Hey, all you Soccer Moms out there! Tired of feeling like an Uber driver for your kids, shuttling them from school to practice, from playdate to home? Well, I have an answer and an app for you: VANgo
Launched last year by Connecticut native Marta Jamrozik, a newly minted Stanford MBA named as one of Forbes Magazine’s “30 Under 30” and herself the daughter of a working Mom, the concept is simple: a rides app for pre-teens and teens with drivers who know about child-care.
“All of our drivers are thoroughly vetted,” says Jamrozik. “They need to have at least three years of child-care experience, a clean DMV record, undergo a background check, fingerprinting, reference checks and even an inspection of their vehicle.” All drivers have company-provided insurance, too.
Right now VANgo is operating in Fairfield County and Phoenix AZ, but they hope to add two more cities this summer. Here in Connecticut they have 60 drivers who work part-time, averaging three to five rides a day. The service is available 6 to 8:30 am and from 2 to 10:30 pm, shuttling kids aged ten to eighteen from place to place.
Rides can be booked up to two weeks in advance or on as little as four hours notice. When the booking is accepted both parents and the kids receive a text with confirmation including the name of the driver, a photo, description of the car and ratings info on the driver.
Local trips start at $17 with a $2 discount for recurring trips. Pricing, says Jamrozik, is based on distance and time with the “vast majority” of the fee going to the driver.
“Our pricing is about 15% higher than Uber and Lyft,” she says but emphasizes that VANgo drivers are experienced with child care: 85% of them are Moms. But so far all the drivers are women… teachers, babysitters, nannies etc.
Unlike Uber, there is no “surge pricing”, raising rates when demand is unusually high. Tipping is allowed, via the app, and all charges are direct to the parents’ credit card so the young riders don’t have to carry cash.
One Mom from Pound Ridge NY who uses VANgo to get her kids to school in New Canaan every day says she loves the service. She has three kids on varying schedules and has to commute to Fairfield herself, so she tried to find a nanny who’d drop and pick-up her kids for five hours a week, but nobody wanted the split-shift gig.
She says the drivers are great and she’s reassured in knowing they’ve all been checked out. Booking in advance fits in with everyone’s routine and while she’s at work she gets peace of mind when she receives a text alerting her that her son’s been picked up and is heading home.
The drivers also like the gig. Fifty-six year old Christina, a grandmother herself, has been driving for nine months and loves the kids… especially their conversations. She wasn’t interested in driving for Uber doing airport runs and ferrying drunk folks home at 3 am, so VANgo was a perfect fit.
Founder Jamrozik says she may expand the service to include parents and the elderly, but for now she’s happy with the kids as her clients and their parents as customers.
Posted with permission of Hearst CT Media
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