Why Funeral Homes Partner With Other Service Providers

Funeral homes are businesses that sometimes need outside support. Find out why your funeral home may partner with third party service providers.
3 Reasons Why Funeral Homes Partner With Other Providers
3 Reasons Why Funeral Homes Partner With Other Providers

When a family chooses to work with a funeral home, they may not realize that the funeral home isn’t the sole service provider. There are commercial facilities that provide services specifically for funeral homes rather than families. They act as a support system for the funeral home.

Why would a funeral home need outside assistance? It turns out there are several reasons why many funeral homes today utilize third-party service providers.

Many Funeral Homes Aren’t Equipped to Provide Every Service

Many funeral homes aren’t huge operations that have everything onsite. Funeral services have expanded significantly in recent years, and making the investment in equipment can be substantial. There’s also the logistical issues of having space to accommodate equipment and experienced personnel that can operate it. 

In order to offer some services, funeral homes often have to partner with third party facilities that are properly equipped. Cremation is a perfect example. Today cremation is more common than burial, but many funeral homes don’t have a crematory. If a family wants to have a viewing prior to cremation the embalming and viewing service can happen at the funeral home, then a commercial crematory can take over to perform the cremation. They’ll also prepare the cremated remains that will be given back to the funeral home so they can give the cremains to the family. 

The Funeral Home is at Capacity

A funeral home only has so much space and resources at their own facility. Even if they have the ability to provide embalming services and can conduct cremations onsite they may already be at capacity. 

It could be a matter of their cold storage being full so they coordinate with a third party service provider that has space. Or the funeral home may only have one cremation machine and their schedule could be full for an extended period so another crematory is needed to help out. 

These types of situations can happen if a funeral home is in-demand, they are short staffed or there is some sort of event that causes the death rate for an area to spike.  

The Funeral Home Needs to Complete Services Quickly

Sometimes a family’s top priority is getting the funeral services handled as quickly as possible. The timeline for direct cremation is shorter compared to other types of disposition, but taking a divide and conquer approach can help speed up the process. 

There are certain aspects of arranging funeral services that will take time regardless, like getting a signed death certificate to do a cremation, but embalming and the actual cremation itself can get delayed if the funeral home isn’t able to handle the service at the moment. 

That’s when a funeral home service provider can step in to help out so that the viewing or cremation can happen as soon as possible. 


At Direct Cremate our primary goal is making funeral services as convenient and affordable as possible for the families we serve. This often means partnering with service providers to get the best possible rates in the shortest amount of time. If you’d like to know more about how we work in tandem with best-in-class facilities, give us a call or text at any time. 

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