PetSmart does not franchise its 1,694 stores. The only PetSmart franchise is an in-store vet hospital at $160,650 to $497,500 per the 2026 FDD.
Quick answer No. None of PetSmart's 1,694 retail stores is franchised. BC Partners took the chain private for about $8.7 billion in 2015 and remains the majority owner. Petco does not franchise either. The one franchise sold under the PetSmart name is PetSmart Veterinary Services, an in-store vet hospital costing $160,650 to $497,500.
None of PetSmart’s 1,694 retail stores is a franchise, and the cleanest evidence sits inside a franchise disclosure document PetSmart itself files. PetSmart Veterinary Services, LLC, a subsidiary of PetSmart LLC, tells prospective buyers in Item 1 of its 2026 FDD that its sole business activity is franchising veterinary hospitals, and that “[n]either we nor our affiliates have ever offered franchises in any other line of business.”
That single sentence closes the question a lot of search results dance around. The store is not for sale. The vet clinic inside it is.
The same Item 1 reports the store count: PetSmart LLC operated 1,694 retail locations across the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico as of its fiscal year end on February 1, 2026. Every one of them is corporate.
BC Partners took PetSmart private for roughly $8.7 billion in 2015 and remains the majority owner. Private equity ownership and franchising rarely mix at the retail level, because the two models pull in opposite directions. A franchisor sells territory rights and collects a royalty. A sponsor-owned retailer keeps every store’s full margin and the option to sell the chain whole. Handing 1,694 store P&Ls to independent owners would fragment exactly the asset a buyer would be paying for.
Petco follows the same pattern for the same reason. Neither big-box chain has ever operated a US retail franchise program, which is why “Petco franchise cost” and “PetSmart franchise cost” queries land on aggregator pages rather than an application.
PetSmart Veterinary Services, LLC was formed in Delaware in March 2022 and began offering franchises that May. The product is a full-service veterinary hospital, including urgent care, occupying a designated space inside a specific PetSmart store. As of February 1, 2026, 43 of the vet hospitals inside PetSmart stores were PVS franchises. Another 656 were Banfield locations and 18 were independent operators under their own names, so PVS was built to fill stores that Banfield had not taken.
The economics look unusual next to a normal retail franchise, because the franchisor builds the space.
| Term | PetSmart Veterinary Services | Camp Bow Wow |
|---|---|---|
| Initial fee | $10,000 (uniformly charged in the last fiscal year) | $50,000 ($25,000 for veterans and first responders) |
| Total investment | $160,650 to $497,500 | $954,606 to $1,229,536 |
| Royalty | 2% to 3.5%, tiered by revenue | 3.5% in year one, then 7% or a monthly minimum |
| Brand or ad fund | Up to 2.5%, currently 1.5% | 1% up to a 3% cap, plus 3% local |
| Build-out | Franchisor builds and owns the equipment | Franchisee funds $516,735 to $663,917 of improvements |
| Term | 10 years, or the remaining PetSmart store lease | 10 years |
| Item 19 | Yes, 23 hospitals | Yes, 207 camps |
| Franchised units | 43 | 225 |
Read the build-out row twice. PVS constructs the hospital at its own expense and licenses the medical equipment to you, and that equipment stays PVS property. Your $160,650 to $497,500 buys medical supplies, insurance, licensing, and $85,000 to $180,000 of working capital rather than a building. In exchange you pay a premises license fee of $10.00 per square foot of hospital floor area each year once the 365-day ramp-up period ends, plus $750 a month in technology fees. Your term also runs no longer than PetSmart’s own lease on the store, so the landlord risk you carry is a lease you never signed and cannot renegotiate.
Eligibility is narrow. You must qualify as a veterinary business and deliver care through licensed veterinarians, and you are disqualified outright if you or an affiliate already own more than 50 veterinary locations. This is a franchise built for a practicing vet or a small regional group, not for a passive investor.
See the full PetSmart Veterinary Services FDD data sheet
The 2026 FDD carries the brand’s first Item 19: 23 franchised hospitals reported fiscal 2025 Hospital Revenue with a median of $826,432. One year of revenue from a young system is a thin sample, so the outlet counts in Item 20 still carry most of the weight.
Franchised hospitals went from 0 to 11 in fiscal 2022, from 11 to 38 in 2023, and from 38 to 37 in 2024. That last year included 15 openings and 15 terminations. Arizona alone opened 3 and recorded 9 terminations, ending the year with one hospital where it had seven. Florida terminated 4. Fiscal 2025 settled at 43 hospitals, a net gain of 6 against the 16 new openings the franchisor had projected.
A young system that reshuffled 15 of its 38 units in one year is not automatically failing. It could be a deliberate cleanup of clinics signed too fast in 2023. What it is not is a validated model, and one year of median revenue in Item 19 cannot settle the question either. Any buyer looking at this offering should be calling terminated operators from Exhibit F before calling the ones still open.
The franchised money in the pet category is in services. Camp Bow Wow, owned by Propelled Brands, disclosed 225 franchised locations plus one company-owned site as of December 31, 2025 in its 2026 FDD. Total investment runs $954,606 to $1,229,536, on a $50,000 initial franchise fee and a 6,000 square foot prototype the franchisor shrank in 2025 to bring construction costs down.
Growth has flattened. Net unit change was plus 13 in 2023, plus 10 in 2024, and plus 2 in 2025. Transfers ran 12, then 7, then 9 over the same three years, so roughly one camp in 25 changed hands last year.
The Item 19 is where a buyer should spend their time. Camp Bow Wow reported on 207 of its 225 camps, those open at least 24 full months that filed complete reports for 2025.
| 2025 gross sales, 207 reporting camps | Figure |
|---|---|
| Highest camp | $2,465,224 |
| Lowest camp | $371,438 |
| Top 25% by profitability, lowest sales in that group | $957,444 |
| Bottom 25% by profitability, highest sales in that group | $1,293,176 |
A camp doing $1,293,176 can land in the bottom quartile while a camp doing $957,444 sits in the top one. Camp Bow Wow sorts those quartiles by total franchise owner’s benefit, not revenue, so the tables are telling you that operating cost discipline outranks volume in this model. On a business carrying $516,735 to $663,917 of leasehold improvements and rent of $17.55 to $28.15 per square foot, a bad lease can bury a busy camp.
For the rest of the category, our pet franchise industry analysis covers retail and mobile concepts, the boarding and daycare rankings compare the facility-based brands, and dog grooming franchises cover the lower-capital end where entry is often under $200,000. Pet Supplies Plus runs the franchised side of neighborhood pet retail with more than 560 stores, and it is the closest thing to a PetSmart you can actually buy.
So the brand you searched for sells no franchise, and the one offering that carries its name has no earnings disclosure and finished last year smaller than it started. The credible pet franchises sit one category over, in boarding, daycare, grooming, and training.
Compare the actual FDD numbers on Camp Bow Wow and the rest of the pet category. We read Items 5, 7, and 19 out of the filed document rather than repeating a franchise development page.
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About this analysis The franchise data in this article is drawn from VetMyFranchise's structured analysis of 2,300+ Franchise Disclosure Documents filed with U.S. state regulators. See our data & methodology.
No. PetSmart sells no retail franchise, and there is no application process for an independent operator to open a store. The company is privately held by BC Partners and grows through corporate stores only. The single franchise offering under the PetSmart brand is PetSmart Veterinary Services, a full-service veterinary hospital operated inside an existing PetSmart store, and it is open only to buyers who can operate as a licensed veterinary business.
No. Petco operates its stores corporately and does not sell franchises to individual owners. Neither of the two big-box pet chains has ever run a US retail franchise program, which is why searches for a Petco or PetSmart franchise cost return nothing official. The franchised side of the pet industry sits in services and neighborhood retail rather than big-box.
The 2026 FDD estimates $160,650 to $497,500, including a $10,000 start-up fee that was uniformly charged in the most recent fiscal year. The franchisor builds the hospital at its own expense and licenses the medical equipment to you, which is why the number is far below a ground-up build. $85,000 to $180,000 of the total is working capital for the first three months.
Boarding, daycare, grooming, training, mobile services, and neighborhood pet retail. Camp Bow Wow is the largest boarding-and-daycare system in our database with 225 franchised camps. Pet Supplies Plus runs the franchised end of pet retail with more than 560 stores. Grooming and training concepts sit at a much lower entry point, often under $200,000, because they carry no boarding footprint.
Facility-based daycare and boarding runs high six figures to low seven figures. Camp Bow Wow's 2026 FDD puts a single camp at $954,606 to $1,229,536, with leasehold improvements of $516,735 to $663,917 on a 6,000 square foot prototype. Rent estimates in the same document run $17.55 to $28.15 per square foot per year. Mobile grooming and in-home training concepts cost a fraction of that because there is no build-out.
This page is part of VetMyFranchise. View all pages: llms.txt · llms-full.txt