How Valet Services Are Redefining Waste Management in Multifamily

Matt: It’s really about putting your money where your mouth is—being able to show what you say and prove it. When we mess up, we admit it, and we prove we fixed it. We track two big numbers in our business: response time—how quickly we respond to an issue—and resolution time—how quickly we close it out.

Host: “I have your reservation.”

Matt: “And I kept your reservation.”

Host: Great analogy.

Host: Okay, everybody—welcome back. This is our second episode of whatever we end up calling this podcast. We’ll probably have introduced the name in an intro we record later.

Today we have Matt Locke with us. He’s the CEO of Brightstep. I had to do some digging to learn what that even means because—unlike me—Matt is not exactly verbose on the internet. Matt, do you want to introduce yourself?

Matt: Thanks. I’m Matt Locke, CEO of Brightstep. We’re a private-equity-owned valet trash service provider. We operate in 25 states, and we’ve got phenomenal talent. I think we deliver best-in-class, tech-enabled service. It’s a great industry to be in.

Host: Valet trash is a relatively new thing. I’m starting to see buildings built around it. I was talking to a guy—Zack Mozer on Twitter—about the Aladdin building. They aren’t doing a trash chute at all; they’re just relying on valet.

That trend didn’t exist 15 years ago. Now you can build a property and avoid the headache of chutes and just say, “Someone will pick it up.” But that kind of design obviously requires seven-day service, whereas most of the industry is five-day service.

Matt: Exactly. It’s part of the amenitization of the space—where culture has been going for decades.

And while the service is an amenity—and it can improve NOI for owners and operators—I think one of the biggest benefits is asset protection. That Aladdin building—without knowing all the details—my guess is it’s a few hundred million-dollar asset.

Host: It’s around a hundred million, and it’s a very old building—a rehabilitation.

Matt: Right. And one of the fastest ways to mess up a building like that is residents dragging trash down hallways—dripping stuff everywhere.

Host: And people generally see valet as “a cost,” but operationally it’s an extra set of eyes. Someone notices: “That light is out.” “It’s hot on that floor.” “It’s cold on that floor.” Or on garden-style properties: “A sprinkler head went off.” Especially in fall and early spring, you can see when area lights are out.

And fewer operators live on site now than 15 or 20 years ago.

Matt: That’s true. Most operators cover three to five properties. Maintenance teams too—more efficient staffing.

Host: I joked earlier: it was hard to find information about you. I had to dig deep and got maybe two pages of material total.

Matt: (laughs) Some people like it that way.

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Brightstep’s “brands within the brand” strategy

Host: Your strategy at Brightstep is “brands within the brand,” right?

Matt: Yes. We created Brightstep as an umbrella after deciding we weren’t going to expand nationally as one uniform brand.

Host: Like a “1-800-GOT-JUNK” model—everything the same.

Matt: Exactly. We believe there are best-in-class regional operators, and we don’t want to wipe their brands off the map. We want to retain their identity, their value proposition, and—most importantly—the people.

Host: Because the brand is already in customers’ heads. Why fight that?

Matt: Right. It resonates with founders, and we run a build-and-buy strategy, so that matters. But at some point there’s scale. For example, in Indianapolis we bought two companies within eight months. The founders lived in the same subdivision. One company was twice the size of the other, and the smaller founder basically said, “It’s okay—we can shutter my brand.”

Host: He doesn’t “win,” but he gets the logo for the wall.

Matt: Exactly.

Host: So what brands do you primarily go to market with?

Matt: Two main brands. One is a southeastern brand—Affinity Waste Solutions. The other is Greenway, primarily in the Midwest and extending west.

Host: And the others don’t exist anymore?

Matt: That’s right. Impact was one of the Indianapolis brands we shuttered. Pro Valet was a small operator in Texas—our first acquisition—which we integrated into Affinity. Since then we’ve done three more acquisitions, including one that closed Friday.

Host: You don’t look tired.

Matt: That one was actually the easiest. I’ve got stories about others that were… not.

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Private equity, valuations, and “hangover” dynamics

Host: In the private equity space, it felt like there was a lot of investment from about 2013 to 2018, then big surges around 2020 and 2022. From your seat, what are you seeing now—especially with valuations and the “valuation hangover” from cap rates and interest rates?

Matt: First, thanks for the invite. We’re adjacent to the waste industry—last-mile, you might say.

And the old joke is true: your business is worth what someone will pay for it. I do think there’s a hangover from interest rates, but it’s partly buoyed by the massive amount of capital sitting on the sidelines and the desire to put it to work.

If you looked at my inbox, you’d see a lot of desire. In the last 18 months, a lot of mid-market funds—upper and lower middle—have raised new funds. TPG raised a $5 billion fund, which is incredible.

Host: That’s a lot of money. What size deals are they chasing?

Matt: I think that fund is targeting $25 million to $50 million of EBITDA and above—so big deals.

Host: Chasing big stuff.

Matt: Exactly. We’re in a different bucket. Our fund is called the Discovery Fund—so we can afford to take some flyers and have a little fun.

Due diligence when keeping brands in-market

Host: When you keep a local brand instead of rolling everything into one national brand, what extra due diligence do you do to confirm the brand holds up locally?

Matt: One of the things we do as part of very prescriptive diligence is client interviews.

It can be a little tricky, because you don’t want to just ask the seller, “Which clients should we talk to?” But we do it anyway. If we get a portfolio list, we’ll pick a couple clients—some big, some small—to understand whether they only take care of large accounts or whether service holds up across the board.

And I’ll tell you—we narrowly escaped a terrible purchase by doing that. We called a client and she told us she hadn’t been able to reach the provider in months. She was actively trying to fire them. She was actually on that call.

So we didn’t do the deal.

Host: That got awkward fast.

Did you keep your camera on? Did you send her a thank-you gift?

Matt: We did, actually. It worked out well for us.

Host: It probably didn’t work out well for everyone—but the seller needed to know eventually.

Matt: Exactly. And talking to clients helps you understand their perspective on the value proposition. We’re slightly tech-enabled—not as much as your company—but those pieces matter when you can prove what you say and support the value proposition you’re selling.

What’s changed in valet trash over the last decade

Host: You’ve been at Carrier, Republic, and other adjacent businesses before Brightstep—trucks and parts, doorstep services. From your seat, what’s stayed the same, and what’s really different?

Matt: The service itself is essentially the same. I got into the valet business around the time we had our second child—he’s 13 now.

What’s changed is what we wrap around the service: technology, communication, speed, transparency. Those are the differentiators. We’re scaled—bigger than mom-and-pop—so we can invest in it.

And one of the biggest changes over 13 years is putting your money where your mouth is—showing what you say and proving it.

Simple things like: we hit every door. When we mess up, we admit it—and we prove we fixed it.

We track two big numbers: response time and resolution time. We hold ourselves accountable to those service levels. And we actively ask clients how we’re doing—leasing managers, maintenance managers, assistant property managers, property managers.

Host: Do you have to incentivize them to answer?

Matt: No. Our district service managers are on property and we have strong touchpoints. It’s a highly relational industry, and we think we have great relationships.

Adoption vs. competitive wins

Host: When we ran Sequoia—we used to run a waste tech company we sold in 2022—we got pulled into new construction conversations. Builders would ask: “Chute? Valet? What are we doing?” Valet wasn’t common in Pittsburgh then. I was trying to bring it here because of the NOI advantage and because you avoid putting in expensive chute infrastructure.

But adoption was hard: who wants to be first? It’s hard to start with a 50-unit building.

Matt: Totally. Fifteen years ago, a big part of our job was education and adoption. Today, the industry is highly adoptive—especially in certain asset classes. Class A properties love it. Honestly, nothing gets built today without valet.

Host: If we redesigned a building we did years ago, we probably wouldn’t include a chute.

Matt: Exactly.

Host: In your growth mix—roughly—how much is competitive wins versus bringing valet to buildings that don’t have it?

Matt: Roughly 60/40. We win new construction, and for the last five years there’s been plenty of it. It’s slowing now—permits are down, things are overbuilt in some places. But there will always be renovations, repositioning from C to B, new owners—so opportunity will still exist.

On the competitive side, this is a very fragmented submarket and service levels vary widely. That creates real competitive opportunity.

The “face of the brand” problem

Host: It’s similar to hauling: you can have a great GM, finance team, customer service team, HR—but the person walking the hallway is the face of your brand. The person taking the bin at 4:00 a.m. is the brand. How do you get that person invested enough to represent you positively?

Matt: That’s exactly right. It’s like the frontload driver at 2:00 a.m.—opens the enclosure, and hopefully closes it back up.

This work is relatively unsupervised and pretty autonomous. And we do it at night—our goal is not to be seen.

Sensors, proof-of-service, and failure modes

Host: Do you see a push toward sensors in your world?

Matt: It’s interesting you mention it. Ten years ago I worked with a container supplier on the idea of RFID. The idea was to show breadcrumbs: every container that was out, and proof it was serviced with a timestamp. At the time it felt like “we’re powering rocket ships”—like it would never happen.

But now there’s more opportunity for geolocation and breadcrumb-type tech. The question is whether you’re going to spend all that time reviewing it—or whether AI can help.

I also think about negative feedback loops: the technology works, you take pictures, you scan, you prove service—then the next night the app crashes. Now what?

A lot of people don’t think about that. Wi-Fi goes down—what happens? If you don’t have a plan, you don’t have a product.

At the end of the day, this is still a people business. If the phone doesn’t ring, you did your job well. Are people happy? Great.

Why Matt came to the Waste Nexus event

Host: As you look at this Waste Nexus event—smaller, more direct conversations—what drew you to it, and what are you looking to get out of it?

Matt: Keith invited me. I’ve known Keith for about 15 years. I was at Republic—he was in Austin, I was in Houston—and we overlapped a lot.

Keith joined your company as VP of Sales in the last year, and then he went into valet trash and worked for Trash Butler—one of our larger competitors. But it’s a friendly industry.

I like the idea of coming together to look at new technologies and learn what haulers are doing—maybe more tech-enabled than we are. I met Mike Mnoian on the way in—that’s kind of like an old home day. And the private equity folks here are interesting too. It’s a great chance to expand my network and see what’s cutting edge.

Host: It’s funny—when we launched this, Whitney and I had been talking about it forever. Then one day I just said, “We’re doing it.” Brian wanted to come through the phone at me.

Lightning round

Host: All right—lightning round. Generally one-word answers. Ready?

Matt: Let’s do it.

Host: Is the Pope Catholic?

Matt: Certainly is.

Host: Public company you’d want to run?

Matt: Maybe Carrier.

Host: If you could build your field of dreams—what sport?

Matt: Golf. I’d build a golf course.

Host: What time do you wake up?

Matt: Six.

Host: Reggie Miller or Tyrese Haliburton?

Matt: Tyrese. Sorry, Reggie.

Host: Ice cream or cake?

Matt: Neither.

Host: Same here.

Matt: Not a sweets guy. Give me a glass of wine—maybe a slice of cheese.

Host: That’s the podcast. Thanks for traveling out.

Matt: Thank you. This was great.

Host: Awesome.

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