. Volume growth flatters a shrinking average, and the consolidators bid first for the books with the best pre-need portfolios, leaving the independent buyer the homes with the weakest ones. Canada's own consolidator left the public market in 2024: Park Lawn was taken private at $26.50 a share, which removed the one domestic disclosure a buyer could have priced against. The practice management software here is screened separately.
Genuinely underserved and genuinely tiny. Roughly 19,000 US funeral homes at achievable ACVs gives a ceiling too low to justify a dedicated build, though it would suit a solo operator content with a lifestyle outcome. Nothing is disclosed here. Every vendor named on this record is private, or sits inside a parent that does not break the line out, so no revenue floor can be built and the market size is genuinely unknown rather than estimated.
Software serving this industry
The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.
No vertical software market has been recorded along this branch. What the subsector typically runs on: Appointment booking, point of sale and payments — a crowded category sold on payment processing margin.
And what every business buys · 25 generic categories
Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.
Who works here
The occupations employed in Other services (except public administration), most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.
Concentrated in this sectorA
These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.
And the jobs every business has
Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. In a small establishment several of these are usually one person, or an outside provider.
Inside this industry
1 row sits directly beneath 81222. Each has a base report of its own.
| Code | Industry | Establishments · CA | What is known |
|---|---|---|---|
| 812220 | Cemeteries and crematoria | 312 | screened at 8122 |
Alongside it, under 8122 Funeral services
| Code | Industry | Establishments · CA | What is known |
|---|---|---|---|
| 81221 | Funeral homes | 1,307 | Funeral Home AcquisitionFuneral Home Management |