On the escalating cost of funeral service: the cost of funeral services to the consumer has increased significantly in the last decade due to the consolidation of funeral business and the overbuilding of funeral homes by individual owners. Large publicly owned companies paid exorbitant prices for funeral homes and were expected to produce hefty profits and returns to the investors that purchase stock. Who provides those hefty profits? The families that they serve. Although many consumers are looking for modest price services. Often times the previous owners remain employed by the corporation and are called "managing partners" a managing partner is an employee that holds stock in the corporation not in the individual funeral home. 

Simply put, with technology and all the "extras" funeral homes are caused to offer such as candle lighting on a web page or purchasing "extras" at an extreme cost to "personalize" a corporate funeral home is financially driven to improve the overall funeral cost. Some corporate owned funeral homes offer funeral directors commission for sales, others offer a bonus plan for meeting a sales quotas or income revenue quarterly and or yearly, free vacations and awards for reaching financial goals. We are not a bonus based business, nor do we have sales quotas to meet in effort to receive a bonus check, therefore what a family can afford to spend is dependent on the family. Never would we want a family to overspend on funeral service cost or put a financial burden on a family in a time of grief.

Americans believe in funerals, but want better value. This is not a new idea, just an old idea whose time has come around again. Fifty years ago, visitations and funerals were held in a home or church or a modest funeral home facility. By keeping the overhead low, the funeral home was able to offer attentive services at a modest price.

Now, Todd County & Cook-Webb Funeral Homes are bringing funeral service full circle by renewing old and sensible traditions. We are convinced that offering services at a fair price to families not only make sense, but is an ethical obligation.