šŸ”’ Are SA online funeral service providers missing a trick? Boom times for US parlours – Wall Street Journal

With funeral attendance limited to 50 people under Coronavirus lockdown rules in South Africa and costs from R50 000 upwards for the on-site family hosts, some funeral parlours are offering supplementary online streaming services to clients – at no additional cost. This is in seeming contrast to exclusively online funeral services in the United States where memorial ceremonies are on offer on Zoom at an equivalent starting price of R24 000. US companies that help people handle tasks surrounding death and dying online ā€” from hosting videoconference memorials to preparing documents ā€” have seen a huge surge in growth and profits, all driven by the Covid-19 pandemic. The US online services include companies that, for a referral fee, send free questionnaires to gather usersā€™ end-of-life wishes, as well as supportive checklists detailing steps to take after a family memberā€™s death. Online advantages for both countries include lower infection risk, hugely increased service ā€˜attendanceā€™ and lower physical ceremonial costs, which in South Africa often includes the purchase, slaughtering and cooking of a sheep, goat or cow, costing anything from R500 to R50 000. That itā€™s expensive for most South Africans is beyond dispute; there are 100 000 burial societies, most of which predate Covid-19 and some, even online technology. ā€“ Chris BatemanĀ 

Online funeral businesses take off amid coronavirus

ByĀ Margot Boyer-Dry

Last month, when Jill Frechtman lost her grandmother, she wanted to mark her passing with a memorial serviceā€”an effort complicated by a lockdown that prohibited gatherings of family and friends.
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With some cajoling, she convinced her parents to try GatheringUs, an online service that hosts memorials on Zoom, starting at $1,400. Without leaving her Manhattan apartment, Ms. Frechtman put together an online service for 89-year-old Blanche Frechtman, the head of their family and a beloved community figure, in just two hours.

During the proceedings, GatheringUs handled the technical issues and logistics, like auto-muting participants during the live stream of the burial on Long Island. Following the burial, the nearly 30 attendees stayed on the video chat for hours, sharing memories of Blancheā€”from her tendency to make friends of strangers to her nightly phone calls with Ms. Frechtman following the nightly news.

ā€œI thought we were going to have to bury her alone,ā€ Ms. Frechtman recalls her mother saying, ā€œbut I felt like you were all there.ā€

Lives on pause

As the coronavirus puts in-person functions on pause, more people are turning to online businesses like GatheringUs, delivering strong growth to this niche of the end-of-life industry. Companies that help people handle tasks surrounding death and dying onlineā€”from hosting videoconference memorials to preparing documentsā€”have been growing in recent years, thanks in part to changing attitudes toward mortality among millennials. But the coronavirus pushed that growth into overdrive.

Online arrangements ā€œare being normalized quickly,ā€ says David Sloane, professor of urban and community-health planning, policy and history at the University of Southern California and author of ā€œIs the Cemetery Dead?ā€

ā€œThe pandemic creates this extraordinary circumstance,ā€ he says. ā€œMost of us canā€™t go to a funeral. We canā€™t go to a cemetery. We canā€™t go to viewing hours. [Thatā€™s] one of the reasons these startups are growing so rapidly.ā€

Online end-of-life businesses, by most accounts, represent a small fraction of theĀ $21 billionĀ industry. But experts and industry leaders report surges in user numbers since the pandemic hit. ā€œAs an industry, we are seeing our predictions come to life at hyperspeed,ā€ says Liz Eddy, co-founder of Lantern, a service based in New York that provides free questionnaires to gather usersā€™ end-of-life wishes, as well as checklists detailing steps to take after a family memberā€™s death. The service also recommends companies that handle the actual arrangements, in some instances collecting a referral fee.

By mid-April, Lanternā€™s user numbers had ballooned by 61% from the month prior, and a similar company called Cake, based in Boston, saw its own preplanning user numbers more than quintuple in March.

Companies that handle other tasks related to the end of life are also seeing increases in growth. Brooklyn-based GatheringUs, which focuses on arranging memorials, saw traffic on its site rise 400% in the second week of April compared with the second week in March, and the company is in the midst of quintupling its team to 20 to accommodate a sharp uptick in demand.

Solace, a service that lets customers arrange cremations online, nearly doubled the number of cases it took on from February to March of this year, the company says. Prearrangementsā€”essentially, reserving a slot for cremation in advance of deathā€”have increased by 70% since January. The company, which serves the Portland, Ore., and Seattle metro areas, charges a flat rate of $895 for collection, cremation and delivery of remains, including fees and taxes. (None of the companies disclosed the specific number of customers using their service.)

A changing culture

For all these companiesā€™ recent success, though, thereā€™s a question hanging over them: Will they be able to sustain their growth after the pandemic has passed?

While Prof. Sloane of USC doesnā€™t think the online companies will replace big players in the traditional death industry, he predicts that they ā€œare going to edge out more space for themselvesā€ as consumers become familiar with their offerings.

Some traditional funeral providers, meanwhile, think offering more online services could benefit the industry.

Walker Posey, a spokesperson for the National Funeral Directors Association, says people donā€™t want to spend a lot of time in funeral homes, and a newfound familiarity with digital tools will lead more people to seek out online services in the future.

ā€œThe culture is changing rapidly, so the tools that we provide need to be relevant for that new culture,ā€ says Mr. Posey, who also runs the South Carolina funeral home that has been in his family since 1879. He adds, ā€œNo oneā€™s saying, ā€˜Letā€™s replace human interaction.ā€™ ā€ Rather, he says, the technology should make the experience better for the family.

For some mourners, online services have offered advantages over traditional services.

At the suggestion of a friend, Danielle Anders from Reno, Nev., recently held a virtual memorial for her 24-year-old son, Dominic. GatheringUs helped moderate the event, setting up a welcome screen, playing a slideshow and contextualizing the familyā€™s choice in music, explaining its significance through the chat window as it played.

Ms. Anders, who wasnā€™t sure what to expect from an online memorial, found the service to be a surprisingly powerful experience, and she was moved that 300 people were able to join in sharing memories of her son.

Going online made it possible to assemble Dominicā€™s friends and family across the country, she says. ā€œIt allowed so many more people to be a part of it than might have been if we had done it in person, even in regular times.ā€

Ms. Boyer-Dry is a writer in Brooklyn, N.Y. EmailĀ [email protected].

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