by Anthony DeMatteo
Staff Writer
In the middle of what will soon be about 80,000 square feet of restaurant supply and fire equipment business space, Alex Stuckey Jr. wants to start a cooking show.
In a operational test kitchen in the Commonwealth Avenue headquarters of Fire Fighters Equipment Co., Stuckey, president of the 9-year-old business, wants to make celebrities out of local chefs.
“We want to have a television show here so that we can build celebrity chefs,” said Stuckey. “So chefs from places like Bistro Aix can come in, do his show and put it on public access TV.”
Stuckey said a studio will be built and shows would start being put “in the can” sometime next year, which is when he plans to double the building’s size to about 80,000 square feet.
Fire Fighters Equipment Co. is a diversified company doing business with some of Jacksonville’s best known entities.
It provides restaurant hoods and sprinkler systems to the University of North Florida and lists the Jacksonville Municipal Stadium and the Baseball Grounds as clients.
“Everything inside of a commercial building that’s related to security, access or fire, we do that,” said Stuckey.
Stuckey graduated from Florida State University in 1989 with a business degree and worked for about seven years at Barnett Bank before starting his own business. In 1997, he started with one employee – himself. Now, 70 people work under Stuckey. The company has nine divisions. The company’s Jenkins Food Service Equipment Division offers full-service sales and installation of all equipment a restaurant needs to operate.
Stuckey moved the company into the restaurant equipment business after working for contractors installing cooking hoods.
“We eliminated the blame game,” he said. “Now, if a customer hires us, we’ve put in the hood and the electrical and the equipment and everything related. We control that process and it makes it much easier for the customer.”
Fire Fighters Equipment Company has about 18 contract licenses, including fire alarms and fire sprinklers.
“Unlike a general contractor, we don’t sub out any work,” said Stuckey. “We work well with general contractors because we take up a big portion of the work that has to be done.”
In a large warehouse loaded with fire extinguishers being refurbished and canisters of compressed air ready to be distributed, the stainless steel of a refrigerator marked for St. Augustine’s Casa Monica peeks out from a cardboard box. Another box is marked for a local pizza place.
Stuckey keeps the business plan he wrote almost 10 years ago in a wood cabinet in his office. Its pages are filled with red lines and modifications.
Some of the plan includes Stuckey’s theories on how to keep employees happy. Most of his employees have offices near windows.
“Our philosophy is to put the people near windows and all the other stuff in the middle,” said Stuckey. “We don’t gather them in cubicles. It makes for a better working environment.”
Operations Manager Dave Royce said it’s busy work, but enjoyable.
“We don’t stop work at 5 p.m.,” he said. “We keep going until 6 or 7 p.m., until the job is done. But it’s a great place to work.”
Stuckey said there has never been an employee cutback at the company.
“As long as I’m running the show, my commitment is to never do that.”
Stuckey is also committed to bigger things for the business he started. And it’s all in the book he keeps locked in his office cabinet.
“Our plan is to grow to be a national company,” he said. “Our next step will be Orlando, then Tampa, then Miami. Once we finish Florida, we’ll follow my business plan, grow regionally and eventually be a publicly traded company.”