The History of Mark Allan Contracting: 25+ Years, One Family, and What That Buys You
It started with a drive-thru window
Before there was a company, there was a window.
Early in his career, Mark Upchurch installed a single drive-thru window for a Domino's location. The work was good. The next job was bigger. Then bigger again. Working with Ganaway Contracting, Mark spent years building Domino's stores across the country — learning what it takes to deliver for a national brand that expects the same result in every market, on every site, every time.
That's the education this company was built on. Not theory. Repetition, standards, and showing up.
1999: Mark Allan Contracting
In 1999, Mark went out on his own. He founded the company with a business partner, Allan Burns — put their two first names on the door and got to work. Commercial projects across Georgia and the Southeast: restaurants, retail, office space.
Allan later moved on, and Mark became the sole owner. The name stayed. By then it wasn't two guys' first names anymore. It was a reputation.
[PHOTO: earliest available project or company photo — even a 2000s-era jobsite shot. If nothing exists, use an early completed storefront from records]
The second generation shows up
In 2006, Mark's son Justin joined straight out of high school. As a laborer.
No title, no shortcut. Justin carried material, then learned carpentry, then ran crews as a superintendent, then ran whole projects as a project manager. Today he's President and lead PM — and when you get an estimate from us, Justin is the one who built it and the one who answers when you call. Nearly twenty years on our jobsites will do that.
Adam, Mark's other son, came in out of college and saw the business differently — less from the field, more from where the work comes from. He left to test that instinct in the wider world: sales and marketing roles working with companies like Marketo and Adobe, then building a real estate business and an assisted living business of his own. In 2022 he came back full time to run growth and business development.
Working together wasn't an accident. It was the plan the whole time.
2020: revenue cut to a fifth
Heading into 2020, the work was steady — film industry projects and restaurant buildouts, two of the busiest corners of Georgia construction.
Then the pandemic hit, and both went to zero. Almost overnight, revenue fell to a fifth of what it had been.
We didn't lay the company down. We looked at where the work actually was: people stuck at home, investing in their houses while storefronts sat dark. So we took the same crews and the same standards and went residential. It kept our people working and the doors open. Some of our best reviews still come from those years.
The road back
Since bottoming out at $500K in sales in 2020, we've grown 40–60% every year — past $5 million in 2025, and on pace to match it in 2026 in a year that's been hard on a lot of our customers.
That growth came from going back to what we know best: commercial work. Tenant improvements. Restaurant and retail buildouts. Office renovations. Warehouse conversions. Projects from $50K to $500K across Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and South Carolina — including recent work for national brands like Olive Garden.
[PHOTO: recent CompanyCam shot — Gadsden Olive Garden or Austell clinic]
What 25+ years actually buys you
Companies our age like to talk about legacy. Here's what ours means in practice:
The person estimating your project has run jobsites for two decades. The person answering the phone has a last name that's on the building. And the standards came from a founder who learned the trade building for the most demanding repeat client there is — a national franchise that measured every store against the last one.
Three generations of lessons, one family, still building.
If you've got a commercial project in Metro Atlanta or the Southeast, call us. Justin or Adam picks up.