Buncombe County, NC has 2.3× more pet-care businesses per resident than the national average.
Buncombe County, NC already has 43 with employees and 263 without — 306 pet care services (excluding veterinary) in total, 11.1 per 10,000 residents against 4.7 nationally. That's 2.3× more than average, so this category is well covered here (US Census, County Business Patterns + Nonemployer Statistics 2023).
- In Buncombe County
- 43
- Per 10k residents
- 11.1
- National rate
- 4.7
- Ratio
- 2.3× more than average
Population 276,789. Ranked 60 of 61 North Carolina counties with enough pet care data to compare — 1 = fewest per resident.
Sources: US Census County Business Patterns ↗ (businesses with employees) and Nonemployer Statistics ↗ (sole proprietors). Every figure here is the two added together.
Buncombe County, NC has 149 more pet care services (excluding veterinary) than in 2017 — 157 then, 306 now, up 95%. Nationally the count grew 53% over the same years.
What this doesn't tell you: Census counts how many exist each year, not how many opened or closed. A rise of 149 could be 149 new businesses — or 157 openings and 8 closures. A year Census suppressed for this county is left out rather than counted as zero.
Series runs 2017–2023. Earlier vintages exist but are not comparable: Census changed which small counties it publishes after 2016, so including them would show counties losing an industry that never left.
Census code 812910 covers non-veterinary pet services: boarding kennels, grooming, daycare, training and pet sitting.
The blind spot: This code cannot tell a dog walker from a grooming salon or a boarding kennel — they are one industry to Census. The solo operators are counted (they are most of the number), but a county that looks well served might be full of premises businesses a walker does not really compete with, or full of walkers and short of kennels. The count cannot say which.
County Business Patterns counts only establishments with paid employees, which is why this page adds Nonemployer Statistics — the sole operators with no payroll, who are the majority in most of these trades. Both are counted above, and both are on census.gov if you want to check them.
There are more of these per resident here than in the country at large. That is a genuine argument against starting one in Buncombe County without something specific that the 43already operating do not have. It is not fatal — a crowded category can still have a bad-service niche — but “there is room” is not the argument available to you here, and any tool that tells you otherwise is guessing.
Census counts these as one industry, so the 43 above includes all of them together. It cannot tell you how many are any single one.
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