- May 12, 2025
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A Sarasota-based fencing business aims to deliver the same level of customer service clients expect at a top restaurant.
The idea to start Level Up Fencing came to Brandon Kulpeksa when he was working as a general manager for Darden Restaurants, which owns Seasons 52.
“I needed a fence for myself,” says Kulpeksa. “The whole process was just a nightmare.”
After trying to get quotes and finding his calls unreturned, he says he built the fence himself.
At the time, Kulpeksa and his former colleague Dan Cusack were trying to get out of the restaurant industry. Cusack had worked as an executive chef partner at Seasons 52 and had once been the general manager of Outback Steakhouses.
“We both have young kids,” Kulpeksa says, explaining they wanted to stop working nights, weekends and holidays so they could attend things like their children's soccer games.
They started the fencing business out of Cusack’s yard, learning the trade by doing it and watching YouTube videos, and have since built thousands of fences. Kulpeksa likens the experience to working his way up from being a dishwasher and learning all the jobs in the restaurant industry.
"Dan and I installed fences for the first year by ourselves," Kulpeksa says. "We personally answered the phones, did everything from start to finish, and little by little, grew from one crew to two crews to three crews to four crews."
Today, Level Up Fencing operates a warehouse on Tower Lane near Fruitville Road and employs four crews of subcontractors plus an office staff of two. The company did $1.5 million in revenue in 2024, a year after it was officially founded, and the business is on track to do $3.2 million in revenue this year, Kulpeksa says.
“It all comes naturally,” he says, "when you keep clients happy.”
One way the company keeps customers happy is by communicating throughout the process, from estimate to installation. Either Kulpeksa or Cusack meets the client at their home or business for the initial estimate before turning the job over to the crews.
“It’s more personal to have the owners come out,” Kulpeksa says.
Satisfied customers are a major source of business for the company.
“In the construction world, referrals are massive,” Kulpeksa says, and it is not limited to word of mouth; online presence is key too.
“We believe reviews are super important,” he adds.
Level Up Fencing has more than 100 reviews on Google, where it has a five-star rating.
“When you go out to dinner, you check your reviews — it’s the same with a fence company,” Kulpeksa says.
If a review comes in that is not five stars, “immediately we call the client,” he says, to find out what can be done to improve their experience.
While he says it’s not the same as a steak in a restaurant, where an order can be fixed in 10 or 15 minutes, his company will work to make the fence right. The business offers a satisfaction guarantee on its work.
The greatest challenge for Level Up Fencing is pricing, according to Kulpeksa.
“The two men and a truck are always going to beat you on price,” he says. “Those two guys are splitting the margin,” whereas his business has crews and overhead.
“Pricing is a really tough piece of our puzzle,” Kulpeksa says.
Before tariffs were set to be imposed this spring, Level Up Fencing emailed customers with pending orders to let them know they could lock in pricing before any hikes. The email included a letter from one of the company’s distributors about its price increases on materials.
The campaign generated a “massive response,” Kulpeksa says, helping to secure 15 to 20 jobs. Now, “we are reset back to regular pricing.”
That said, he notes the prices of materials like aluminum and chainlink have been increasing, while wood fluctuates and PVC/vinyl has remained unchanged.
Daily the business receives calls from people seeking fence repairs following the hurricanes, Kulpeksa says in late April, more than six months after Hurricane Milton.
“The hurricane was wild,” Kulpeksa says.
People started calling the day after Hurricane Milton hit, and he says Level Up Fencing created a temporary outpost at his business partner’s mother’s house — the only place they could get internet and cell service.
“The biggest thing was answering the phones, calling people back, keeping everything in sync and keeping realistic expectations,” he says.
During the hurricane response, the time frame for a job, from estimate to installation, stretched to seven weeks versus the usual four weeks, Kulpeksa says.
In January and February, the company had about 150 to 160 jobs going out a month, which has since ebbed to 80 to 100 jobs a month.
To meet the demand, Level Up Fencing added subcontractors — temporarily growing from four to seven crews — including some from Mississippi and Jacksonville.
So the Jacksonville crew could stay in the area, Kulpeksa and Cusack helped pay for an Airbnb from December to February. The three workers liked Sarasota so much that they became full-time residents in March, Kulpeksa says, and are now one of his four crews of subcontractors. Each crew has a specialty, he adds, like custom wood or vinyl.
As its name indicates, Level Up Fencing is not staying with the status quo. The owners plan to keep improving their service, and to do that, they are looking to become distributors in the coming years.
“The distribution side is the next thing for Level Up Fencing,” Kulpeksa says. “When you supply your materials, the price gets better — there's more competitive advantage — for passing that on to the client.”
As a distributor, he says, the business could also supply materials for “two men and a truck” operations.
The way for the business to make money is “numbers by volume,” Kulpeksa says. “The more people you service, the more clients you retain. Let’s get more satisfied customers.”
