ATLANTA — It was Yusuf Lewis' junior year at Morehouse College when he first had the idea of creating a cleaning service business.
It was around the time that COVID-19 had hit and Lewis was trying to book a cleaning service, a process he found to be complicated. After his experience, Lewis wanted to find a way to make this interaction easier for people, and in his senior RefreshCoAtl was officially launched.
Lewis originally had plans to work at a consulting firm after graduating college. It was when things didn't go as planned that Lewis changed course.
"I was kind of in a pivotal moment, thinking like, 'Okay, am I going to spend my senior year in college looking for another job, preparing for interviews, still finishing classes, or am I going to build my own thing?' You know? So I decided to jump the parachute on the way down and build RefreshCo," said Lewis.
Since that day his senior year, Lewis has been in the cleaning industry and he's been able to bring technology to the service.
"It's an industry where technology necessarily hasn't taken over fully and so there's a lot of companies that are dealing with phone calls and it's pretty much just like face-to-face interaction when trying to schedule a service," said Lewis.
RefreshCoAtl allows its users to schedule a cleaning service in 60 seconds online. They can choose to have their entire space deep cleaned or just a specific room.
Lewis' main goal with RefreshCoAtl is to make his clients' lives easier by offering customizable cleaning services paired with a stress-free way of booking them. He wanted to give time to his clients.
"They can go and spend their time doing like all the other important things that they have to do or take their time for themselves, taking the time to spend time with their kids," said Lewis.
Although RefreshCo was not Lewis' original plan, he has always found himself to be an entrepreneur at heart.
Throughout college, Lewis ran Sole Snatchers, a sneaker resale business, and was able to bring a sneaker event to campus at Morehouse his sophomore year.
Lewis has put his sneaker resale business on hold to focus fully on RefreshCoAtl.
In the future, Lewis wants to see his business grow out of Atlanta and move towards every major city.
"Just go to every major city because there are people who need cleaning all over the world and I see that being possible for RefreshCo," said Lewis.