By Rodrigo Uchoa, special for Brazil Stock Guide
Last week, on 2 November, as Brazilian cemeteries filled with the annual pilgrimage of All Souls’ Day visitors, the New York Times published a piece by Maggie Hennessy posing a question that, from a Brazilian perspective, feels almost naïve: could bars and restaurants become the new funeral homes?
The article opens with the story of Ed Elkins, who died in January at the age of 86 after living with Alzheimer’s disease for more than a decade. Long before his illness, he had told his wife, Angela, that he wanted a party at Perry’s, the Japanese restaurant in Washington where the couple were regulars. She initially called a few funeral homes, then thought better of it and spoke to the restaurant manager instead. The farewell finally took place in May, during happy hour. There is something moving about the description: a celebration of a life in a place that had genuinely mattered to the person who had lived it.
For American readers, this is presented as a growing trend. For anyone raised in Brazil, however, it evokes a much older tradition: the gurufim, an Afro-Brazilian wake marked by music, food, drink and storytelling. The word is thought to derive from Kimbundu, one of many African languages that left their mark on Brazilian Portuguese. It made national headlines last August when the family of renowned samba musician Arlindo Cruz honoured his wishes with a farewell that included music, beer and a barbecue. Similar scenes are not hard to find across Brazil.
Not that such traditions are absent from the United States. Musical funerals have long been a fixture of New Orleans culture and a draw for visitors. The more significant change lies elsewhere. The restaurant wake is not merely a cultural phenomenon. It is a symptom of a market that has already begun to transform itself.
According to figures from the National Funeral Directors Association cited by the New York Times, cremation accounted for more than 60 per cent of final dispositions in 2025 and is expected to reach 80 per cent by 2045. Without a body to view or a grave to purchase, the ritual becomes detached from the funeral home and can take place almost anywhere: a beach, a park, a hotel function room or a favourite pub. In the association’s annual survey of Americans aged over 40, 58 per cent said they had attended a memorial service in a non-traditional venue during 2025.
Brazil remains a long way from that reality. Cremation accounts for only 8 to 9 per cent of deaths, according to Sincep, the association representing private cemeteries and crematoria. Yet the sector is already sizeable, generating around R$13 billion a year, according to research by Zurik Advisors commissioned by the industry itself. It is also highly fragmented and largely family-owned, exactly the sort of profile that tends to attract private equity investors.
And attract them it has.
The most visible example is Grupo Zelo, formed in Belo Horizonte from the merger of four funeral businesses in 2017. Following an investment of around R$370 million from Crescera Capital, the company embarked on an aggressive acquisition strategy. It now says it serves more than four million people across fourteen Brazilian states and reported revenue of R$540 million in 2023. Cortel, a funeral and cemetery operator based in southern Brazil, followed a different route, building from cemetery assets, and today nearly one-fifth of its capital is held through CARE11, a real-estate investment fund listed on Brazil’s stock exchange. In the United States, the benchmark remains Service Corporation International, a publicly traded company that has dominated the sector for decades.
The asset that interests investors is not the funeral itself but the funeral plan: low monthly payments, long-term contracts and predictable recurring revenue. The turning point came with Brazil’s 2016 legislation regulating prepaid funeral plans, which gave the model a firmer legal footing. According to Grupo Zelo’s chief executive, new subscriptions grew by more than 15 per cent between 2023 and 2024.
A more controversial example can be found in São Paulo. In 2023, the city government granted 25-year concessions over 22 public cemeteries and a crematorium to four private operators. According to the municipal workers’ union, the cheapest funeral package rose from R$428 to R$1,494. City Hall argues that the concession programme modernised cemetery infrastructure while preserving access for lower-income families.
In November 2024, Supreme Court Justice Flávio Dino ordered, through an interim ruling, that prices return to their pre-concession levels, adjusted for inflation. When the full court began reviewing the case in May 2025, Justice Luiz Fux requested additional time so that it could be considered alongside a separate but related action under his supervision. The price cap remains in force. The broader constitutional question has yet to be settled.
The case illustrates the funeral industry’s central dilemma: bereaved families are the consumers least capable of shopping around, negotiating or walking away. Nobody asks for three competing quotes while waiting for a body to be released.
That is why funeral plans represent both consumer protection and commercial gold. They shift the purchasing decision to a moment when people can still think clearly.
And that idea of having time to think brings us back to the gathering at Perry’s.
I found the description of Angela Elkins’s farewell deeply comforting precisely because she had the opportunity to choose, without pressure, where and with whom she wanted to say goodbye.
My father died last year. Quite suddenly. We ended up purchasing a package that included a small ceremony followed by cremation. The service consisted of a recorded script delivered through powerful surround-sound speakers, dramatic lighting and images projected onto a vast immersive screen that reminded me of the Sphere in Las Vegas. At the end, the coffin disappeared automatically behind a curtain of falling petals.
What did any of that have to do with who he was? Or with who we were?
I have already told my children that, when my time comes, I want a gurufim.
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