No one intends to let a loved one’s gravesite fall into disrepair, but upkeep can be tricky if you live far away or don’t know how.
Startups have been bridging the gap through regular weeding and cleaning services, while social media accounts showing how it’s done — like those run by Caitlin Abrams and Shaun Tookey — have amassed large followings.
Tending is a gravesite maintenance app spun out of All Funeral Services, a software platform that helps cemeteries and crematoriums manage sales, records, and inventory and create searchable online maps.
“We noticed that cemeteries and funeral directors all work with people when they’re in deep grief,” Artem Manilov, co-founder and CEO, told The Hustle. “We need to go through the difficult times, but after, we can honor our ancestors, and that’s actually what we started to build.”
How it works
- Tending offers either a one-time restoration starting at $225 or a subscription starting at $96 per session.
- About 60% of its customers choose the latter, which includes an initial restoration and quarterly maintenance.
- Independent contractors perform the maintenance and upload before-and-after photos to Tending’s app.
- AI identifies stone types and offers contractors guidance on how to restore and clean them.
- Cemeteries can earn money through referrals.
Tending has completed 20k+ one-time orders across the US, counts 5k+ active subscribers, and receives ~70 new orders daily.
In the near future…
… Tending plans to add family accounts with group chat.
It’s also exploring what memorializations might look like as burials become less common — such as a holographic or virtual space where people can still participate in meaningful rituals.
Elsewhere:
- You, Only Virtual is a platform that lets users chat with AI versions of late loved ones.
- In Japan, events company Alpha Club Musashino offers metaverse cemeteries for people who are too far and/or busy to visit in person.
And recently, Pam Cronrath worked with Proto Hologram and Hyperreal to create a hologram of her husband of 60+ years to appear at his funeral. It even conducted a Q&A, confusing many guests who, she told reporters, “genuinely couldn't understand how it was happening.
