Back-Office Quarterback

Quest Resource Management Group, based in Frisco, Texas, was recently named one of the top environmental services companies on the Inc. 5000 ranking. The recycling and sustainability enterprise has grown at a reported clip of 350 percent in just three years, increasing its annual revenue to close to $122 million.

Most of the services Quest offers comprise recycling and landfill diversion, however the company doesn’t own scrap yards per se. To serve its thousands of customers on a day-to-day basis, Quest depends on a network of 4,000 vendor partners throughout the U.S.

Through those partners, Quest oversees the collection, transportation and recycling of waste streams and reporting and billing and also provides 24/7 customer service for more than 10,500 client locations in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico. Materials managed include cooking oil, used tires, antifreeze, meat and seafood products, scrap metals, automotive batteries and construction debris.

Founder and CEO Brian Dick explains the company’s strategic direction:

Q: What factors led to Quest’s recent growth?

A: A lot of it has come from delivering creative solutions to problems no one else could solve. One of those was developing a national food waste and organics collection and recycling program. That took us headfirst into competing with solid waste companies and being able to provide services for what are now 4,000 locations for organics recycling. Another factor behind our growth has been the economy. With all of the recent layoffs, we’ve provided a sort of back-office solution that has allowed organizations to continue to meet their recycling goals.

Q: How are you different from other waste management companies?

A: We’re like a general contractor in the sense that when you come to us, you get one inspector, one customer service line and one direction for your project. We don’t own the assets but we act on behalf of our clients to create a national solution.

Q: What kinds of reporting do you provide to your clients?

A: Our data management tools really set us apart. We have an online sustainability intelligence dashboard that provides our clients access to their data 24/7. From a compliance standpoint they can verify where their waste streams went and who picked them up; from a financial standpoint, their accounting teams can verify that payments were correct.

Q: What’s next for Quest?

A: One goal is to get into the process engineering portion of waste generation, where we can help manufacturers figure out what is causing their waste streams and then re-engineer the processes to not generate those wastes.