Our 2023 Business Award Winners Are…

Best HVAC Company | Best Contractor | Statewide Winner and Best of Treasure Valley

One cold and stormy night years ago in the Treasure Valley, things had gotten dire. The phone lines stayed busy as calls kept coming in for emergency repairs, but technicians at Diamond Heating and Cooling were entirely booked.

As the storm progressed and the cold deepened, they were unable to keep up with the demand and were forced to schedule some repairs for the next day.

One customer in particular was entirely without heat. Diamond couldn’t get to her that night. The soonest they could help her would be in the morning.

She set the appointment for the morning, but called back a little bit later because another company could get to her sooner.

Diamond canceled the appointment but told the client, “Hey, if the other company tells you that you need expensive repairs or a new system—anything like that—please at least call us to get a second opinion.”
The next day, she called for the second opinion. The other company said she needed an entirely new system. The Diamond technician went in to give that second opinion.

The problem? Her thermostat needed new batteries.

Turning the Tide, Changing Minds

Back in 2009, Rick and Sue Ellen turned the focus of Diamond Heating and Cooling to servicing residential clients.
Prior to that, the business had been focused on new construction. With the new angle, their immediate goal was to change the way contractors in their industry were regarded—they wanted to build trust back into the expectations and experiences of their clients.

They knew it was an uphill battle, but they didn’t balk at the challenge. From the outset Rick and Sue Ellen have striven to hold their brand to strong standards.

Sue Ellen says, “It’s been tough building that trust, but we’re so dedicated that, sadly, we’ve had to let people go in the past for not sticking to our standards.”

One of the ways Diamond demonstrates their commitment to being a trustworthy company is to offer free second opinions on all major repairs.

If another company says a compressor is bad or a unit needs to be entirely replaced, a Diamond technician will go out and check to make sure the part or unit truly is bad. They do this free of charge, provided a competitor’s bid has been presented to a client.

Apprenticeships and On-the-Job Training

As a trade industry, HVAC technicians are well paid and enjoy a constant demand for their work.
However, it’s not always easy for up-and-coming job seekers to even know where to begin to get into the trade. Never to be deterred, Diamond has built a full training facility so that they can bring in new technicians.
They also offer one-month paid apprenticeships so that prospective technicians can discover for certain that they want to enter the full apprenticeship program.

There’s a lot of on-the-job training, riding out to jobs with technicians to see what it’ll be like. By the time a technician is a journeyman—about four years into it—the techs at a place like Diamond make anywhere from $70K to $90K a year.

If there’s one thing that the past three years have taught us, it’s that we always need to be ready to change course and adapt. Diamond has made a point of implementing new ways of doing things to keep up with the desires of their clientele.

That’s why Diamond recently added electrical to services they offer their clients. Through constant dialogue with their customers, they knew this was something their clientele wanted.

The evidence is there when you look for it. The folks at Diamond Heating and Cooling pay attention and listen, and they’ve established a brand with unexpectedly strong trust through a values- and people-driven approach in an industry that has often been seen as dishonest, complicated, and baffling.

Best Seafood Restaurant | Statewide Winner and Best of Treasure Valley

Though the gem of Boise’s seafood joints, Fresh Off the Hook, has been around since 1996, Gary Andrew bought it in 2021.

Was that crazy? Everyone told him it was.

After talking to him, I have to say they were wrong. “I’ve owned a lot of businesses, and I don’t say that to brag. Some have been successful and some have not,” Gary said as he talked with me about his restaurant. “The number one thing I’ve learned in all of them is that all businesses are people businesses. Our main objective is to make sure [guests] have a really pleasant experience—that when they sit down, they’re treated kindly and get a meal. When they leave the restaurant, they should just be feeling good. And food is only part of that.”

From Laundromats to Real Estate to Restaurants

Gary has been in the Treasure Valley his whole life. He’s passionate and animated in conversation, and right away I can see why he’s so successful—though according to him, not all his businesses have been.
He has owned a lot of them, from wholesale lumber to real estate development and laundromats.
In 2021, in an attempt to reduce stress, he sold everything and retired. He was going to slow down, he said.
I’d known him for about ten minutes, but I could tell that slowing down and not having a business wasn’t going to look good on him.

It wasn’t! His retirement lasted six weeks.

He’d heard about Fresh Off the Hook because his mother-in-law eats there all the time. So, he met with the founder of the restaurant and bought it on the spot. His friends said he was nuts. Remember this was in 2021 and the restaurant industry was suffering. But Gary had never owned a restaurant. It was going to be an adventure, a chance to learn something new.

Not a Franchise and Seriously Fresh 

There’s so much to love about this restaurant, and Gary sees it. More than anything, he’s incredibly proud of and impressed with his team.

“The first time I went to the kitchen, it happened to be a busy night and I watched a cook as he worked,” he explained. “I’ve never seen multitasking like I’ve seen in a cook on a busy night. It was amazing to watch Sean. When the night was done, I told him he had a real talent.”

Gary is quick to let me know that the restaurant was already amazing when he bought it, and so he only made a few changes. His desire is to continue to emphasize the communal, familial feel of the restaurant and extend that ambiance and warmth to their guests.

And the name really says it all: their food really is fresh.

There have been a lot of transplants to the Treasure Valley from the coast. It’s always flooring to Gary and the rest of the staff when someone tells them their seafood is better than anything they ever ate in Seattle. But that happens regularly.

“Our menu has always been excellent,” he explains. “It’s a little gem.”

And Gary loves that it doesn’t have a franchise vibe, that it’s one of a kind, and that the only overlords they answer to are the health department. You really can’t beat that.

I’ve been landlocked my entire life. Have never really been into seafood, honestly. But Gary’s enthusiasm about his restaurant and the class of it all makes me ready to try out whatever their best dish is, personally.

For me it’s easy to say that with an establishment like this, I’m rooting for their continued prosperity and growth.
“My people know that success to me is not just about the bottom line. And as a result, we are seeing numbers at this restaurant that haven’t been seen since it opened in 1996.”

Totally deserved!

Best Car Wash | Best of Panhandle

Bill Martin and I connected over the phone, chatting for a while about his lifelong love affair with car washes. As the founder and owner of Metro Express car washes, Bill is proud to share with me insights into the family business. Each of Bill’s grown kids runs a Metro Express car wash, located in Missoula and Boise, but the company footprint stretches from Missoula to Coeur D’Alene and Spokane.

Bill has been in the car wash business since his days in Kansas City, MO, when he first began working at a car wash in 1969. It wasn’t till 1974 that he opened his own car wash. But Bill wasn’t fated to live forever in Kansas City, and he sold that business and moved to Boise in 1981.

Once Bill landed in Boise he opened Nu-Look car wash. The name was very fitting for the time period, with that German krautrock flare. It remained Nu-Look until he launched the Metro Brand in 2004.

Family Values and Customer-Focused

Metro Express Car Wash is the dream of what an express car wash can be—their website is sleek and user-friendly. They make it easy to manage your subscription if you opt for that. Their family story is right there on the page, and like so many of the best businesses around, Metro Express puts the customer first.

In our conversation, Bill’s values — which have established Metro Express as one of the best car washes around — are unmistakable. He and his family value grit and service, and they are very customer-centric.

There’s something about the car wash industry. I noticed in talking to Bill that it’s all about sharing knowledge and mentorship.

Any car wash I mentioned up and down the cities along the Rocky Mountains, Bill knew. He knew the owners, he knew their stories, and usually he knew about their successes or if they’d gone out of business.

He talked of his mentors, but he also talked of people he’d mentored—not only his kids, but others to whom he owed nothing. When he spoke of other car wash owners in the industry, he did it with grace and class that I found very refreshing.

Environmentally Aware — Even Friendly — Car Washes

But what about washing a car during a drought? This is a hard question, but we can’t avoid it considering where we live.

Metro Express recycles 80 percent of the water used. This means their facilities are built from the bottom up with water filtration systems in mind, and it also means that there has always been conscientious thought about the environmental impact driving their design from the beginning.

Today, car washes are many times more efficient than they were twenty years ago. Bill explains that a car wash used to need a lot of help to make sure it could get a car clean, often using manual labor. But with applied chemistry and better equipment and facilities, car washes today require less to do more.

What about do-it-yourself? Or in your driveway with a garden hose?

“All the runoff water with the dirt and stuff that comes from your car in our carwashes?” Bill answered. “That gets treated in the city sewer before it goes back into the aquifers. But water washed away in your driveway goes straight into the river without treatment.”

It’s clear from our conversation that there’s still room for growth. Right now Metro Express is building a new facility that will be outfitted with solar panels. The up-front cost is massive, but Metro Express hopes to be a leader in applying forward-thinking tech to the industry.

“They’re very expensive, but we just think it’s the future. If it’s beneficial, it’ll be something we always do for our car washes,” Bill said.

Metro Express currently has 11 locations. By the end of 2022, they’ll have 15. With values like theirs, I don’t see why they shouldn’t have at least 20more car washes.

Idaho’s Best New Mexican Restaurant

There aren’t enough Mexican restaurants actively elevating one of the finest cuisines in the world to 11. You know, on the dial (to paraphrase Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap). Taking anything to 11 is a prerequisite for achieving greatness. Before breaking through whatever leveling up system you have, you must first go to 11.

Mexican food touches all the buttons in a person that food can possibly touch: it is comfort, spice, familiarity, family, love, hope, and excitement distilled into cuisine. One might even argue that so much of what we discover in it that tastes heavenly is the flavor of the desert, the sea, the mountains, the fields, the sky, and the rain.
Is it possible to overstate how loved and admired Mexican food is in the western United States? Probably not. It is interlaced through all that we do, and we like it that way. In fact, we want more of it.

What’s great about Tuesday? Tacos. What’s the best way to eat cheese? Nachos. Which cocktail personifies summer? Margaritas. What can I do with a cactus? Eat it in a molcajete.

And last … is there a way to blow your mind by re-envisioning something that we might have taken for granted? Yes.

Let’s start by saying the word Barbacoa, Idaho’s Best Restaurant. Then let’s up the ante with three new words: Coa De Jima.

Mexican Food Is Family

Coa De Jima is the result of two passionate visionaries when it comes to Mexican food: Nikolai Castoro and Chef Enrique Martinez.

Elegant, beautiful, and influenced by the phenomenal Barbacoa—where Nikolai learned the restaurant business as the son of Robert and Martine Castoro—this restaurant is the peak of upscale Mexican food in Boise. Together, Nikolai and Enrique built something that is furthering the landscape of what we can expect in the realm of Mexican cuisine. They’ve forged a unique menu that’s both delicious and jaw-dropping, complementing dishes with equally delectable one-of-a-kind hand-crafted cocktails.

Martine herself has overseen the design and development of this oasis in downtown Boise, tucked into the charming historic district. What is done here stems from the desire to educate others while also exploring the frontiers of Mexican cuisine, bringing the past into the future and fusing it with modern tastes for a mouth-watering menu.
Don’t expect a Barbacoa knock-off, though. Approach Jima with the understanding that the experience will be unique as well as delicious.

When You Know, You Know

The past two or three years have been fraught with risk and fears about the survival of businesses. But there have also been brave souls who stepped into the unknown and took risks. Many of these new businesses have not just flown — they’ve soared.

Jima is an example of passionate restaurant owners taking the chance on developing something new and not balking at the risks. But one of the restaurant’s advantages is the legacy of its founders.

As a family that knows the restaurant business very well, Nikolai, the Castoros, and Chef Enrique Martinez know just what to do to get this bird off the ground, where she can soar.