By Ron Hurtibise
South Florida Sun Sentinel
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Spero Georgedakis, founder and CEO of South Florida-based Good Greek Moving & Storage, says he realized the damage that crooked moving companies could create when he began his career as a police officer in the city of North Miami back in the 1990s.
Calls would come in from angry consumers, he said, but police often could not resolve the situations because they were civil disputes.
So after Georgedakis traded his badge for the moving business, he committed to setting up a company that did not enrage customers by “playing the game” — hooking them with lowball estimates and once all their possession are loaded onto their truck, demanding they pay two or three times the estimate if they ever wanted to see their stuff again.
In 2015, Georgedakis started Good Greek Moving & Storage in West Palm Beach with two trucks and a promise to handle customers’ moves “the Good Greek way.”
The “Good Greek” nickname, he said, was coined by newspapers covering his exploits as a star high school quarterback in Astoria, a neighborhood in Queens, New York.
Nine years after it was founded, Good Greek has 500 employees, nearly 200 trucks, and operations centers in West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Plant City, with plans to open more facilities in Orlando; Fort Myers; Fort Pierce; and Dallas, Texas.
It also has its first Independent Mover of the Year award. The national distinction, which recognizes all-around excellence in the moving and storage industry, was announced last weekend at the American Trucking Association’s annual gathering of its Moving & Storage Conference in New Orleans.
The company was selected based on several criteria, including efforts to innovate, provide benefits to its employees, enhance the image of the moving industry, overcome challenges, demonstrate corporate responsibility and develop a unique or successful approach to conducting business, conference spokesman Sean McNally said.
Each planned new location will employ more than 100 workers and house six to 10 trucks, Georgedakis said during a recent interview.
From law enforcement to the moving business
Steve Stepp, deputy city manager in Palm Beach Gardens, first met Georgedakis when he applied for a police officer position in North Miami, when Stepp, a 40-year law enforcement officer, worked there as a sergeant.
Georgedakis was a hard worker and earned respect from fellow officers on street patrol, Stepp said.
Eventually, Georgedakis was promoted to the city’s SWAT team, where he worked for five years before taking a job with All My Sons Moving & Storage and helping to expand that company throughout the country.
A half-dozen fellow officers followed Georgedakis into that company, Stepp said, before he branched off on his own and started Good Greek.
He never forgot the heartache caused by shady movers and “used his law enforcement experience to do background investigations on (applicants) to make sure they were honest people,” Stepp said.
Today, the company says it has one of the highest referral rates for moving companies of its size in Florida. Georgedakis appears on television and radio shows to educate consumers on ways they can avoid getting ripped off.
His company provides customers with its trucks’ GPS signal so they can always know where their belongings are while in transit. After the move is complete, Good Greek’s “Superhero” character arrives at their new home with a gift basket loaded with discount cards, a bottle of “Good Greek” olive oil, a cutting board and other gear.
Georgedakis has also maintained his connection to sports by embracing teams throughout the state. Good Greek has contracts as exclusive mover of the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the NBA’s Miami Heat, Inter Miami CF of Major League Soccer, both of Florida’s Major League Baseball teams, and four major universities, including University of Miami, University of Florida, Florida Atlantic University and Florida International University, among others.
That means the company moves not only every piece of equipment that the teams take to away games, but also personal belongings of players who need to live near their teams’ home arenas during playing seasons.
More recently, the company partnered with the Florida Police Benevolent Association and began promoting its services to police officers in major cities such as New York and Chicago who were interested in Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ offer to pay $5,000 to relocate to Florida.
In addition to between 350 to 400 household moves a week, the company handles unloading, storage and reassembly of hotels under renovation — one floor at a time, Georgedakis says.
Six hotel projects are currently underway, he says. They often involve receiving and installing new fixtures. “We’re actually putting the headboards into the wall,” he said. “We’re hanging the pictures and the TVs. We’re plugging in the fridges. We’ve got a whole system where we knock out many rooms in a day.”
A westward expansion
Georgedakis says much of the company’s household moving business involves relocating clients to Florida from California and New York. Its expansion plans will enable the company to carry more loads to and from the faraway locations, he said.
Planned acquisitions of existing carriers in Jacksonville and St. Augustine will enable the company to move military members when their deployments change.
“They’ve never seen anything like this,” Georgedakis said. “We’ve going to give them true white-glove service, whether it’s a five-star general or a lieutenant.”
Recently the company extended its reach by opening a junk removal service, an auto transport service, an insurance agency, a real estate agency and a lending service.
The insurance agency writes homeowners, auto, motorcycle, boat and even health. The realty service has sold about 100 homes so far, Georgedakis said.
The company decided to offer the services when it realized that many homeowners who consider moving haven’t thought about all of the other needs that go with it, he said.
“We are the world’s first and only total relocation company,” he said. “I’m the one-stop shop. When it’s time for a consumer to move, they think of the Good Greek. It’s one call and I can help them with all, most, (or) any of the services that we provide.”
In addition, the company’s concierge department helps clients transfer their utilities, entertainment services and home security systems, plus secures any available discounts offered to newcomers. The service is offered free of charge, Georgedakis says.
Training program includes mock house
The company’s effort to attract and retain honest workers begins with background checks, drug tests and a two-week in-house “Superhero Movers Academy” training program “that weeds out some of the people that don’t meet our expectations or our standards,” he said.
The company built a mock house in its West Palm Beach facility for trainees learn how to pack, move, and unpack household goods.
“There are actually three bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen and an office,” Georgedakis said. “It’s fully furnished down to the dishes and the glassware.”
Workers, he said, “practice everything from greeting the customer to paperwork, inventorying what we’re taking in our possession. And then of course, the protecting of the furniture, the wrapping, disassembly, reassembly, packing and unpacking.”
Despite the training, not every worker shines, as suggested by mixed reviews on the company’s Better Business Bureau page. While 36 reviewers gave the company four- or five-star reviews over the past two years, an equal number gave the company a single star.
Still, that number represents a small fraction of the amount of moves that Good Greek accomplishes each year. Google reviewers have been more generous, with 2,300 clients of the West Palm Beach location giving the company an average 4.4-star rating and 777 clients of the Fort Lauderdale facility awarding a 4.6-star composite score.
The company reaches out to everyone who posts a complaint about a bad experience, Georgedakis says, and tries to resolve them.
“The online complaints do bother me a lot,” he says. “And that’s why we go above and beyond to repair them. And sometimes they can go away quickly. Sometimes not.”
Stepp said he remains impressed by the company’s professionalism. He has hired Good Greek three times for various moves, and recommended it to family members and about eight to 10 friends. “It’s always went well,” Stepp said.
“When people are moving — their lives, their personal things, their clothing — it’s scary,” he said. “I think you need to have a level of comfort that you’re hiring a reputable company. There’s nothing more important than to have a trusted business to rely on, and I think that might be Spero’s strongest point.”
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