Our History

In the late 1950s, Mr. Frank Oddo was working for his father in the family’s grocery store, where they struggled to find reliable cleaners in the evenings. That pain point drove Mr. Oddo to do something about it – which ultimately led to the birth of City Wide Maintenance in 1961.

City Wide began as a typical janitorial service company by employing all the workers and providing “just the basics.” However, as time went on, City Wide received requests to provide more services and in response, Mr. Oddo became a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. Unfortunately, management was spending their time recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and counseling minimum wage employees instead of managing client relationships.

Mr. Oddo’s second son, Jeff, graduated from Kansas State University in 1988 with an engineering degree and construction background, opening the door for change. In 1996 Jeff took over as the active president, and over the years his position evolved to the CEO and owner role that he holds today. Jeff is credited with redirecting the company onto a path that would come to set City Wide apart in the building maintenance world through its breadth of service offerings, efficient and innovative approach to the provision of services, and outstanding customer service standards.

Company lore credits Mr. Cho, City Wide’s first bona fide independent contractor, with the adoption of the independent contractor model. The decision to use independent contractors transformed City Wide from a traditionally staffed operational company to a sales and management company, and it helped City Wide’s clients view the company as an extension of the client’s management team rather than another vendor. This shift paved the way for exponential growth.

Jeff changed the model from a traditional janitorial company to a sales and management company focused on the building maintenance industry. By managing the services requested by a facility, instead of performing these services ourselves, City Wide is able to focus on and represent the client, thus reducing the stress and time associated with managing multiple vendors and services.

Taking the advice of Tom Hill, Jeff launched a franchising expansion plan in 2001 to share its success with others beyond Kansas City. Due to City Wide’s growing success, and with a desire to help others, Jeff identified a way to replicate the model. After successfully franchising the business model, City Wide now has nearly 70 locations across the U.S. and Canada, with aspirations of 166 locations by 2028. Over the course of 60 years, City Wide has grown from cleaning one building of less than 500 square feet, to managing more than 400 million square feet of commercial space every day.