FROM THE GROUND UP
Matt Jeffery sets a high ceiling for flooring
Matt Jeffery, a 34-year-old flooring company founder, has a secret tactic for finding great employees. He looks for job applicants who have been waiters or waitresses.
If this sounds random, it’s not. The construction contracting business can often be organized chaos, Jeffery said, and people who have successfully waited tables or served as a bartender in a restaurant have, perhaps unknowingly, perfected a rare skill set: rolling with the unexpected.
Jeffery’s 22-employee company, Chattanooga Floor Care, grew 120% in 2021 and is on track for another 20% gain in 2022, he said. The company, which Jeffery co-founded and operates with his dad, Barry Jeffery, specializes in surfacing concrete floors, a lowmaintenance finish that more home-owners and businesses are using.
Think about what’s underfoot when you walk into any Walmart or Home Depot — polished concrete. Now extrapolate that worldwide, and include residential applications, and you have an idea for the potential of the concrete floor surfacing market.
Jeffery’s company has resurfaced floors at such high profile properties as the Hotel Indigo on W. 6th Street and the Kinley Hotel Southside on Market Street.
Jeffery said his involvement in the business started seven years ago when he moved to Chattanooga from the Atlanta area, where he had been a middle school English and social studies teacher. He wanted to get closer to his parents and to establish a foothold in an entrepreneurial career with greater earnings potential.
Polished concrete flooring seemed a natural reset for his dad’s side hustle, a company that specialized in stripping and waxing floors, and carpet cleaning. Jeffery said he learned that Chattanooga contractors were importing concrete refinishing workers from places such as Atlanta and Birmingham, because there were not enough workers skilled in the craft here.
At that point, he thought to himself — that’s the wave of the future. He quit his teaching position in an Atlanta suburb and moved in with his parents here to expand his dad’s business.
Chattanooga is Jeffery’s hometown. He attended Chattanooga Christian School and later earned a bachelor’s degree in education from Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro. From there, he took a position in Atlanta teaching at a school that was 99% non-Caucasian.
Jeffery said his four years teaching at Sweetwater Middle School in Gwinnett County in Georgia were formative. “It taught me a lot about cultures and community and neighborhoods, and how much that impacts you,” he said.
While living in Georgia, Jeffery also met his future wife, Katy, who was in nursing school. Eventually they were wed and began rearing a family here in Chattanooga. They have two sons, Hampton, 2, and Woods, 4 months.
Jeffery said polished concrete has been a popular flooring system for about 20 years, but in just the last few years residential customers have become a major force in driving the boom.
“During the pandemic, because of the influx of money, our residential division has almost doubled,” Jeffery said. “We are doing pool decks, patios, garages, basements.”
Jeffery said that he believes his career — which he could have never envisioned as a child growing up in Chattanooga — is divine providence.
“Everything in my past happened for a reason,” Jeffery said. “There’s all the years as I traveled as a musician. All the years I was a bartender, waiter, teacher. It’s all led to today. It’s helped me be a better manager.”