Home Is Where the Vet Is: Vetr Plans to Expand into Northern Michigan

Startup wants to bring in-home veterinary care to Traverse City

By Kierstin Gunsberg | Dec. 7, 2024

“She’s like 80 punds but thinks she’s a lap dog,” jokes Rachel Berkal of her four-year-old goldendoodle, Penny Lane.

Named after Kate Hudson’s Almost Famous character, the caramel-colored pup was Berkal’s inspiration to create the in-home veterinary care startup Vetr Health with fiancé Sadoc Paredes and his sister/business partner Ruby Paredes in 2022.

“Penny is the reason why we started Vetr. Without her, we wouldn’t have had the same perspective on the business,” Berkal says. “Of course I always had pets growing up, but she’s our first child, and you just experience all the things differently when you’re directly responsible for their care.”

The Comforts of Home

Like any parent knows, one of those experiences is doctor visits, which can be, well, ruff. Especially because of something Berkal calls trigger-stacking, which happens when the anxiety of wrangling pets into their carrier, sweet-talking them through the car ride, and persuading them inside the waiting room stacks so deep that, “by the time they even get back to see the veterinarian, they are level 10 freaking out.”

Skip the carriers and curbside freakouts altogether, thought Berkal and her business partners, by bringing the vet to cats and dogs in the comfort of their own homes. After a couple years of refining their business model and operating as a pilot, they officially launched Vetr Health in Grand Rapids earlier this year as a membership-based, in-home service that offers annual exams, vaccines, and lab tests.

“We’re a guest in the home. We’re giving them treats and we’re warming them up,” says Berkal, adding that their vets and techs carve out 45 minutes for each appointment. After that first home visit, clients can access Vetr’s telehealth visits.

So far, Vetr Health has enrolled 85 cats and dogs at $50 per month per pet, with discounted rates for additional pets, and plans to expand into Ann Arbor, Metro Detroit, and Traverse City in the coming year. “I would love for that all to happen in 2025,” Berkal says.

The TC Connection

This past September, Berkal and Sadoc loaded up Penny (who goes “everywhere” with them) and headed to Traverse City for the TCNewTech Pitch Competition, where Michigan-based startups showcase their business plans and vie for funding. Vetr Health landed first place and $5,000 to put towards their growth. But breaking into a rural market like northern Michigan won’t be as simple as their plans for downstate regions.

“There’s a lot more density [downstate] for us to continue to test and to learn about our target customers, our marketing strategy, and how to share what we're doing with the in-home care,” explains Berkal, who loves to take Penny to hit up The Little Fleet’s pet-friendly space when they are in town. “I think we’ll learn a lot in the next six months after we start getting our toes wet in the Metro Detroit area… downstate is just a better indicator of how much faster we can get up there.”

One reason they’re eager to expand to Traverse City is the influx of work-from-home employees who moved to northern Michigan during the pandemic. Berkal says these pet owners are a purrfect fit for Vetr Health’s services, as many of their current clients enjoy the convenience of checking “vet visit” off their to-do list without leaving their home office.

Seniors, who make up nearly a quarter of Grand Traverse County’s population, and those with mobility issues are other Up North markets Vetr is aiming their services toward. “We’re working with a lot of retirement communities and people who are living in assisted living facilities that really appreciate what we’re offering,” says Berkal.

The Partnerships

Traverse City is already home to more than a dozen veterinary clinics, but the Vetr Health founders say they’re not heading north to compete. They’ll actually need to partner with area vets to make their in-home model work since it has its limits—surgeries, even basic ones like spaying and neutering, aren’t something that Vetr can just set up in someone’s living room.

X-rays and imaging are other procedures Vetr relies on their partner clinics for. And while their services put travel-weary older pets at ease and create better accessibility for animals who have trouble getting in and out of vehicles, Vetr has to refer serious diagnoses like cancer to veterinary hospitals.

“[We’re] mostly wellness and preventative care,” says Berkal, adding that they can also handle some injuries and sick-visits. But, “We’re not a replacement for emergency veterinary care.”

For Berkal, who left a career in Corporate America to join the startup world, launching Vetr Health has been kind of like jumping into the chilly waves of Lake Michigan (something Penny actually loves to do).

“I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit. It’s really scary to leave a stable career, stable paycheck to try something when you have no idea if it will work.” But she hopes that besides providing easier access to pet care, Vetr can also become an asset to the veterinary industry, which has faced worker shortages, rising operating costs, and reports of burnout over the last few years.

Looking forward, the founders are exploring a franchise model to address those challenges. A franchise would enable existing veterinary clinics to expand into in-home and telehealth using Vetr Health’s platform. It would also help to loosen up tight schedules by funneling some appointments over to telehealth. Meanwhile franchisees could reduce certain operating costs, like lab fees, which Vetr curtails by sending tests off to their in-house lab, co-founded by Sadoc and Ruby prior to Vetr’s launch.

“Our goal is to not only improve the lives of pets but to improve the lives of veterinary professionals,” Berkal says. “We want to give them a path to practice veterinary medicine that is going to be better for their mental health, their work-life balance, and for them to make the money that they’re worth.”