Most funeral home software is designed by people who studied the industry. Kindred is built by a family that has lived it — first call through committal — for seven generations.
That is not a marketing line. It is the reason the product exists. LarkTek, the company behind Kindred, is the Larkin family's software company. The same family has answered the phone for Utah families at Larkin Mortuary since 1885. We did not come to funeral service looking for a software market. We came to software because we already knew the work.
One man in Ogden
George William Larkin emigrated from Cambridge, England, and arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1863. He cut stone for the Salt Lake Temple. He rode for the Pony Express. Brigham Young later appointed him to oversee the Ogden cemetery. In 1885 he began arranging funerals — the start of a tradition of care that has not left the family since.
In 1912 his son, Alma J. Larkin, opened a Larkin Mortuary in Salt Lake City. In 1925 the firm moved into the Hagenbarth Mansion at 260 East South Temple, a house the family still keeps: hand-crafted woodwork, stained glass, rooms built for gathering. Alma led the company's growth until his death in 1946. His sons Alma J. “Jay” Larkin Jr. and Max S. Larkin took the work next. Robert “Bob” Larkin became president in 1984. Lance Larkin led as president until 2025 and now serves as Chairman. Robert Larkin, Jr. is president today. A new generation — some still in their teens — is already growing up in the business.
How the work gets into your hands
Caring for families is something Larkins learn young. Many grow up in the cemeteries, the flower shop, and alongside the staff. By the time they sit with a family, the work is already in their hands and their hearts.
That is the education no product-management workshop can replace. You learn what a first call actually feels like at 2 a.m. You learn why a contract has to be right the first time. You learn that the family in front of you does not care which system the invoice lives in — they care that someone is paying attention. You learn that “the way we do it” in a funeral home is rarely a preference. It is a promise that has been kept, case after case, until it became the firm's character.
We have made those promises ourselves. We have also inherited the gaps: the re-typed name, the missing signature, the month-end that does not match the arrangement room. Kindred is what we built so other independent firms do not have to keep inventing the same workarounds.
Why that makes the software different
A vendor can interview funeral directors. We grew up next to them. The difference shows up in what the software refuses to treat as optional.
The case, the contract, the family, and the books have to be the same record. A change in the arrangement room has to be the change the bookkeeper sees. The interface has to be learnable by people whose job is care, not software. Support has to be a person who knows funeral service and picks up. And the company that builds the tool has to still be here — and still answerable — a decade from now.
Those are not feature-list items. They are the constraints of a firm that has been trusted with other people's worst days since 1885. Kindred is funeral home software built inside those constraints: cases, contracts, accounting, and the rest of the operational day in one calm, secure place. We wrote more about that in Why We Built Kindred.
Independence, on purpose
LarkTek is independent and family-owned. There is no venture capital steering the roadmap and no private-equity owner counting quarters. The only people we work to satisfy are the funeral homes who trust us with their work — the same standard the mortuary has held with families for 141 years.
Software owned by a fund is optimized for a sale. Software owned by a family that has been in funeral service since George William Larkin is optimized to still be on the other end of the phone.
You can read the family's own telling of the years on Larkin Mortuary's legacy page, and more about the company on our about page. If you want to see the product, book a demo.
We did not set out to become a software company. We set out to take care of families. Kindred is how we take care of the firms that do the same.
