MANHATTAN — If New Yorkers pay to have their meals delivered and for other people to do their laundry, why can't they pony up for someone to hold their packages?
That's the question entrepreneur J.R. Yujuico, 31, asked himself before he co-founded a new mail delivery service that lets residents of the Village and surrounding neighborhoods have their packages sent to local delis, shops and Laundromats.
Customers of Village Doorman, which launched in mid-August, pay the company $4 to have a package received by a local business. When the package comes in, Village Doorman calls, emails or sends the customer a text message confirming the arrival. Packages picked up late accrue additional charges if they are left at stores for more than two days.
"New Yorkers will definitely pay for convenience," Yujuico said. "It doesn't make sense for someone who's working to stay home to receive packages, and having them sent to your office is sometimes looked down upon."
People who do have packages sent to their workplaces can use Village Doorman to avoid lugging their pieces home on the subway, Yujuico said.
The company split profits with participating businesses, and boasts of bringing new customers into stores.
So far, Village Doorman has 17 package pickup locations in the West Village, East Village and on the Lower East Side, including SoHo Grocery in NoHo, Brown Bag Laundry in Greenwich Village and Hudson Gourmet in the West Village.
James Erath, owner of Puppy Love & Kitty Kat pet groomer and dog-walking service in the East Village, said he agreed to receive packages for Village Doorman customers because he already let locals use his shop as a delivery site.
"[Village Doorman] made it a lot easier for me, plus I get a little bit of money out of it," he said.
Yujuico, a Palo Alto, Calif., native, and co-founder Adham Zaki, who hails from Cairo, Egypt, met at an international school in the Philippines and later worked for Goldman Sachs. They left their jobs in 2008 to become entrepreneurs and founded an outsourcing firm, Yujuico said.
The company aspires to have a location on every other block in the Village and eventually cover the entire city.
