BrightStar Wants to Bring the Four Seasons Experience to Assisted Living

BrightStar, a home care provider that pulled in $220 million of revenue in 2012, is making the jump into assisted living with plans to infuse a Four Seasons-Neiman Marcus flavor into the industry.

While the company is starting small, Shelly Sun, the company’s chief executive officer, told Crain’s Chicago Business that BrightStar is scheduled to open its first community in Madison, Wisc. early next year. Rather than go large, the company says it’s using the 36-unit community as a prototype, with half of the beds set aside for memory care.

The goal is to have 30 communities within five years, with hopes to go public as early as 2015.

Advertisement

“We want to be one-stop shopping for families,” Sun told Crain’s. “We’ve been providing home care, but as clients age many families have been asking us for recommendations for assisted living beyond that. Instead of referring them on to other companies, we’d like to keep them as our own.”

Making the jump into assisted living will not be easy: the pilot community will cost $6 million to build, and requires a more skilled group of workers than the home care currently provides. Sun told Crain’s she will need to set herself from the established players in the industry from the beginning.

“Most of the others offer homes with 200 residents or more. We’ll focus on smaller bed-and-breakfast-type settings,” she says. “Our rates will be higher as a result, sure. But we’ll be offering more of a Four Seasons-Neiman Marcus kind of experience.”

Advertisement

View the report here.

Written by John Yedinak

Companies featured in this article: