Introducing Groom Book

We built the CRM you've been waiting for if you're tired of paper files, spreadsheets, and overpriced salon software that spies on you.

Pet grooming is a $7B+ industry in the US alone. Independent groomers and small salons make up the majority of that market — yet the software options for them are genuinely terrible:

• Legacy desktop software that costs $200/month and runs on Windows 98
• SaaS platforms that take 30% of your booking revenue and lock you into their ecosystem
• Generic scheduling tools never designed for the realities of grooming (breed-specific timing, coat types, anxious pets, no-show deposits)

We built Groom Book because we got tired of watching groomers pay through the nose for software that doesn't understand their business.

What Groom Book Does

Groom Book is a complete pet grooming business management and customer relationship platform — fully open source and self-hostable.

For daily operations:

• Appointment scheduling with calendar management for single or multi-groomer salons
• Client and pet profiles with grooming history, coat type, behavior notes, and preferences
• Service catalog with pricing, duration, and breed-specific templates
• Online booking portal your clients can use 24/7
• POS, invoicing, and receipt generation including tips
• Automated SMS and email reminders so you stop chasing no-shows
• Reporting dashboard: revenue, utilization, trends — no spreadsheets required

For transparency and control:

• Staff impersonation: managers can view the customer portal as any client, with full audit logs
• You own your data. Full stop.
• PWA — install it on your phone, works offline for the mobile groomer on the road

Why Open Source?

First, trust. Groomers have been burned by SaaS companies that raise prices overnight, get acquired, or simply shut down. With Groom Book, your data lives on your server. There's no vendor lock-in, no surprise pricing changes, and no company that can pivot away from your use case.

Second, customization. Every grooming business is different. Mobile groomers have different needs than salon chains. Breed specialists have different workflows than general-purpose groomers. Open source means you — or any developer you hire — can adapt Groom Book to fit your business, not the other way around.

Tech Stack

Groom Book is built for developers who want to self-host or contribute:

• Backend: Hono (TypeScript, Node.js) — fast, lightweight, edge-ready
• Frontend: React 19 + Vite + PWA
• Database: PostgreSQL via CNPG + Drizzle ORM
• Auth: OIDC via Authentik (or disable auth for local dev)
• Infra: Kubernetes + Flux GitOps, or single-server Docker Compose

Getting Started

Self-host in 5 minutes:

• Web UI: http://localhost:8080
• API: http://localhost:3000

For production with Kubernetes, see the groombook/infra repository.

Contributing

We're building this for the community. PRs welcome.

• Report bugs and request features via GitHub Issues
• Read the README for dev setup instructions
• Fork, branch, and open a PR — CI must pass before merge

The Ask

If you know a groomer who's been complaining about their software, send them this link.

If you're a developer who wants to contribute to a project that actually helps small businesses, we're here.

If you're a pet owner who's watched your groomer's salon use a whiteboard and a paper folder system, you now have something better to suggest.