By Kevin Hogencamp, Contributing Writer
Karin Tucker said seeing her business ravaged by fire and smoke was surreal and demoralizing.
“You just don’t realize the damage a fire can have on your psyche,” Tucker said of the January 2014 blaze at Biscottis, the landmark Avondale eatery she co-owns with Barbara Bredehoeft.
But, Tucker said, within 45 minutes of calling Paul Davis Restoration of North Florida, co-owner Marguerite Mumford was there with coffee, doughnuts and assurances that Biscottis would quickly rebound from the $500,000 blaze.
Marguerite and Mike Mumford own the restoration company, which had an emergency crew there by daybreak.
The 260 Paul Davis franchisees in the United States and Canada provide restoration and remodeling services including construction, mold remediation, water extraction and smoke containment and cleanup.
The Paul Davis team initially figured it would take about a month to get to the restaurant fully operational.
But, Tucker told them, “That’s not going to work.”
The restaurant was up and running again in 10 days.
How? With long work hours, lots of expertise and some ingenuity, Tucker said.
The Paul Davis team developed a plan to open the restaurant in stages and to use Biscottis’ workers to help with the cleanup, inventory documentation and contents restoration.
“It was a round-the-clock operation and we were going to have temporary workers. Why not hire temps who knew the environment and equipment they’d be working with?” Mike Mumford said.
The Biscottis project was higher-profile than most of the company’s work, about 70 percent of which is residential. But the job was typical in that the restaurant needed a building doctor just as a hospital patient needs an emergency room staff, Mike Mumford said.
That’s precisely why Jane Lynn, a Paul Davis contents estimator and project manager, loves her job.
“I get to come to work to help people that weren’t expecting a tragedy to come into their lives,” said Lynn, an eight-year Paul Davis employee.
Founded in 1966 in Jacksonville, Paul Davis Restoration began franchising in 1970. The Mumfords purchased the North Florida franchise in 1999 from her parents, who owned it for about four years.
“They thought it would be something fun to do part-time in retirement and quickly realized it’s full-time, which wasn’t where they wanted in their life,” Marguerite Mumford said.
The couple came from the corporate world — she was a marketing executive and he was a banker. Marguerite Mumford ran the business for about a year before her husband left his job and began helping with the business’s day-to-day operations.
“I guess I always wanted to own my own business,” Marguerite Mumford said. “We said we were going to put everything we had into it and 16 years later, we’re still here.”
Parents of two children, the Mumfords co-manage the business and share operations responsibilities. She focuses on marketing and he is a general contractor with a strong finance background.
They say their business’s revenue is 500 percent greater than in Year 1 and that its workforce has grown from seven to 35 employees. They’ve steadily built their business largely through relationships they’ve developed in the building industry. The recession had minimal impact on their company.
“Pipes break, fires happen, trees crash onto homes and vehicles go through buildings regardless of the economy,” Marguerite said.
The couple credits the team they’ve built for the business’s growth — and their peace of mind.
“We have great people in place to the point where we don’t have to micromanage,” Mike Mumford said.
The couple, who rewarded their team in recent years with a cruise and a Disney World vacation, have particularly enjoyed creating a work culture they’ve always wanted to work in.
“There’s a lot of pressure and responsibility with being business owners, but also a nice amount of freedom,” Marguerite Mumford said. “I don’t have to explain to my boss why I am leaving at 3 o’clock to pick up my son for school or go see his play.”
While much of their work involves specialized services — such as mold remediation and restoring contents ranging from furniture to wedding dresses — their staffers often find themselves providing comfort to distraught customers.
Sometimes, Marguerite Mumford said, Paul Davis team members are quasi-psychologists.
“We’ve often said around here that we don’t restore buildings, we restore lives,” Marguerite said. “It’s a little kitschy, but in many ways it’s true.”
Jane Lynn, whose mother is a nurse, said her favorite part of the job is reuniting customers with treasured mementos like photographs.
“I love my job because I get to do a little bit each day to help people put their lives back together,” she said. “And I’m not a nurse type, so this really suits me.”
The Mumfords are active in numerous community service endeavors, including an annual coat-and-sweater drive, and are especially inclined to support local fire departments throughout Northeast Florida.
For the Biscottis project, Paul Davis Restoration received the Northeast Florida Builders Association’s First Coast Remodelers Award for a commercial remodeling project more than $250,000.
Also in 2014, Marguerite Mumford was named the Insurance Professionals of Northeast Florida Insurance Professional of the Year.
The year before, the Mumfords were honored by the Jacksonville Historic Preservation Commission for their rehabilitation of Paul Davis Restoration of North Florida’s headquarters at 2111 N. Liberty St. in Springfield.
The 40,000-square-foot, two-story building is a former Chevrolet parts depot built in about 1929. Some areas were renovated to retrofit space from the original fresh water wells, coal chutes and segregated restrooms.