A Reaction Is Not a Strategy
Most price rises in this industry happen the same way. Costs creep. The owner absorbs them, because the alternative is a conversation nobody wants. It gets uncomfortable. Eventually something tips it over, and a rise goes out.
That rise is almost always too small, because it is sized against what feels acceptable rather than against what the last few years actually cost. And then the cycle starts again, from further behind.
The problem is not the amount. It is that the trigger is a feeling. Feelings arrive late.
Where this comes from. We founded and still help run a pet business, we speak with owners around Australia most days, and we read the same owner communities you do. The rules below are observation and arithmetic, not survey data. Every date and figure we cite is sourced at the end.
1. Ad Hoc Rises Always Finish Behind
Costs move on a schedule. Wage rates change annually. Insurance renews annually. Rent reviews are usually annual and written into the lease. Product suppliers adjust whenever they choose.
Prices, left to their own devices, move when someone works up to it.
Put those two patterns side by side over three years and the gap is obvious. It is not that any single rise was wrong. It is that three years of annual cost increases were answered by one rise, sized to feel reasonable rather than to close the gap.
What to check: find the date of your last price change and the date of the one before it. The interval between them is your real pricing cadence, whatever you intended it to be.
2. Anchor the Review to a Date, Not a Feeling
The single highest-leverage change is to stop deciding whether to review, and only decide what the review concludes. A date in the calendar does that.
Australia hands you a natural one. The Fair Work Commission's annual wage review is decided in June and applies from the first full pay period on or after 1 July. From 1 July 2026, modern award minimum rates rose by 4.75 per cent, and the National Minimum Wage rose to $26.44 an hour (Fair Work Ombudsman).
If you employ anyone, your largest cost line changes on a known date every year. Reviewing your prices on that same rhythm is not aggressive, it is just matching your income to your costs.
Worth knowing: 2026 also brings a second dated change. From 1 October 2026, card processing fees can no longer be passed on as a separate surcharge, so for many businesses that cost has to move inside the price instead (our guide to the surcharge ban).
3. Calculate From Your Costs, Not From the Business Down the Road
Checking local prices tells you what other people charge. It does not tell you what you need to charge, because you cannot see their rent, their wage bill, their hours or whether their pricing is working for them.
The number that answers the question is your cost per bench hour: what it costs to have one person working on one pet for one hour, including fixed costs and full employment on-costs. We set out how to calculate it in the first article in this series.
This also solves the hardest part of the conversation. "That is what everyone charges" is weak and invites argument. "Our costs went up and this is what an hour costs us to deliver" is specific, true, and much harder to push back on.
4. Choose the Notice Period Deliberately
There is no correct notice period. There are trade-offs, and the mistake is drifting into one without noticing.
Two practical notes. First, whatever you choose, apply it consistently, because inconsistent notice is what actually generates complaints. Second, expect a rush of bookings at the old price during the notice window, and decide in advance whether the new price applies to the appointment date or the booking date. Deciding that afterwards, with a customer in front of you, never goes well.
5. Say It at Checkout, Not in a Broadcast
A public announcement gathers the objections into one place and puts them on display, where the people most inclined to argue reply first and everyone else reads it.
The same message, delivered one at a time at the counter, lands completely differently. The pet is there. The work has just been done. The person is standing in the result of it.
The pattern that works is simple: charge today's appointment at the old price, mention the new one, and rebook them before they leave. It is one short conversation instead of thirty replies, and it converts the awkward moment into a booking.
That rebooking is worth making easy, because it is the whole return on the conversation. A standing booking set up at the counter puts the next several appointments in the diary at the new price in one step, so the rise is priced in from the moment they walk out.
Key Takeaway: Give people the news while they are holding the reason for it. A price rise explained next to a freshly groomed pet is a very different conversation from a price rise announced to a feed.
A Simple Annual Rhythm
- May. Pull twelve months of costs. Recalculate your cost per bench hour. Note the current award rates for your classifications.
- June. The wage review outcome is published. Set your new list. Decide your notice period and whether the new price follows the booking date or the appointment date.
- July. New rates apply. Start telling people at checkout and rebooking as you go.
- Rest of year. Do nothing. That is the point.
The Bottom Line
The businesses that find price rises painful are usually the ones that do them rarely. A review that happens every year, on a date you did not choose emotionally, sized by arithmetic you can explain, is a much smaller event than the one you have been putting off.
This is the third article in a five-part series on pricing and capacity in Australian pet businesses.
Sources
- Fair Work Ombudsman, Minimum wages increase from 1 July 2026. Verified 9 August 2026.
Figures inside the diagrams are illustrative worked examples, not survey results.