After roughly 26 years in pet-waste removal, Kandra Witkowski now holds the title of business development director at Scoop Soldiers, a nationwide franchise based in Dallas. Working remotely from Missouri, she puts it simply: "I have always loved scooping." She adds, "I find it very enjoyable," noting many veterans of the business prefer the office, but she still likes being in the yard.
The niche exists because plenty of dog owners let pets go in the yard, and for reasons ranging from mobility limits to time pressure, they do not always handle cleanup. The internet and social platforms have made the service easier to discover, while the broader trend toward outsourcing chores has kept demand steady and brought more operators into the game.
There is still white space. Jeremy Brook, who opened Mastiff Mounds in Brandon, Florida, in July 2025, says, "On one hand, you have this evolving of the internet and more people, entrepreneurs, business owners, seeing the opportunity for this business, but yet, at the same time, a lot of people are still very unaware of this service."
A number of founders say the barrier to entry is low. William Milliken co-founded Swoop Scoop in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, in late 2020 after his wife, while pregnant, hired a service because he was not keeping up with their dogs' mess. He had run an electrical business and brought digital marketing experience; his high school friend wanted to start a home-services venture but did not have a trade like HVAC or plumbing. Milliken remembered that scooper and saw an opening.
Early growth came the scrappy way. Milliken's partner secured the first 10 to 15 clients by knocking on doors and posting in Facebook groups. Once ad spend kicked in, the customer list jumped from roughly 20 to above 300 in under three months and kept accelerating.
The company now operates seven locations across the Pacific Northwest. Per documents reviewed by CNBC Make It, Swoop Scoop generated more than $9 million in sales from October 2020 through August 2026, and Milliken says it is on track for $3 million in 2026.
Milliken's team also built a community to seed the market. On Skool, an online education platform, their Poop Scoop Millionaire group has 600 members paying $69 a month to swap playbooks with Swoop Scoop's founders and other would-be operators.
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The tech stack is maturing too. Sweep & Go, a customer relationship tool built specifically for scoopers, went live in 2019. Documents reviewed by CNBC Make It indicate that in its first year it processed roughly $6,900 in card volume for animal waste removal companies.
By 2025 that tally reached $56.2 million, and the company expects to handle $100 million of transactions in 2026. Founder Ogy Nikolic says he worried in 2020 that the idea might fizzle because people staying home could clean their own yards, but six years on he and others say demand has surged.
The toolkit is basic. Pros typically bring along a rake, a dustpan outfitted with a trash bag, and a garden sprayer used to sanitize their equipment between appointments. Owners set their own prices, usually factoring in yard size, how many dogs live there, and whether the client wants ongoing service.
Scoop Soldiers' listed pricing starts at $19.99 per week for weekly visits covering as many as four dogs, and $79.99 for a single cleanup. Rates differ by market and franchisees choose their own tiers, Witkowski says. For solo operators, clustering clients tightly helps squeeze in more stops each day.
The work itself is simple, but the company-building is not. Witkowski says the headaches are familiar to any service business: technicians ding mailboxes, call in sick, occasionally get bitten, and some customers delay payment. She adds that "not everyone should be a business owner," especially a franchisor responsible for multiple locations. Scoop Soldiers itself has more than a dozen locations across the country.
Even with competition, collaboration shows up. Cheresee Rehart, who has run Yard Guards on Doody in Riverview, Florida, for 23 years, says, "One success is everybody's success," noting that she and Brook are direct rivals and still work well together.
Here is the through-line for investors: low startup costs, clear pricing levers, and specialized software are turning an overlooked chore into a repeatable local-service business. Sweep & Go's move from about $6,900 in first-year volume to $56.2 million in 2025 and a $100 million target for 2026 signals infrastructure forming around these operators.
Watch the ecosystem. You have franchises like Scoop Soldiers with published price anchors and more than a dozen locations, growth chains such as Swoop Scoop reporting more than $9 million in cumulative sales since late 2020 and scaling to seven locations, and purpose-built software processing tens of millions in payments. That is where convenience spending is showing up.
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