The Coon family and the Byron shop
Call the Raccoon.
Raccoon is founder Rick Coon’s own nickname, not a mascot. In the 2003 trade profile that tells this shop’s story, he said that somebody will tell people who do not even know his name, “Call the Raccoon; he’ll get it right.” The shop has been answering that call from Byron ever since.
- Registered
- Georgia, 9 December 1998
- Rated on Google
- 4.6 from 43 reviews
- Profiled
- Stone Business, December 2003
From the shop’s history
A mason, a Harley sold for a saw, and a backyard in Warner Robins.
Everything in this ledger comes from Stone Business magazine’s “Fabricator Focus” profile and from Georgia’s business records. Read it as the history of the shop, not as a description of today’s equipment or headcount.
- The trade
- Rick Coon came up as a mason. First brick and concrete block, then ceramic tile, then setting stone. When Stone Business profiled the shop in December 2003, he had thirty years in masonry behind him.
- The first saw
- He sold his 1948 Harley-Davidson to pay for his first skill saw and an 8-foot rail saw.
- The first shop
- The backyard of the couple’s home in Warner Robins. The magazine wrote that he would come inside “with his beard frozen solid from working away on winter nights.”
- The move
- A commercial lot in Byron, near Interstate 75, picked because people could drive to it from both Warner Robins and Macon. The shop and showroom were built on that lot, and the shop is still there, on the GA-247 Connector.
- On paper
- Raccoon Stone and Tile Works LLC was registered in Georgia on 9 December 1998.
Rick had been called Raccoon for more than thirty years by then, and every business he had run carried the name. That is why the business is Raccoon and not Coon. If you want to see what the saw turned into, the services page walks a job from the yard to the install.
Finished tops
Four jobs, pinned up side by side.
A porch bar, a corner vanity, a kitchen counter and a wet bar. Different rooms and different stone, cut by the same shop.
The stone yard
The reason people drive to Byron is standing outside.
In 2003 Rick Coon said of the slabs: “I want to have enough material so they can walk through and look at full slabs.” That plan became the yard. Today the shop’s own Facebook page says it has served central Georgia for 26 years and invites people to “Come browse our full stone yard and meet our team!”
Customers notice the difference. Michael Evangelo wrote in a Google review that other companies in the area have little 1 foot square blocks to look at, and some send you up to Atlanta where they buy their slabs, while Raccoon has the full slabs at the shop. The stone you stand in front of is the stone that gets cut, which is also the idea behind everything on the services page.
Who you deal with
Mary Coon’s method, and the person customers name today.
Before she joined the business, Mary Coon spent more than twenty years at Warner Robins city hall. Rick said of her in 2003: “She’s awesome with putting kitchens together.” Her own method was plain. “I don’t try to tell them what they want.” She asked, and she kept a file on each customer after their first visit. In 2003 she held memberships in the local chamber of commerce and the homebuilders’ association, and the shop is still listed with the Robins Regional Chamber.
“When they come to the door, I know who they are.”
The same habit shows up in 2025 Google reviews, where customers name Connie, the person they work with in the showroom when choosing a material and pattern. Helga Leahy wrote, “Dealing with Connie was a pleasure.” Ronald Hancock wrote about having kitchen and bathroom tops replaced in a mobile home, and thanked Connie and the crew. Rick said in 2003: “There won’t be strangers coming around.”
2347 GA-247 Connector, Byron
Come see the yard and meet the people who cut the stone.
The shop is open Mon-Fri 8am-5pm. Bring rough sizes if you have them, and see how a job runs on the services page before you come.