By the time Doug Soper rings the doorbell for a roof replacement, the proposal is already written.
The work starts as soon as a homeowner books an appointment. Soper orders the roof’s measurements online and has the dimensions back within six hours. He builds the estimate from them, and the next day he walks into the first meeting with his price ready.
On insurance jobs, the order stays the same. “I write it up first and give them my number, and then we sit down and look at the insurance estimate if it’s an insurance job,” he says. The homeowner has Restoration Roofing’s figure in hand before the two of them turn to the insurer’s.
Soper treats that first visit as a briefing. “We’re not salesmen,” he says. “We come in and we educate the homeowner on what we’re doing and why we do it that way.” Homes make up about 80 percent of the company’s work, and commercial roofs account for the rest. The company works across Kansas City’s Northland, in towns from Liberty and Gladstone out to Kearney and Platte City.
Insurance work brings a good deal of paperwork and back-and-forth with the carrier, and Soper takes that on for the customer. One homeowner, selling a house after the buyers asked for a new roof, described in a review how Soper laid out the insurance process at the start, so nothing that followed came as a surprise. The tear-off and new roof went on in a single day. Afterward Soper came back for his own inspection, walking the perimeter and moving benches and tables to make sure the cleanup met his standard.
His first roofing work was a high school job in the 1980s. In 2001 he moved into roofing management, and a few years later he went into business for himself. Restoration Roofing is now a father-and-son company. Soper and his son handle the field management, meet with customers, do the ordering and schedule the three crews that put the roofs on.
Soper is plain about why that arrangement works. “I know him better than I know anybody else in the world. I raised him. He is me,” he says of his son. “So I know that he’s going to do the right thing and do it every time.”
The two aim to park outside a customer’s house 10 minutes before an appointment, finish their paperwork in the truck and ring the bell at the promised time, a habit Soper traces, probably, to his grandparents.
When a customer calls, the owner picks up. “I answer my own phone,” he says.
The men on the roofs stay put, too. Soper says his crews are some of the best paid in the city and that the pay keeps them loyal. “I have the same guys year after year,” he says.