Ted and Pam Larsen hope their five children will continue the family business. (Submitted photo)
In 1991, Ted and Pam Larsen began Church and Chapel Funeral Services to offer the same high quality and personalized services as other funeral homes, but at less cost to the families.
“We operated out of one location at that time but have grown our business into five area funeral homes and two funeral planning centers,” said Ted Larsen. “A good portion of our service is families looking for a church service, but we also have funeral home chapels available if they don’t have a church affiliation in the greater Milwaukee area.”
A great benefit of using this family owned and operated, full-service funeral provider is they are locally owned, unlike many funeral homes today that were purchased by out-of-state corporations.
“There is a big difference between us and the big corporate conglomerates,” Ted said. “If you have a passing in your family, hopefully you will select a family owned and operated funeral home to bury your loved one and not Wall Street. No out-of-state business should be calling the shots and raising prices. We provide a very good valued funeral, which is not as expensive as the big funeral homes.”
A pricing structure for all Church and Chapel Funeral Services, including urns and caskets, is available on their website as well as printable PDF files. Most who utilize their services notice an immediate difference of $2,000-$4,000 below the cost of other funeral homes.
“We invite anyone to compare and contrast our fees and services with other funeral homes,” Ted Larsen said. “For example, our full-service traditional funeral fee is $3,940 (excludes casket, vault and cemetery charges), while other fine funeral homes basic service charge ranges from $5,000 to more than $7,000 for the same services. Should a family wish to use any one of our funeral home chapels instead of their church, there would be an additional fee of $365.”
Church and Chapel Funeral Services offers the same options as the bigger funeral homes, including preplanning, which offers the individual the opportunity to make their wishes known to their loved ones. To help navigate the nuances of preplanning, Church and Chapel has three preplanning counselors to assist with decision making.
By growing Church and Chapel Funeral Services to five locations, Ted and Pam said they hope their five children — Brooklyn, Garrett, Hunter, Chad and April — will follow in their footsteps.
“As our second-generation children grow up and are beginning to get old enough to come into the business behind us, we will expand as necessary, but currently, we plan to remain in the Milwaukee metro area.”
For those interested in seeing what Church and Chapel Funeral Services has to offer, visit churchandchapel.com, or call 414-476-0052 or 262-827-0659.
