Steven Crouse opened his auto repair shop in January 2018 with three bays, one guy — himself — and no idea what was about to happen.
“I thought three bays would be plenty,” he recalls, adding that it wasn’t long before he had to rethink and reset. “I had to hire somebody after two weeks. We were working on stuff in the parking lot. We had a lean-to outside and worked under that. It was non-stop.”
Today, Crouse Performance & Automotive has long since outgrown that initial location. His shop is still in Soddy-Daisy, but he’s now got 11 bays, six full-time mechanics and two full-time office staffers.
“Never crossed my mind” that the business would be as successful as it has, he says. “It grew so fast; it was really a challenge.”
Now 37, Crouse says he’s always been a car guy. He often tagged along when his dad, a Chattanooga-area auto parts dealer for nearly 30 years, went to work.
The younger Crouse also worked in the Atlanta area, where he learned about more than headers and gaskets. It was during that time that he had a pivotal moment in his business philosophy.
“What really got me was seeing how other shops treated people,” he says. “It wasn’t right. I wanted a place where I could treat people the way I’d want to be treated if I were the customer.”
Crouse had started the Atlanta-area job as part of a high-end drag-race team in 2015. He was making the daily commute, but after getting married in 2016, he decided to leave that job the next year — without having a new source of income lined up.
“I realized pretty quickly that what I wanted to do was start my own shop. We had a little money saved and started looking for a building. We called around to line up some work.”
That initial work, combined with what Crouse called good “word of mouth,” proved too much for his initial location, necessitating the move to a larger shop in early 2020.
“We wanted to do performance work when we first opened,” Crouse says, “But we figured out pretty quickly that there’s a bigger market in light duty diesel trucks.
Photo by Abby White / The second working space at Crouse Automotive & Performance.“Now we do about 50-50, gas and diesel,” he adds. “We do pretty much anything light- to medium-duty diesel, and pretty much anything on the gas side. I mostly do diagnostics now and help with quotes, but I’m still pretty hands-on with my guys — I’m never afraid to jump in there with (them). “
Crouse says that when he looks to the future, he sees an increased emphasis on parts, some 89,000 of which he already has on his recently revamped website.
“We’ve really been looking at it the last six months,” he says. “People call all the time and ask our opinions on parts. Being an easy place to access (parts) has always been a goal.”
But Crouse, who shares two young daughters with his wife, Kari, hastens to add that when he talks about growing his business, he does so in a very specific context.
“The biggest thing for me right now is maintaining,” he says. “There’s a balance between the demands of growth and how we want to live our lives with our family.
“We want to stay consistent and continue to give customers the service they expect and deserve.”
Crouse Automotive & Performance is in Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee, about 18 minutes from downtown Chattanooga, traveling primarily on US Hwy 27 North.