Dave Gutfranski founded Coastal Quality Construction, Inc. at the end of 2009. His business is now one of the fastest-growing companies in the Cleveland area.

Coastal Quality Construction, Inc. served as general contractor for a major expansion of Mustard Seed Market & Café, the largest locally owned retailer of natural and organic products in Ohio.

When Dave Gutfranski founded Coastal Quality Construction, Inc., he fully expected business to be slow. It was late in 2009, at the official end of a crushing recession. “Everything was down, people were cutting numbers,” Gutfranski says. “I decided in September 2009 to go out on my own.”

The risky move went according to plan. Gutfranski expected that the first few years would be slow, giving him time to overcome learning curves. His hope was that “when things picked up, bumps in the road would be worked out.”

That strategy has worked. Coastal Quality Construction, based in Broadview Heights, Ohio, has experienced tremendous growth over the past eight years. Last year the company landed a spot—No. 20—on Crain’s 52 Fastest-Growing Companies list, based on revenue growth and total revenue. And this year on the Inc. 5000 list, it ranked in the top 65 percent of the country’s 5,000 fastest-growing private companies.

In fact, Coastal Quality Construction has experienced about 30 percent growth each year since it began, Gutfranski says, and the company is on track to pull in $10 million in revenue in 2017.

Growth Mindset

The president of the company is no stranger to growth. Before branching out on his own, Gutfranski worked for two general contractors. Both started small, and both grew to become large companies. Gutfranski has surrounded himself with leaders with similar backgrounds, and they all bring with them lessons from the past.

“The key people in the company have come from larger GCs,” he says, “and have seen tremendous growth prior. We’ve always been set up to handle the growth and give the customer service that needs to be given to clients.”

Centered on Customer Service

Coastal Quality Construction’s quick path to success is built on relationships, according to Gutfranski.

“Relationships are vital,” he says. “You are dealing with the same people over and over. Whether subcontractors or architects, the whole business is relationships.” And the key to those strong relationships, he adds, is teamwork, transparency and trust.

“What’s different for us is estimating,” Gutfranski says. “We are as transparent as possible on what we include and do not include.”

This philosophy guides his team’s relationships with everyone involved in a project—the business owner, the architect, the subcontractors.

“Our project partners trust that what we’re telling them is the truth, that it’s real and able to be accomplished,” he says. “Do what you say, say what you’re going to do.”

Gutfranski says his clients trust him to provide the best service.

“We do everything we can to make sure the owner is happy—during pre-construction, during the job, when [the work is] under warranty, even a couple of years after the job is done,” he says. There are clients who call years after a job is done, he says, and Coastal Quality Construction will send someone out to fix the problem.“You end up with happy customers, which can lead to new customers,” Gutfranski affirms.

The company’s client list is extensive and includes projects in various markets, such as education, restaurant, fitness and residential. Specific examples include CoreLife Eatery, Rascal Flatts Bar and Grill restaurants, Take 5 Oil Change, Cleveland Yoga, Bob Gillingham Ford, Mustard Seed Market & Café, Constantino’s Market, The Big Bang bar, CrossFit Cleveland, and Orangetheory Fitness.

Interstate Projects

While most of its jobs are in and around Cleveland, Coastal Quality Construction is willing to travel anywhere east of the Mississippi River.

“We’ve been near Rochester, N.Y.,” Gutfranski says. “We’ve been in Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Connecticut.”

The long-term dream is an office in Florida, the state that inspired the company’s name and where Gutfranski briefly lived before returning to his home state with his wife.

Building on Cleveland’s Strengths

His father was an electrician, and when Gutfranski graduated he had two options—become an electrician or go to college. He chose college, to study construction management.

“I’d worked with my dad growing up,” Gutfranski says. “I was always around construction.”

He studied at the University of Cincinnati and then the University of Akron. He was hired full-time by a company he co-oped with, even before he graduated, and was heading up the estimating department by age 25.

“I grew up in Cleveland, on the south side,” he says. “I’ve been here my whole life, except a couple of years. It’s a big city but a small town, and everyone knows someone you know.”

Cleveland is also home to top-notch workers and tradespeople, he adds, the folks who help keep his company growing.

“The only way you grow is if you find good people who put the time in and work with you,” he says. That means finding teammates who care, who he can trust to make decisions and move forward. For now, Gutfranski is involved in some way in virtually every Coastal Quality Construction project, but notes that “at some point I can’t look at everything.”

His company has come a long way since its first year in business, when revenue topped out at $60,000. Gutfranski is mindful of the risks to quality when growth is too fast, with not enough controls. He relies on Dustin Thonen, formerly Senior Project Manager who is now Vice President of Construction, to manage certain construction and office duties.

“As you grow, you need to make sure quality doesn’t drop,” Gutfranski says. “You need to make sure everything you do is the way you want it done.”

Gutfranski has great trust in Thonen, who has more than 20 years of experience in construction. Thonen has spent the past three years learning the Coastal Quality Construction way, earning the promotion to vice president and the additional responsibilities it brings, Gutfranski says.