Interview With George's Auto Repair

The small business we decided to ask to interview and they granted us the permission was George’s Automotive Repair. It’s a mechanic shop in the Logan Square area; 3209 W. Barry Ave. is where the place of business is located. They are open Monday thru Friday 8A.M.- 6P.M. and Saturday 8A.M. –3P.M. George’s Automotive Repair does complete auto repair, bodywork and painting, they specialize in foreign and domestic cars. The founder of the business was George Ghanayem. He was the one who opened the mechanic shop in 1980. In the 37 years of business there has been only two owners for George’s Automotive. The first one was of course George Ghanayem and second was his brother Khadir Ghanayem, who took over the business in 1994. Pretty much

Having a customer relationship, he prides himself with the work he puts in on fixing cars guarantee work, and he gives warranty to his customers for any defects on the parts and on the job that he did. The customers like this in his shop that he is always honest about what is wrong with their car and how much it will cost them. They also like that he gives warranties to his customers so if it doesn't work then they can come back to him and get it fixed again. Every month he scans the shop in his terms to see what they need, he also does inventory. He checks the whole shop to see what he ran out of and what he needs for the customers. He mostly needs to reorder and stock up on materials such as: motor oil, transmission fluid, and brake fluid, power steering fluid. These are the main stuff that are his everyday usage for his clients. Every week he adds up the receipts for the parts he orders and pays for the parts. I would categorize his method of inventory as Direct Materials

Word of mouth as he puts it, a lot of people had referred him, his customers say his honest. He has a website and of course business cards, the shop has good reviews in google and yelp a 5 stars review. People look at yelp and google reviews and that's one of the reason to how the business promotes itself. Many people go to places by reading those reviews, if the place has bad reviews they won't go there. If the place has good reviews of the services that's where they like to go. The location where the shop is at promotes the business itself, because it has been there for a long time and it has customers that have been coming to this shop this long time. He does do a monthly budget. Everything depends on how many cars come in for any type of service. He said this business is mostly 80% cost and 20% profit. His fixed cost is labor, and insurance. Variable cost is property tax, electricity, gas, and direct materials. The way he described how he budgets, it’s a variable overhead flexible budget