Turf Pride Lawn Care, based in Mentor, Ohio, is on pace to do $2 million this lawn care season. The company was founded by President Dave Petti in 2002 and has spent the last eight years or so expanding.
“We have 17 employees and run eight routes,” Petti says. “Most of our business is family. My wife has been working with me pretty much ever since the beginning. We started hiring in 2015. Even though we’ve been in business since 2002, I was a solo operator for many years.”
Recently, Petti’s son began working with the company — along with a few other new hires.
“We’re fully staffed currently,” he says. “We’re very fortunate to have all our routes filled. Plus, my son came to work for us, and we now have a full-time salesman, which we never had before. We now have a fleet manager to take care of the equipment and vans, too.”
With so many fresh faces in the office, Petti knew it was important to start the season off with plenty of preparation.
“We’ve focused a lot on training,” Petti says. “We’ve done more and more of it every year. This year, we took the last two weeks of February and brought everybody back early. We did some in-house training with slideshows, going over our handbook, safety reviews, driving tests and all that.”
While training can seem monotonous at times, Petti says it’s important to keep it exciting.
“We kept it fun, too,” he says. “We fed them every day and did team building stuff after lunch. One was an obstacle course through the warehouse. It was a lot of fun and it was a really good way to kick things off.”
Petti recalls that by the end of the two weeks, all the new employees blended so well into the business.
“We had two new employees but by the end of it, it was like everyone had known each other for years,” he says. “The culture really improved.”
With all this training under their belts, Petti says he’s even more optimistic about the season ahead.
“We’re planning on an amazing April,” he says.
Petti adds the benefits of training show up throughout the year — every time a technician steps foot on a lawn.
“The more our technicians know,” he says. “The better they can take care of our customers.”
