With a background in food service, strip mall management and truck driving, there was no hint that one day Marc Provenzano would be involved in the portable sanitation and wedding industries. But for six years the 62-year-old has been renting out two portable restroom trailers during the May through November wedding season, servicing Connecticut and parts of New York, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. He operates his business, White Glove Restrooms, out of his home in Milford, Connecticut.
Provenzano’s prior skills proved useful to the enterprise. He’s organized, detail oriented and good with people. “I felt I could provide a superior service,” he says. “I’m smaller, I’m hands-on, I’d had 30 years of business experience, I knew how to interact with clients and I was very laser-focused on cleanliness and presentation.”
ENTREPRENEUR TO UNION MAN
When Provenzano graduated from high school in the 1970s, his father, Albert Provenzano, said he’d either pay for college or set him up in a business. “My father was an entrepreneur and I saw how he lived his life,” Provenzano says. “It was hard work, but I thought, I can sign up for this.”
He started with a deli/catering business in the strip mall his father had built, later added a laundromat, then in 1990 followed in his father’s footsteps and built his own strip mall and put in a pizzeria — and on the side managed property and fixed and flipped houses (about one a year). By 2004 he was still managing property but had sold all the businesses.
A chance encounter at a bar a few years later led him in a very different direction. He heard the Teamsters were hiring drivers to move equipment for movie sets in the state. Provenzano had a commercial driver’s license and decided to take the opportunity.
“It was a whole different lifestyle,” he says. “I’m an entrepreneur so I like to think for myself and do things in the most productive way. In a union situation, that thought process works against you.” But it was a blessing in disguise, he says, because it gave him health insurance and, with three daughters, he needed it.
When that fizzled out after about five years, he went to work for UPS. The job was seasonal so, in looking for additional work, he came across a portable restroom company seeking drivers for its restroom trailers. “That’s where I was introduced to the nuts and bolts of the portable sanitation business,” he says. “I was never in a restroom trailer in my life before that.”
He only did that for a couple months during the summer of 2014, but it got the wheels turning — mostly because of everything the company did wrong.
“It gave me thinking points of how could I do this better,” he says. “It looked to be a fairly easy business model compared to my other businesses and it was enjoyable because people were glad to see you and you’re going to weddings and events.” After analyzing the financial and business aspects, he decided to give it a go.
GETTING STARTED
Provenzano began putting things in place in late 2014 so he’d be ready to go for the 2015 wedding season. He bought a four-stall Porta-Lisa from JAG Mobile Solutions and sent an introductory email to wedding planners in Connecticut. Using GoDaddy he set up a website — which was a struggle, he admits.
“It just wasn’t my cup of tea as far as getting the proper verbiage and putting the pictures in there and making something that doesn’t look like a third-grader did it.” It took about 10 days before he was satisfied with the results. But he had designed it on a desktop, and some time later it was brought to his attention that it wasn’t formatting properly on cellphones — which is what his target market, the 20- to 35-year-olds, uses. At that point he called GoDaddy and they fixed the problem.
He did about 18 jobs in 2015, enough to give him confidence and to justify ordering a second trailer, this time a two-stall Porta-Lisa (after having turned down a number of weddings requesting a two-stall). In 2016, he did 60 weddings.
MAKING IT SPECIAL
Soap and paper towels were the only “amenities” Provenzano’s prior employer provided in their trailers, which he thought was underwhelming for a wedding. His are stocked with toiletries and hygiene products such as body sprays, perfumes, hairspray, mouthwash, deodorant. (“The dollar store is my friend — that and Amazon.”) His deodorizer products and scent rings are from J&J Chemical.
He also likes to create a lovely setting. His Porta-Lisa interiors are from the JAG Cottage series, which features wainscoting, crown molding and wood-grain floors. He adds flowers, scenting and background music. “No matter what you’re selling somebody, or what experience you’re providing for them, you can always put the extra effort into differentiating yourself,” he says.
Initial contact with the client is through email and phone. As for pricing, he says he’s not the most or least expensive. “I present value at my cost that people understand. I really don’t have many people haggling with me.” Provenzano delivers the trailers Thursday or Friday for weekend weddings and picks them up Sunday or Monday. The clients turn everything on at the day of the wedding using his simple checklist.
Provenzano says the trailers are fairly easy to maintain and he does it himself — he checks the air pressure in the tires, replaces the brakes when needed and changes the flush valves on the toilets every three years.
CUSTOM ALL THE WAY
Initially Provenzano used other vendors to pump out his trailers, but soon realized it would be more efficient to have his own vacuum truck. He planned the design down to the square inch. First stop was Bald Hill Dodge in Rhode Island to buy a 2016 Dodge Ram 3500 dually with four-wheel drive, plus a white paint job to match the trailers and the company name. They then took it to B.H. Trailers and Plows who added a 9.5-foot truckbed from CM Truckbeds, custom underbody storage boxes and a backup camera.
Then he had to work out the tanks. Saving space was critical. He made a diagram of the flatbed and worked out everything. He had ITI Trailers & Truck Bodies build a custom stainless steel slide-in waste tank. He figured 300 gallons would enable him to do two weddings of 100 to 150 people per weekend. The Conde (Westmoor) Super 6 Power Pak pump has vacuum and pressure capability he wanted.
“I didn’t know if I’d ever need pressure,” he says. “But it has come in handy when occasionally you get a blockage, which could just be a buildup of toilet paper — or, one time, a miniature bottle of Southern Comfort. If you have to disconnect the hose, it’s messy. With the pressure you’re able to blow everything back into the tank and clear the line.”
Lastly, Macy Industries built a custom 170-gallon rectangular aluminum freshwater tank. That left room on the back of the truck for carrying equipment, such as his Honda ultra-quiet 3,000-watt generator. “It all worked out very well to make an efficient use of space so I can carry everything I need and be self-contained within the truck,” he says.
KEEP IT SIMPLE
Weddings only. Provenzano says he did not go into this business wanting to be everything to everybody. He thought weddings looked like the cream of the crop. Marketing is simpler and more focused. Trailers don’t get beat up as they might at other events. The value of focusing on one thing goes back to his deli days, he says.
“I learned the more items you have on your menu, the less efficient you are and the less money you make on each dollar you sell. It makes it easier to run the business the way the clients are happy with because I’m not all over the map with who I rent to.”
No employees. Provenzano says he turns down work and could easily support eight trailers, but that would require employees and he’s adamant he wants to run this business as a one-man show. To pull that off, he relies on event staffing agencies to provide attendants (contracting directly with the client) and a couple of self-employed ladies to clean the trailers after each use per his detailed instructions.
Handicap needs. Provenzano didn’t feel he could justify the cost of a wheelchair-accessible trailer but does provide a wheelchair-accessible portable restroom sourced from another vendor on infrequent occasions when one is needed. He maintains strict standards for their quality and cleanliness.
NEXT CHAPTER
Provenzano enjoys the wide range of beautiful and interesting wedding venues — oceanfront property, family farms in the hill country, museums, vineyards, even an indoor horse arena.
At Lighthouse Point Park in New Haven, weddings take place at a gazebo on the beach with the ocean as a backdrop, then guests can go inside and ride a restored 1800s carousel. An airplane hangar at the Danbury airport features 1940s planes hanging from the ceiling. He had his doubts about a rock quarry, he says, but it turned out to be wonderful.
“It was in upstate Connecticut on top of a mountain with a large side of it cut out because they’d been taking granite out of it for 40 years. They put up a tent, had it catered, put in parking. The views were absolutely gorgeous.”
The 2020 COVID year was a mixed bag for Provenzano. There were many cancellations (he refunded 100%), but he also picked up some weddings that were originally too large for his services but had been scaled down. In fact, Provenzano thinks weddings of the future may be smaller, a trend he started seeing even before the virus. He also thinks it’s possible COVID may permanently scare people from having tight gatherings, opting instead for larger tents.
Provenzano says he’s not at the end of the tunnel just yet but does want to start thinking about retirement options in the next three or four years. But he likes to keep busy and can only do so much fishing, he says. One idea he’s floating around is licensing his business model to other portable restroom companies so others can benefit from his experience.
This has been the most enjoyable and stress-free business Provenzano has owned. He loves it and says he gets really fired up by the compliments.
“There’s not too many nuts and bolts doing this compared to the other businesses I had. I found my little niche that works for me and I’m excited and proud what I, by accident, fell into but made work.”
