As I was cleaning stalls this morning I was thinking about equine boarding, and how it is pretty much the only service industry that doesn’t really seem to itemize the costs for customers, and as a result no one seems happy - not the workers, the customers nor the barn owners.
So - would you pay for services rendered?
E.g if the barn owner offered you a price list that had:
Dry stall fee (mandatory)
Grass Hay fee per lb (with minimums according to equine weight)
Alfalfa Hay fee per lb
Senior feed per lb (with minimums to nutritional needs)
Performance feed per lb (with minimums according to nutritional needs)
Ration balancer per lb (with minimums to nutritional needs)
Bags of bedding per week (with minimums)
Stall Cleaning per day (with minimums)
Turnout in Grass Paddock per hour
Turnout in Dry lot per hour
Turnout in Group pasture per hour
Fly Spraying/Fly Mask/Fly Sheet application & removal per day
Blanketing application & removal per day
Booting application & removal per day
Supplement administration per day
Medication administration per day
Wrapping per day
etc and so on
And then each “thing” was new to you - e.g. buckets, feed pans etc. that you paid for directly and could take when you left. You’d pay for those up front, as well as a disinfectant and stall setup fee.
Obviously substitute different hay types/turnout types depending on your region and offerings.
Barn owners - don’t freak out about tracking all of this either on the request end or the recordkeeping end - I’m just trying to determine whether there would be a palate for having it all itemized so that you’re paying for exactly what you get.
This is the model that the dog boarding kennels, day cares, and other types of business similar to horse boarding near me do it.