I don’t have this problem, but a lot of people I know pay astonishing amounts of money for day care. If you could figure out a way to build the Starbucks of day care, you could probably make billions of dollars. Similarly for elder care.
Also, schlep alert: this might be the densest regulatory thicket outside of healthcare, with huge variation in standards at (at least?) the state/province level. In my little environment of 13 million Ontarians, a recent arbitrary change of the teacher/child ratio allegedly drove a good many daycares out of business.
The commentary below has focused on child care—a more salient pain point for our demographic, surely—but the “elder care” angle actually seems much more promising. Still labor-intensive, but fewer regulatory nightmares (?).
Note there are some very large regional players in this game, but there don’t appear to be any Starbucks-size winners (so says my wife, who often works with the elderly).
You develop a system for setting up and running a day care center, in the same way that Starbucks has a system for running coffee shops. That gives you economies of scale, because you only need to develop the system once, and then you can copy it across the country. What are the best toys? How do you physically set up the center? How do you manage the pickup transition (what do you do if a parent is chronically late to pickup?) Do you include a transportation (bus/van) service to get kids to the center?
Then you also develop a brand, which gives you a huge marketing advantage. New parents wonder where to send their kids to day care, and the LironCare brand is already at the top of their mind.
Having a brand also makes you more trustworthy, for game theory reasons, and there’s nothing more important in day care than trust. Parents know that if there’s a fiasco at any one LironCare center, that’s going to be a huge black mark for the entire company, and they know you know that too, and so will work 100% to make sure there’s no fiasco.
Such things exist (e.g. Action Day Primary Plus where I live). They are among the more expensive options. One reason is that the brand allows them to price themselves higher, but it is also true that their costs are fundamentally higher. Their competition is home daycares that not only don’t pay for added rent and employees, but take a tax write-off for using their home as their business location.
The reason daycare is expensive is because of state laws regulating daycares that mandate a certain number of kids (e.g. 6) per licensed adult. Divide a living wage for your area by that number and you’ll realize there really isn’t much overhead at all.
This sounds like a pretty good idea to me. One worry that comes to mind: Perhaps the reason there aren’t already big childcare chains is that as a chain grows, the probability of some fiasco sinking the brand of the entire chain approaches 1. (But I can think of other possible reasons. For example, perhaps people who start childcare places don’t have the desire for world domination needed to create a successful chain.)
I think the best way to research this idea would be to read lots of Yelp reviews of existing childcare places.
I don’t have this problem, but a lot of people I know pay astonishing amounts of money for day care. If you could figure out a way to build the Starbucks of day care, you could probably make billions of dollars. Similarly for elder care.
This.
Also, schlep alert: this might be the densest regulatory thicket outside of healthcare, with huge variation in standards at (at least?) the state/province level. In my little environment of 13 million Ontarians, a recent arbitrary change of the teacher/child ratio allegedly drove a good many daycares out of business.
Also, parents are insane (source: am parent).
The commentary below has focused on child care—a more salient pain point for our demographic, surely—but the “elder care” angle actually seems much more promising. Still labor-intensive, but fewer regulatory nightmares (?).
Note there are some very large regional players in this game, but there don’t appear to be any Starbucks-size winners (so says my wife, who often works with the elderly).
Nice one, thanks. Can you elaborate a bit on what you meant by “Starbucks of day/elder care”?
You develop a system for setting up and running a day care center, in the same way that Starbucks has a system for running coffee shops. That gives you economies of scale, because you only need to develop the system once, and then you can copy it across the country. What are the best toys? How do you physically set up the center? How do you manage the pickup transition (what do you do if a parent is chronically late to pickup?) Do you include a transportation (bus/van) service to get kids to the center?
Then you also develop a brand, which gives you a huge marketing advantage. New parents wonder where to send their kids to day care, and the LironCare brand is already at the top of their mind.
Having a brand also makes you more trustworthy, for game theory reasons, and there’s nothing more important in day care than trust. Parents know that if there’s a fiasco at any one LironCare center, that’s going to be a huge black mark for the entire company, and they know you know that too, and so will work 100% to make sure there’s no fiasco.
Such things exist (e.g. Action Day Primary Plus where I live). They are among the more expensive options. One reason is that the brand allows them to price themselves higher, but it is also true that their costs are fundamentally higher. Their competition is home daycares that not only don’t pay for added rent and employees, but take a tax write-off for using their home as their business location.
The reason daycare is expensive is because of state laws regulating daycares that mandate a certain number of kids (e.g. 6) per licensed adult. Divide a living wage for your area by that number and you’ll realize there really isn’t much overhead at all.
This sounds like a pretty good idea to me. One worry that comes to mind: Perhaps the reason there aren’t already big childcare chains is that as a chain grows, the probability of some fiasco sinking the brand of the entire chain approaches 1. (But I can think of other possible reasons. For example, perhaps people who start childcare places don’t have the desire for world domination needed to create a successful chain.)
I think the best way to research this idea would be to read lots of Yelp reviews of existing childcare places.
You are describing an entirely plain-vanilla franchise operation, aren’t you?
Starbucks and McDonalds are both franchisees but Starbucks has a high quality brand.
Gotcha, makes sense.