Getting The Bugs Out

In the extermination business, there is Al Burger and there is everybody else. What does he know that the others don't?

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Howard Roth, born and reared in the Bronx, had to work late one evening at the cheap North Miami Beach, Fla., steak house where he was, temporarily and not by choice, the night manager. A new exterminator was coming to attack the resident cockroaches. Roth let the crew in, went for a drink, and came back later to see how things were going. He opened the door and couldn't believe what he saw. "It was the middle of the night, and here were these five guys, filthy dirty, crawling under and into everything, just doing a super job. Jesus Christ, I said to myself. After a while one guy got up off the floor and we started talking. I didn't know it at first, but he was the boss."

Roth switched jobs.

He hired himself, says the boss, Alvin Burger (rhymes with merger). "We're talking and Roth says, 'I'm gonna go to work for you. Anybody who can motivate people to do this kind of work, I want to be associated with him.' "

That was 17 years ago. Today, Miami-based "Bugs" Burger Bug Killers Inc. services nearly 12,000 restaurant and hotel accounts spread over 43 states, and the boss doesn't personally supervise every job anymore. No matter. The work gets done just as it would if he were there.

Al Burger has no MBA and little patience for the financial and administrative details of business. But he has overcome the biggest hurdle facing any small, growth-oriented company whose sole competitive advantage is quality of service. The more than 400 service specialists working for "Bugs" Burger (the company) today are just as motivated, and get just as dirty, as the original crew 17 years ago. Al Burger (the man) couldn't do a better job himself.

Says who?

The competition, to begin with. " 'Bugs' Burger," says Jim Gillis, owner of All Boston Exterminators, "is number one. There is no number two."

And customers. "Let me put it this way," says Bob Crooks, manager of Gallagher's Restaurant, in Garland, Tex. "You have 'Bugs' Burger, and then you have to go waaay down to get to the second best."

And employees. "I left 'Bugs' Burger and worked for another company," says Alan Rosenberg, a service specialist in Boston who was recently promoted to district manager. "It was a step backward. They had no standards. So I came back. This is the only company I ever saw where the owner and the people on the job all think the same way."

With anticipated 1984 sales of $25 million, "Bugs" Burger is not the largest company in the national pest-control market, estimated at close to $2 billion annually. Orkin Exterminating Co. and Terminix International, both corporate subsidiaries with branch operations or franchises in about 40 states, rack up greater sales: $213 million for Orkin and $160 million for Terminix in 1983. Most of the rest of the industry consists of small, local operators. Indianapolis alone has about 75 pest-control companies. The competition is cutthroat, and the service, according to people with years of experience in the industry, is about the same everywhere: minimal. Most customers assume they will get the same results no matter who they hire, so they hire on price. "Bugs" Burger doesn't operate in that market. "It's like he's a Mercedes," says Gillis, "and you've got a whole lot of Chevettes driving around out there."

"Bugs" Burger's marketing hook is its audacious guarantee -- an unconditional promise to eliminate all roach and rodent breeding and nesting areas on the clients' premises, with no payment due until the pests are eliminated. If the company fails, the guarantee says, "Bugs" Burger will refund the customer's last 12 monthly payments and will pay for one year's service by another exterminator of the customer's choice.

The company doesn't promise that a restaurant diner or a hotel guest will never see another roach, but it does promise that if one shows up, it won't be native-born. Should an immigrant bug ride in with the groceries and stroll across a diner's table, "Bugs" Burger pays for the meal and sends the offended gourmet a letter of apology as well as a gift certficate for yet another free meal. "Customers feel like they've hit the state lottery," says the manager of one client restaurant. "They come in the next time and look for the little things." Hotel guests experiencing a similarly close encounter also get their night's lodging free, an apology and an invitation to return -- on the house. To help the company make good on its promises "Bugs" Burger customers agree in writing to prepare their premises for monthly servicing and are fined if they don't.

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