Why entrepreneur Chase Mullin expanded his company into Baton Rouge

Since Chase Mullin founded his eponymous landscape company in 2007, he hasn’t shied from thinking big.

As Business Report writes in its latest issue, the New Orleans-based firm specializes in commercial and industrial projects, earning $23.5 million in annual revenue and employing a team of 250. It invested $1 million in a second location that opened in Baton Rouge last April and has a third location planned for Lafayette in 2026.

A UNO alum, Mullin launched the business at age 22, finding inspiration in landscaping’s role in post-Katrina rebuilding. His company’s initial focus was residential installation and maintenance.

“My vision of what a landscaping company could do at that point did not stretch very far beyond that,” Mullin says.

But within the first year, that changed. Mullin visited Grunder Landscaping, a large landscaping firm in Dayton, Ohio, that had positioned itself as an industry model. During a formal field trip, Mullin was moved by the company’s fleet of branded vehicles, uniformed employees and multimillion-dollar profits.

“I knew within five minutes of showing up, that that’s exactly what I wanted to build,” he says.

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