The verdict is in — senior in-home care is big business and four senior care franchises have snagged spots in Franchise Business Review’s “Top Emerging Franchises”. FBR surveyed more than 1,500 young franchise brands (operating for five years or less) and asked them to rank their companies based on financial opportunity, training and support, leadership, operations and product development, core values (e.g., honesty and integrity of franchisor), general satisfaction, and the franchisee community.
Qualicare Family Homecare, FirstLight HomeCare, Amada Senior Care, and CareBuilders at Home were all represented on the list of top franchises. Amada Senior Care took fifth place, FirstLight landed third, and Qualicare Family Homecare walked away with the coveted first place spot of all top emerging franchises.
With no wonder. Senior care (especially in-home care) franchise opportunities have exploded in recent years. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the home health-care sector is currently the fastest growing industry sector in America. In 2012, there were just under 1.2 million jobs in home health care. In 2022 it is estimated that there will be about 1.91 million jobs in the home care field. That’s an unprecedented increase of over 715,000 jobs. That translates to a compounded annual growth rate of 4.8 percent.
But besides providing jobs and having employment security, there are other, more personal reasons people find themselves in the senior care industry. Most come to the field after being a family caregiver to the elderly or disabled in their own households. For many, the satisfaction of knowing they are doing the great and important work in helping seniors age at home, with dignity, trumps the profit margins.
Teresa Yoder, Amada Senior Care, Santa Clarita, CA franchise owner tells FBR why she was attracted to her franchise:
My beliefs were in line with the business practices of Amada Senior Care, as it pertained to complete concern and attention to family and senior needs, and what was best for THEM, not necessarily just profit driven.
There are nearly 11,000 senior care agencies in the United States: 1,000 new agencies opened in 2012 alone. Recently, I wrote about Leeza Gibbons and her husband deciding to open a Senior Helpers franchise; it not only made financial sense, but they saw it as an opportunity to “provide trusted and dependable care and encouragement to seniors and families facing devastating illnesses such as Alzheimer’s and dementia.”
If you believe you have what it takes to run a Senior Home Care Agency, we suggest you do your due diligence and request information from top senior homecare franchises. You can learn about their operating models and marketing approaches, as well as the minimum cash required to open your own franchise.
