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It’s just another storefront tucked in among the flea market, the wig shops, and the styling salons at Liberty City’s aging Northside Shopping Center on NW 79th Street and 27th Avenue. But the wares at this store, which has been open for about five months, are beauty supplies of a different sort. A stark, black-and-white sign above the glass doors announces “Casket Depot.” You push a buzzer and the lone sales representative, a middle-age woman dressed in a conservative skirt and jacket, ushers you into a large, silent room. Rows of open caskets await, their satin and velvet innards gleaming under harsh fluorescent lighting. Prices are neatly handwritten on small pieces of paper affixed to each casket: The stainless steel with the Last Supper duplicated on the inside lid goes for $888; the full-body (so called because the entire lid opens rather than only the top half) casket upholstered in white costs $1148. If that sounds high, the same goods generally would cost about twice as much at a funeral home.
There are two Casket Depots in Miami, both in inner-city neighborhoods; the second is three miles east of the Liberty City location, on NE Second Avenue at 79th Street. The sign outside the second store reads “See us before you … visit a funeral home or cemetary [sic].” Two other casket stores in the Little Havana area, both called the Funeral Store, Inc., target the Hispanic market and are not affiliated with Casket Depot. All four of these cut-rate casket outlets have been open for a year or less. Miami has been somewhat slow to pick up on a national trend toward funeral price-shopping; in response to a growing consumer backlash against exorbitant funeral home profits, casket stores with bargain-basement names have opened across the nation during the past five years.
Seems like a great idea: Give hardworking families a break on the extravagantly high price of funerals, which cost at least $2000 but usually closer to $10,000, according to data published by the Arizona-based Interfaith Funeral Information Committee. A large part of the expense is the casket, for which the mortician pays from $250 to $400 wholesale, but sells retail for $1000 to $6000.
Thus discount casket stores in low-income enclaves like Little Havana, Little Haiti, and Liberty City appear to be homegrown businesses that serve the community. It’s true they offer more affordable goods, but the shops aren’t exactly independents. Miami-Dade’s two Casket Depots really are affiliated with an established mortuary: Poitier Funeral Home. Casket Depot owner Rosalind Hadley works at Poitier and is the sister of Poitier owner Bernard Poitier.
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Neither Casket Depot nor Poitier seem anxious to publicize their connection, no doubt hoping to avoid altering the public’s perception of Casket Depot as a humble option for those who can’t afford frills. (Hadley, reached by phone at Poitier’s NW 62nd Street location, said she was in the middle of funeral preparations and unable to comment.)
So far it appears the two companies have kept their identities distinct in the public’s mind. “[Casket Depot] is owned by Haitian people, and that’s how they get a lot of their business,” speculates Evelina Reid, a pleasant young woman who operates a hot dog stand across from the Little Haiti Casket Depot on NE Second Avenue. Reid says everyone in the neighborhood takes it for granted that the owners are struggling Haitian immigrants, a perception fueled by the store’s Creole-speaking manager and the fact that most of the businesses on that block cater to a Haitian clientele. “I see people go inside, and especially the children seem to be interested,” Reid goes on, “because it’s the only place you see things like that besides a funeral home.”
Raphael Khalifa, who opened his second Funeral Store outlet about six months ago, doesn’t hide the fact that he also owns Funeraria Nacional, an established mortuary with locations on SW Eighth Street. “The profitability of funeral homes is taking a dive because you got something called a casket store,” declares Khalifa. “So I’ll tell you why I opened a casket store. I didn’t want somebody else opening one up to compete with me. I’m competing with myself. I’m going to have the [casket] inventory anyway. I lowered the prices even more [in the Funeral Stores], so I make less profit there, but it’s enough.”
Therefore the Funeral Stores and Casket Depots can help the mortuaries move inventory as well as bring in business they might not otherwise attract. “A number of funeral directors have opened their own casket stores; I think they saw the inevitable and they’re playing both sides of the fence,” says Lisa Carlson, executive director of the Funeral and Memorial Society of America, a watchdog group. “And of course if you buy a casket at their store, guess which funeral home they’ll recommend?”
And a cheaper coffin is no guarantee of a cheaper total funeral bill. Mortuaries can and (according to some critics like Carlson) already have started to raise rates for any number of other services they provide, such as embalming, transporting, viewing, et cetera.
Henry Wasielewski, a Catholic priest in Tempe, Arizona, and long-time funeral-industry critic, contends casket stores are as much a rip-off as funeral homes. “The mortuaries are trying to catch the people who might be going to someone else’s casket store,” asserts Wasielewski, director of the Interfaith Funeral Information Committee. “People who read about [casket discounters] are just trying to be good consumers. They go find a casket store, and it’s run by the [owner of a funeral home] except it’s $20 cheaper. That’s nothing. There are so many more scams. People don’t know what they’re buying.”
For example the funeral industry claims sealer caskets, equipped with a neoprene rubber seal around the lid, preserve a body longer. Sealers cost hundreds of dollars more than nonsealers. But in fact the seals actually speed the decay process by “activating the highly destructive anaerobic bacteria in the body,” says Wasielewski. At the Casket Depot in Liberty City, all the caskets on display recently were sealers, the store manager said.
“Nobody, even if they’re in terrible grief, will buy a ten-dollar tomato,” Wasielewski continues. “You just know tomatoes don’t cost ten dollars, but the thing is you know there’s someplace else to go. But the problem is casket stores can stay in business, because people don’t know where to go. If they knew a beautiful metal casket costs the mortician $250, or even less with a manufacturer’s discount, they’d say wait a minute.”
