THE NEXT BIG IDEA

Entrepreneur Brooks Gammill ’19 on his latest ventures: Grill Guys and RecruitU

By Megan Tady

Brooks Gammill has a grease fire to thank for inspiring his grill-cleaning franchise Grill Guys, now entering its fifth season. And he has his revenue from Grill Guys to thank for the seed money to invest in his latest venture, RecruitU.

In 2018, Gammill was visiting family in Nantucket, Mass., when his uncle’s grill caught fire during a barbecue. Gammill volunteered to clean the grill, and inspiration struck. He wondered if property owners around the island also needed their grills cleaned, especially before the busy rental season commenced.

Over the course of his senior year at Berkshire, Gammill—who already had a passion for entrepreneurship—launched Grill Guys, and during one spring weekend on campus he discovered he had 10 grills to clean back on Nantucket.

“I went back to Nantucket, and honestly, I didn’t like it,” he said. “It was a ton of hard work. It was brutal. And that first weekend, no joke, I remember being in the shower with tears coming down my face wondering what I had gotten myself into.”

Still, Gammill knew the business had legs, and over time he refined his system and invested in commercial equipment, biodegradable degreasers, and electrical cleaning tools. He was able to branch out to three other locations: Fairfield County, Conn., Westchester County, N.Y., and new to this summer, the Hamptons, N.Y. The enterprise is becoming a family affair, with brother Briggs ’20 managing Fairfield County and brother Boden ’22 managing Nantucket. Fellow Bear James Nemeth ’22 will run the Hamptons, and Julian Honts ’23, Nick Donaldson ’22, and Will O’Callaghan ’22 have joined the team this summer. Griffin Grisé ’20 and Patrick Murdock ’20 have also worked for the company.

While running Grill Guys, Gammill has been earning his economics degree at Trinity College. At the same time, he’s teamed up with a childhood friend, Wesley Farley, to launch RecruitU, a platform to make it easier for students to find and land jobs in finance—a process that typically relies on networks and often excludes nontarget schools.

“The process for recruiting out of college campuses into finance is very broken,” Gammill said. “Say I come from a school that doesn’t place well into Wall Street, and I have none of those connections. I don’t have the ability to even find those jobs. Essentially, we want to democratize this access by creating a one stop platform for all your recruiting needs to land that dream job.”

Gammill has had an entrepreneurial mindset since he was a kid, and working hard is in his DNA, instilled in him by parents Pam (a Berkshire Parent Committee member since 2013) and Ken Gammill, Jr. (a member of Berkshire’s Board of Trustees since 2020). He babysat, and he ran birthday parties and lacrosse clinics. When he was 13 years old, he set up a summer day camp in his backyard in New Canaan, Conn., with his older brother, Barclay ’16, and his mom, dubbing it Braveheart. All of the Gammill brothers helped run the camp for seven summers with seven counselors, enrolling up to 40 campers. He saved most of his earnings, which provided the capital to start Grill Guys.

“I didn’t know I was saving up for the next big idea, which is also what I’ve done with RecruitU,” he said. Gammill was also inspired by both of his uncles’ business savvy on Nantucket—one started a real estate company and the other a fishing charter business—and he often peppered them with questions about investing in the stock market and earning passive income.

And at Berkshire, Gammill took Advanced Economics, creating a composting business, “All in One Composting,” to compete for the

RecruitU will help finance students find and land jobs.

Sabin Entrepreneurial Prize. “A lot of entrepreneurship is being able to deal with a million things at once, but not let it stress you out,” Gammill said.

“The Sabin project really introduced me to that, and Berkshire in general heightened my awareness of what it feels like to have true responsibility for other people.”

Gammill’s advice for Bears who want to start a business: “Talk to people about your idea to figure out if it’s really a problem that needs to be solved.” But more important is the willingness to try. “You have to have the confidence that even if it doesn’t work, you tried, and that’s better than someone who talks about an idea and doesn’t try it. In terms of Grill Guys, I’ve tried selling hats, T-shirts, grill spices, grill spatulas, and barbeque catering. I’ve done all these little avenues to see if it was the next big thing. And some of them have done fine, and some of them haven’t worked. But that’s how I’m learning.” grillguysllc.com