Most people these days are familiar with Uber, the app-based taxi substitute that provides transportation in many U.S. cities. Now thanks to the innovation of some of college kids, there’s a similar service available to help you when you move.
According to the Louisville-area news source Courier-Journal.com, Bellhops is an online service that basically hires nearby college kids in the areas to help you move items into or out of a location. Steven Wolf is one recent user of the app that the news site caught up with.
“It was exactly what I needed,” Wolf said a few days after using Bellhops. “I don’t know anybody here, and if I did, no one wants to burden friends with a move.”
One of the company’s biggest successes is knowing who they are and who it is they want to serve. Instead of getting involved in moving vans and trucks, Bellhops actually doesn’t even offer transportation equipment. As the name suggests, their business model relies on focusing on the niche of smaller moves and flexible service.
In other words, you need help getting a bunch of stuff from Point A to Point B, so they give you some college-aged muscle to get the job done.
By setting up the business like this, they’re able to keep costs low and affordable ($40 an hour), while also giving the college kids they employ a little extra spending money. At $15 an hour, many recent college grads don’t even get paid as much as Bellhops’ employees.
In the same way as businesses like Uber, Bellhops payment is done completely virtually via the app. When you consider the average American moves about 12 times in their lifetime, there’s certainly a lot of potential business available.
The company got its start on the campus of Auburn University’s summer orientation. With the mad rush that is the first weekend of college move-ins, the startup was able to get over 250 students and their families to try out their service.
“We found a huge demand with people who need small-scale help,” said Hudson Magee, Bellhops’ marketing manager.