Customer story
2026
How Creature Comforts grew from 4 to 12+ clinics without vets staying late to write notes
Creature Comforts is one of the most talked-about veterinary groups in the UK. A vet-led network that went from an idea to 12+ clinics in barely two years, with more on the horizon. We sat down with Simon Hayes, their Chief Veterinary Officer, to hear how they built it so fast, why they did everything differently from day one and the role Vetnio plays in keeping their vets out of late-night admin.
Built differently, on purpose
Creature Comforts was set up in 2023 with a deliberately slow start. The team spent just over a year defining the brand, the values and the culture before a single clinic opened its doors in 2024. 'If you start out with a plan to grow quickly, then you have to put the building blocks in place to start with,' Hayes says. That groundwork was a decision, not a delay. 'We decided very early on that we wanted to stand out differently from other vet clinics. The way we look, the way we feel and the way we interact with both our staff and our customers has to be different.' So they hired for the things vets aren't trained to do: a branding and marketing team, and a tech team to build their stack from the ground up.
A traditional clinic opening in a new area takes two to three years to build enough of a client base to become viable. Creature Comforts compresses that with a sales team that pre-sells memberships for six months before a clinic opens. 'We're opening with 300 members plus,' Hayes says. 'So you've got a running start at it. You're already on the way to being a successful clinic even before you've opened.'
The original pitch was a tech-enabled veterinary group, and the team built their own app to match. Clients book appointments, pay bills and chat live with the clinic, all in one place. Then the ground shifted. 'We started the business in 2023, opened our first clinic in 2024, and we're now sitting in 2026. The growth in AI technology in that period of time has hit us like a bus.'
A tech team that still chose to partner
This is the detail that says the most. Creature Comforts has its own tech team and built its own app, but when it came to clinical note-taking and decision support, they went with Vetnio instead of building it themselves. For a group that ships its own software, that's a deliberate call. 'We found the best people to do the things that we as vets don't know how to do,' Hayes says. The same instinct that led them to hire a branding team and a tech team led them to Vetnio for the clinical layer. 'Making a partnership with good tech partners who have the same vision, the same outlook on what veterinary can look like has been a tremendous help to us.' They had the option to point their own engineers at the problem. They decided the better move was to partner with the team that does it all day, every day.
Try Vetnio yourself. Less admin, more time with patients. Book a 20-minute demo and see it for yourself.
Creature Comforts × Vetnio: Redefining the UK Vet Experience
How Creature Comforts grew from 4 to 12+ clinics in two years, and why CVO Simon Hayes says his vets no longer stay late writing notes.