Culture & History
BUSINESS CULTURE AND MISSION
Reinhart Grounds Maintenance provides professional landscape services to commercial clients in Central IL through innovation; lean management; rigorous continuous improvement of people, systems, and processes; and by focusing on understanding what our customer’s value. Our business philosophy and culture are based on lean management principles. The primary focus of our company is to generate value for the customer. The Reinhart House of Lean illustrates some of the fundamental operational tools and strategies that we use to pursue this level of perfection. This lean management model implies that if any part of the foundation, cornerstones, or walls is weak, neglected, or missing, the entire structure will ultimately fail.
The core of our Companies' business is to offer professional management of the land maintenance that most of our clients consider a nuisance to manage. Most of the services that we provide involve hard, physical labor. We pride ourselves on the ability to work hard, manage projects efficiently, with a high quality of workmanship. We choose not to compete where our knowledge base is of little value or where the only factor is cost. We consistently leverage greater knowledge, experience, and capability than our competition and use it to our strategic advantage. However, our ability, not our ego, determines how we perform, concentrating on services that we provide the best, delivering an appropriate rate of return.
BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS
One of our core beliefs is absolute respect for people and relationships. We believe that the primary way to accomplish our mission is to develop relationships with high performance, passionate people. We deliver amazing service with professional, highly trained, committed employees, vendors, and customers who share our core values and vision. Companies that share a relationship with us understand how they contribute and impact our mission on a daily basis.
COMPANY HISTORY
The Beginning
Chad was 15 years old in the Spring of 1987 when he put an advertisement in the local community newspaper searching for a way to make summer money mowing a few lawns. The following year he was so busy that his older brother Todd joined the company to keep up with demand.
Due to their hard work and attention to detail, what started out as a simple idea for summer employment has become one of the largest and most respected Landscape Service firms in Central Illinois. Todd and Chad learned a strong work ethic from their parents working on their family farm just a few miles west of Bloomington/Normal. From a young age both had daily chores each day after school. Weekends and summers were spent side by side planting and harvesting crops, mowing, walking beans and baling hay. Their father Larry taught them about raising livestock, hydraulics, engine mechanics, and how to manage finances while their Mom Ruth, who was a school teacher, instilled in them a passion for learning and encouraged them to focus on their education. Growing up in this environment taught the brothers a lot about hard work, innovation, and respect for people. These lessons are the foundation that their company culture is based on to this day.
Focusing on the Company
In the Spring of 1992, when Todd graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Agri-Business and Chad graduated from High School, the focus was turned on the business full-time.
Four years later Chad graduated from Illinois State University with his Bachelor's degree in Industrial Technology, Energy & Power. By 1995, Reinhart's began to shift their focus to concentrate solely on the commercial market, allowing them to be better aligned with their long term vision.
WEED MAN FRANCHISE
Until 2002, Reinhart Grounds Maintenance was sub-contracting all fertilizer and weed control work. They had become dissatisfied with their service provider and were looking for ways to expand their business. In 2002, Chad and Todd purchased a Weed Man franchise along with another partner, Josh Fromme, providing service for their local community. Their first year of business accounted for over 250 customers when they began to realize what a great opportunity Weed Man was. In 2003, the partners purchased two more territories encompassing the greater Peoria area and in the Spring of 2008 Andy Behrens joined the team and opened the Champaign-Urbana location.
FACILITY
Reinhart Grounds Maintenance built their new 14,000 square foot, state of the art facility on four acres just West of Bloomington-Normal 2003. Until that time they had been working from several locations and had offices in their homes. This new facility has really allowed them to take their award winning company to the next level.
TODAY
Today, Reinhart Grounds Maintenance, Inc services the commercial property maintenance markets with a full service approach.
