Business Spotlight: Shipshape Siblings

As workers across southwest Missouri leave their offices each business day, crews from Brokate Janitorial LLC are just clocking in.

With roughly 1 million square feet of office space to spruce up every night, the Branson-based commercial cleaning company’s 35 employees drop in on private offices, municipal buildings, medical clinics and theaters before the next workday dawns.

Clean is the key word, but there are myriad tasks beneath – from dusting desks to disinfecting doorknobs and waxing floors to polishing chrome.

“They don’t hire us to vacuum their carpet, they hire us to clean their carpet. In the end, they want a clean office,” says Cheyne Brokate, vice president of operations, who runs the business with his older brother, Jeremy.

To that end last year, Brokate Janitorial employees emptied 750,000 trash cans, filled 22,000 mop buckets and, in sum, cleaned 100 million square feet of office space.

Such activity and a lucrative municipal account grew company revenue 42 percent, says Jeremy, executive vice president, declining to disclose 2013 sales. Last year marked the first full year cleaning the city of Springfield’s Public Works buildings under a $200,000 annual contract with up to five renewal options. The first renewal was enacted at midyear.

“We do a little bit of everything for the city,” he says of the roughly 25 properties, including City Hall, the Busch Municipal Building and several Public Works facilities.

The Brokate brothers now run the business they grew up in. Their parents started a cleaning service in California, before selling it and moving to the Ozarks in 1995. Upon relocating, Brokate Janitorial was formed, and mother Margie Brokate has had full control of the company since 2002.

“We played a lot of sports growing up, so that was always a trade off,” 29-year-old Cheyne recalls. “We’d go do our activities and stop on the way home to clean a couple places.”

To hear it another way: “We’d always get bribed to help out,” Jeremy says.

After studying finance at Missouri Southern State University in Joplin and taking a job with Edward Jones, Jeremy struggled with the sales side. In the mid-2000s, he joined his brother, who already was helping mom keep up with operations.

“We saw an opportunity to help her grow this business into something where she could retire,” says Jeremy, 31, noting Margie is now semiretired.

The brothers largely have stepped away from the so-called dirty work and have focused on business development. The city deal in 2012 is evidence, and shortly after signing the large contract, they hired a manager for the account. The company now employs two supervisors in Springfield and one in Branson.

Randy Mattox, a Hillyard Inc. sales representative, began working with Brokate Janitorial a couple years ago when the Brokates opened their Springfield office, 1447 S. Enterprise Ave, Ste. D. He says Brokate already had a rep for its cleaning supplies in the Branson market.

Unlike many of his roughly 60 clients, Mattox says Brokate orders cleaning chemicals weekly to keep inventory levels at a minimum.

“They are one of the few contract cleaners that have really kept the lid on product purchasing,” he says, pointing to Brokate’s dilution control system at its main office so lead employees carefully manage usage on job sites. “I think that’s a good way to do it. Now, I don’t sell as much to them. But I’d rather sell them what they need.”

He says the brothers aren’t shy to ask questions to improve their processes, and he’s shared a few cleaning trade secrets.

“They’re not trying to reinvent the wheel, they’re just making sure the wheel is polished,” says Mattox, who also works with institutional clients such as Mercy Hospital, and Missouri State and Evangel universities.

In addition to the work for the city of Springfield – the largest cleaning contract on the city’s books – Brokate Janitorial has a contract to clean Springfield-Greene County Park Board offices and the Cooper Tennis Complex.

Among its 50 active clients are CoxHealth clinics, Showboat Branson Belle and Presley properties in Branson. Though 60 percent of its work is in offices, other cleaning is for manufacturers, restaurants and contractors, such as Larry Snyder & Co., on construction sites post-completion.

Tidying up for nonprofits is a growing segment, and the company recently signed on to clean Salvation Army of Branson year-round – at no cost to the charity.

The deal, valued at $5,000 in services, falls in line with Brokate Janitorial’s goal to donate $25,000 in services and cash to area nonprofits in 2014. The brothers say previously they’d meet charitable requests on occasion, including aid to Faith Community Health and Jesus Was Homeless in Branson.

“We never really had a system for it,” says Cheyne, who brainstormed the idea.

“We wanted to set a goal.”