Postal Service adding branches in stores
In today’s shipping business, it’s easy to get your package to Singapore overnight if you’re willing to pay for it.
So being accessible to busy customers is the way to stand out.
FedEx partnered with Kinko’s to get into 24-hour stores. UPS teamed up with Mail Boxes Etc. and operates more than 5,600 locations worldwide.
Now, it’s the U.S. post office’s turn. The government isn’t planning to go 24/7, but it is trying to be more convenient. First it opened automated postal centers in some post office lobbies, and now it has licensed postal outlets inside retail stores.
Perhaps a throwback to the days of the general store, the state has 45 contract postal units, including three in the Triangle. The post office is considering another in the Brier Creek area in Raleigh.
Locations: In Debby’s Hallmark on Falls of the Neuse Road in Raleigh, the Cruizers gas station at 13250 New Falls of the Neuse Road in Wakefield, and the River Oaks Landing shopping center near Interstate 40 and N.C. 42 in Garner.
They are like miniature post offices, with official post office signs, packaging and an official blue mail-drop slot. A post office representative picks up the mail daily Monday through Saturday, and there are extended Saturday hours.
What you can do there: Most of what you can do at a regular post office, except
money orders, passports, post office boxes and overnight international mail.
The benefits: The post office pays for the equipment and training, but the store owner pays for construction and labor.
For the post office, the contract units cost $5,000 each, instead of millions of dollars, and they don’t require a land purchase. They’re quick to install, and they shorten lines at existing post offices.
For the store, the added service helps bring traffic, and potentially, sales. And for the customer, it’s easier to mail things.
Who makes money: The post office makes money selling items and postage to the shop owner, who sells them to the customers. The post office pays the owner a small percentage of the sales.
Those profits are usually eaten up by the need to hire more employees. Still, the owners who have installed the post offices say it’s a good move.
Will it catch on? It will with customers such as Sue Westmeyer, who lives near Debby’s Hallmark and visited the store last week for some anniversary cards. “I was going to go to the post office down the street, but my mother came over and said, ‘There’s stamps right here,’ ” she said.
