Grow with Grunder: How Grunder Landscaping Co. changed in our 30-plus year

(Graphic: Creative Stock/ DigitalVision Vectors/Getty Images)

At Grunder Landscaping Co., we set our 2023 top-line revenue goal with the plan to add an additional $2 million in revenue. This goal felt doable but still challenging for our team as we gut-checked it with the people, equipment and facility investments required to achieve it.

For nearly 30 years, we’ve operated out of the same property in Miamisburg, Ohio, but we’ve had to change the layout of our yard, improve and expand our facilities and get smart about how we use our space. We’re fortunate to have a lot of land to work with and also to be near our clients, but after 30 years, we had to make improvements and adjustments as we’ve grown and changed. These include:

Facility improvements

We upgraded our space over the years to ensure our team has a nice, clean place to work. We value and respect our team and want our facility to reflect that. Our office and shop aren’t overly fancy. You’ll find laminate countertops and vinyl flooring that looks like wood throughout, but you’ll also notice we designed it to give each person a workspace with materials that are easy to keep clean.

We’ve also updated the bathroom our crews use within the last few years. We believe having clean, updated bathrooms says a lot about a company. Would you want to work somewhere where the bathroom was gross?

Making the most of our space

We’ve always run a tight ship and kept our shop, yard and offices organized and clean. We believe that’s key to efficiency and our success. We changed the way we prioritize what we store versus ordering just in time.

We order and store materials for lawn care applications, where we can predict and order what we need for the year and get a big discount through an early order program. Materials we plan to store need to be nonperishable, and we must have space to hold them, too. We order all green goods on a just-in-time model and only store them as long as we have to.

We don’t hang on to things in case we need them. Doing that makes it difficult to track what you have, and you end up with a lot of clutter you never use or need.

Additions

We made many additions over the years to our facility, including:

• Enclosing part of our shop previously used for storage to create a team room where field team members have lockers to store their stuff (2021).
• Building new offices on the upper level of our storage mezzanine to create dedicated space for additional team members (2023).
• Building a storage facility and dedicated space for Grunder Green’s lawn care applications (2022).
• Building a salt dome as we increase our snow removal square footage (2022).

We were at $1 million in annual revenue when we originally built our building. This year we hope to do $12 million. We need more team members to do that and more storage space for the different types of materials as we add new profit centers to our business.

As we grow, we’re doing it purposefully to stay true to our mission of “Creating opportunities for our team to grow and succeed by enhancing the beauty and value of every client’s property while exceeding their expectations every step of the way.”

We’re growing to create more opportunities for our team and that’s at the center of every decision we make.

Even if you’ve been to see us for one of our Grunder Landscaping Co. Field Trips in the past, I encourage you to come back and see us this fall. We’re growing rapidly. We’re projecting 20 percent growth for 2023 after more than doubling the size of our business between 2020 and 2022. We can show you how we plan for and manage everything that comes with that growth. I hope to see you in Dayton this fall: GrowGroupInc.com/GLC-Fall-Field-Trips.