Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Funeral home back to being locally owned, will continue to serve Austin

 

Austin’s oldest funeral home is now under local ownership.

Worlein Funeral Home owner, Tyler Hoff, has purchased Mayer Funeral Home and took over the business on April 27 of this year.

Hoff, who purchased Worlein in 2021, took over Mayer from Mahn Funeral Home in Rochester, a process that began after talking with Mahn co-owner and vice president Joe Mahn.

“‘If you’re interested, make me an offer and we can see where it goes,’” Hoff remembered Mahn telling him. “They are going through some restructuring on their staff and they are trying to keep things in more geographic pods and go more eastward.”

Hoff said the purchase of Mayer presented an opportunity for both Austin and the funeral home.

“It’s a good opportunity for us to make sure the community is still being served and Mayer Funeral Home is locally owned again,” Hoff said.

Hoff went on to explain that the move will allow staff to grow with the acquisition of Mayer and making the funeral home a good extension of what is already in place.

Mayer, which will continue acting as a separate entity from Worlein in terms of a business, will continue to have an office manager in Roberta Jones and will also have a director stationed at the funeral home during the mornings. Funeral directors currently at Worlein will also cycle through at Mayer.

Hoff also said that people can still reach Mayer through the phones and that eventually phones will be able to be answered anywhere between the two sites.

“Right now we’re good,” Hoff said. “The way we’re set up now, we’re looking for one more funeral director just to complete that rotation and get our staff up to what we think is a good management level for everybody.”

Hoff said that outwardly and inwardly, not a lot will change with the business other than to change the name to Mayer-Hoff Funeral Home.

“It’s just a good signal to the community that Mayer is still here, the building is still here, but things are going to change a little bit in how we offer stuff,” Hoff said.

While there will be no merger of the two funeral homes into one business, Hoff said he hopes for a synergy between the two that will allow for versatility on how they serve families.

“It’s going to mean more availability,” he said. “If you want to have a visitation at the funeral home this day, but it’s already booked by another family, we have another location a mile away we can also use.”

“You’re going to see a lot of synergies,” he continued and added: “It’s never going to say Mayer-Worlein-Hoff. It’s always going to be separate companies, but a lot of the same people on the back end.”

For now, the purchase of Mayer won’t mean a lot of changes, but in the future Hoff said that it will rely on customer suggestions to get a gauge on which direction they choose.

“Let’s operate as we can right now and as close to normal and see what our community feedback is and see what our client families are telling us,” he said. “I’m still learning every single day. We’re going to try and take things easy and do things as a group and as a community.”

“Overall, we just want everyone in the public to know that the building’s not going anywhere,” he continued. “We’re not going anywhere. We’re going to make sure everybody is being taken care of.”