Last updated 9 August 2026. Written and reviewed by Dr. Evan Lewis, PhD.
To start a mobile foot care business you need a nursing licence, a foot care certification, professional liability insurance, a sterilisation setup you can transport, a business registration and a car. The clinical side is the part most nurses already have. The part that decides whether it works is routing, repeat bookings and a second revenue line that is not your own hours.
Why mobile, and why now?
Because the people who most need routine foot care are frequently the people who find leaving the house hardest. Reduced mobility, no driver, a walker and three front steps. Going to them removes the single biggest reason appointments get missed.
Search behaviour reflects it. Mobile foot care queries come back strongly across Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Thunder Bay, Nanaimo and Victoria, and mobile foot care nurse near me consistently outranks the plain clinic search. Demand is not the constraint here. Capacity is.
What do you need before you take a single client?
Six things, roughly in this order.
- Your nursing licence in good standing. RN or RPN. Everything else sits on top of it.
- An advanced foot care certification. Theory plus supervised hands-on hours. Our guide to what a foot care nurse does covers the route in.
- Confirmation from your provincial college of what you may do independently. This is the step people skip, and it is the one that matters, because the course teaches the skill and the college grants the permission.
- Professional liability insurance that covers independent practice, not just employment. Read the wording. Employed coverage often does not follow you into your own business.
- Business registration and a bank account kept separate from your personal one from day one.
- Infection control you can carry. Instrument reprocessing, a plan for transport, and a written protocol you can hand to anyone who asks.
What kit do you actually need on day one?
Less than the catalogue suggests. Nippers and files, a nail drill with dust extraction, scalpel handle and blades, a portable chair or stool that saves your back, gloves and PPE, a decent light, instrument transport cases, and a bag that does not require you to unpack it in someone's hallway.
The two things new practices consistently under-buy: light and a second full instrument set. You cannot see what you are doing in an average living room at four in the afternoon, and a single set means your day stops the moment reprocessing does.
The thing they consistently over-buy is a large retail range of foot products they end up storing, counting and eventually discounting.
How do clients find you?
Rarely through a website at the start. In order of what actually produces bookings:
- Retirement residences and long-term care. One conversation with an activity coordinator can fill a recurring day.
- Referrals from pharmacists and family doctors. They are asked this question constantly and usually have nobody to name.
- Existing clients. Foot care is unusually word-of-mouth driven, because people discuss it with friends of the same age.
- A Google Business Profile with the words mobile and your city in it, because that is the phrase people type.
How do you price and route it?
Routine foot care in Canada is generally paid privately. Some clients are covered through veterans' benefits, some seniors' programs or private insurance. Decide early whether your travel is inside the fee or a separate line, and say so before you arrive rather than after.
Then route ruthlessly. A mobile practice lives or dies on how many visits fit between the first and last of the day, and the enemy is the client twenty minutes off your loop. Cluster by building, by street and by day. Two clients in the same residence are worth considerably more than two clients across town.
The revenue line most new practices leave on the table
Here is the structural problem. You sell hours, and you only have so many. Charge more, work longer, or drive less: those are the three levers, and all three run out.
Meanwhile the client goes six weeks between visits, and in those six weeks nothing happens. Nails grow at about 1.62mm per month (Yaemsiri and colleagues, JEADV 2010), so by your next visit you are looking at two and a half millimetres of new growth that had no support behind it. And the environment has not changed either. Gupta and Versteeg, in JAPMA, report recurrence and relapse rates for superficial fungal infections of the feet of 10% to 53%, and StatPearls notes that occlusive shoes worn for extended periods predispose patients to dermatophyte infections.
You are doing excellent work every six weeks into an environment that undoes it in between. That is frustrating clinically and it is a wasted revenue line commercially.
It is also the ceiling on the whole business model. A mobile practice is one nurse and a car, and the only part of it that scales is what the client keeps doing after the car has driven away.
How the take-home half works
IodinePure is the routine that runs in the gap. Two ingredients, iodine and distilled water, listed with Health Canada as a cosmetic, made in a GMP-certified facility, and already on the shelf in more than 200 foot care clinics across North America. We describe ourselves as the homework clinics send home with their patients, and that is the literal design brief.
Commercially it is deliberately built for a one-person practice:
- No inventory. Clients order through your link and we ship. Nothing to carry in the car, nothing to count, nothing to write off.
- Commission, not a discount. You earn on what your clients buy, rather than buying stock at a margin and hoping it moves.
- Recurring on subscriptions. A client on a refill subscription pays you every month it renews, not once.
- We handle payment, shipping, support and the guarantee. Your name is on the relationship, not on the logistics.
The terms, the commission rates and the wholesale price list are on the For Clinics page. There is chairside guidance in how to use IodinePure in your clinic, and a printable after a nail procedure take-home sheet you can hand to clients.
Does this work the same way in the United States?
The business shape does. The credentials do not. Foot care nursing is a smaller and less formalised field in the US than in Canada, state nursing boards vary considerably in what they permit independently, and much routine nail care sits with podiatry practices instead. If you are US-based, start with your state board rather than a Canadian course outline, and read what a DPM is to understand the professional landscape you are entering.
One commercial difference worth knowing before you build a US client list: routine foot care is largely excluded from Medicare, with an exception that turns on systemic disease severe enough that care by a non-professional would put the patient at risk. The DPM article quotes the actual wording. The practical effect is that a US practice is often selling to a private payer for the same visit a Canadian client pays for privately anyway.
Who this is not for
If you want predictable hours and no admin, mobile practice is the wrong shape. You are the clinician, the receptionist, the driver, the bookkeeper and the person cleaning instruments at nine at night. Plenty of nurses love it precisely for the autonomy. Some try it for six months and go back to a clinic, and that is a perfectly reasonable outcome.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I start a mobile foot care business?
Confirm your nursing licence and complete an advanced foot care certification, check with your provincial college what you may do independently, get professional liability insurance that covers independent practice, register the business, set up transportable infection control, and build your first bookings through residences and pharmacist referrals.
Do you need to be a nurse to do mobile foot care in Canada?
To practise advanced foot care as a nurse, yes, you need to be a licensed RN or RPN with additional foot care certification. What you may then do independently is determined by your provincial nursing regulator rather than by the course provider.
What equipment do I need for mobile foot care?
Nippers and files, a nail drill with dust extraction, scalpel handle and blades, a portable stool or chair, gloves and PPE, strong portable lighting, instrument transport cases and a means of reprocessing. Two full instrument sets are worth more than most single upgrades.
How much can a mobile foot care nurse earn?
It depends entirely on fees, visits per day and how tightly your route clusters, and it varies widely by province and setting. The structural point is that appointment income is capped by your hours, which is why many practices add a take-home product commission that is not tied to chair time.
Is mobile foot care covered by provincial health plans?
Routine foot care is generally paid privately in Canada. Some clients have coverage through veterans' benefits, seniors' programs or private insurance. Decide in advance whether travel is included in your fee, and tell clients before the first visit.
How do mobile foot care nurses find clients?
Mostly through retirement residences and long-term care, referrals from pharmacists and family doctors, and word of mouth between existing clients. A Google Business Profile using the word mobile plus your city captures the search people actually type.
About the Author
This article was written and reviewed by Evan Lewis, PhD, who specialises in natural and nutritional therapies for the prevention and management of chronic disease and its complications, with a focus on clinical nutrition and nerve health.
Licensing, insurance and scope of practice are set province by province in Canada and state by state in the US, and Medicare coverage rules differ by contractor and by plan. This article is orientation and not legal, insurance, coverage or regulatory advice. IodinePure products are listed with Health Canada as cosmetics.
