Skiptown Bundles Bar, Park and Grooming Into a $60 Membership Bet

Most independent dog daycare and boarding operators fill less than 60% of their grooming and training capacity, according to a benchmark released earlier this summer, even as loyal customers keep coming back. Skiptown, the venture-backed daycare-and-bar chain with three US locations, is betting a bundled subscription model can close that gap for good, folding three membership tiers into a leaner lineup anchored by a $60-a-month plan it says already delivers more than $1,000 a year in value per member.

Skiptown folds three membership tiers into one VIP bundle

Skiptown announced Tuesday it has relaunched its membership program as "The Skiptown Club," replacing its prior three-tier structure with three new plans built around bundling rather than à la carte pricing.

The VIP Plan, priced at $60 a month or $599 a year, bundles unlimited access to Skiptown's Bar & Park amenity with monthly grooming, a 25% discount on additional grooming, 10% off daycare, boarding and walking, twice-daily daycare reports, free early drop-off and an annual birthday party. The Clean Pup Plan focuses on grooming alone: a monthly nail trim, ear cleaning, bath and wellness check. The Social Pup Plan, at $25 a month across all markets, covers unlimited Bar & Park check-ins, complimentary treats and discounted guest passes.

Annual commitments across all three plans work out to two months free. Skiptown says the relaunch, which took effect July 1st, has produced 8,000 active memberships across its three locations, Charlotte, Denver and Atlanta, as of the second quarter, up 23% from the prior quarter.

"The Skiptown Club is about giving pet parents more value from every visit while making it easier to give their dogs the care, enrichment and experiences they deserve," said Mike Rotondo, Skiptown's CEO, in the announcement. Liz Sims, the company's head of product, tied the bundle to Skiptown's own software: "The Skiptown Club is only possible because of our proprietary tech stack, allowing us to own every layer of the experience."

Skiptown operates a hybrid format that pairs daycare, boarding and grooming with an off-leash dog park and a bar for owners, a combination distinct from the standalone-daycare model used by national franchises like Dogtopia and Camp Bow Wow.

Bundling is how Skiptown avoids dog care's monetization problem

Skiptown's timing lines up with a structural problem the rest of the category is still working through. A survey of 457 pet care operators this publication covered in July found that boarding and daycare businesses have loyal, repeat customers and real revenue growth, but chronically low utilization, with grooming and training capacity running under 30% at many shops and 14% of owners paying themselves nothing over the past year. The businesses clearing $1 million in revenue per location weren't winning on more customers. They were winning on higher add-ons per booking and better occupancy.

Skiptown's new structure answers that gap directly. The $25 Social Pup plan is a low-friction front door: unlimited bar and park access converts casual visitors into paying members without requiring a daycare commitment. The $60 VIP plan then bundles the higher-margin, harder-to-sell services, grooming, boarding and walking discounts, into a single recurring charge instead of asking an owner to book and pay for each one separately. It's the same logic behind gym membership tiers that fold classes nobody would buy individually into a flat fee members rarely cancel.

The tech stack claim from Sims is the part worth taking seriously. Franchise daycare chains generally run on third-party scheduling, payment and loyalty software licensed across hundreds of independently owned locations, which limits how tightly membership perks, occupancy data and grooming capacity can be tied together in real time. If Skiptown genuinely owns that stack across a much smaller, wholly operated footprint, it can reprice and rebalance bundles faster than a franchise system renegotiating vendor contracts and retraining franchisees on a new tier structure.

Backed by Techstars Ventures, Bull Creek Capital and Firebrand Ventures, Skiptown reports roughly $22.6 million in estimated annual revenue and 90 employees across three cities, according to third-party company data. Against 8,000 active memberships, that points to a business already leaning on recurring membership revenue well before most independent operators in the Dog Gurus survey have solved the same problem. The backdrop helps explain the bet: US pet industry spending is projected to grow from $158 billion in 2025 to $165 billion in 2026, a market venture investors keep underwriting even as most operators inside it remain thinly capitalized, single-location businesses.

What Skiptown's next cities will test about the bundle

The open question is whether the bundle travels. Skiptown's model pairs a bar and off-leash park, a real estate and liquor-license-dependent format, with daycare and grooming under one roof, a harder build than a standard daycare storefront. Its current backers are early-stage-focused funds, and a national rollout on Dogtopia or Camp Bow Wow's scale would likely require a larger growth round.

The next signal to watch is whether the 23% quarter-over-quarter membership growth holds into Q3, now that the relaunch has had a full quarter to season beyond the early adopters most likely to switch plans immediately. A second consecutive quarter of similar growth would suggest the bundle is converting casual bar-and-park visitors into full members, not just reshuffling existing customers into a differently priced plan.

Also worth tracking: whether grooming attach rates inside the VIP bundle actually lift utilization, the exact problem the Dog Gurus survey flagged industry-wide, or whether the bundling discounts simply shift revenue that would have been booked separately anyway. If Skiptown can show the bundle grows total spend per member rather than just repackaging it, that's a playbook independent operators and franchise chains alike will want to copy.

Source: Skiptown via PR Newswire