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Tech

Doorman, the On-Demand Package Delivery Startup, Is Expanding to Chicago and NYC

The service allows users to schedule packages to be delivered at their convenience.
Rachel Pick
New York, US

E-commerce has made it easy to order just about anything to your home, but one problem tech still hasn't solved is making sure you actually receive your package.

Doorman, a startup that began operations in San Francisco in 2013 and is moving slowly eastward, aims to fix that. With Doorman, online retailers can ship your packages to a personal "address" that is actually a space within Doorman's warehouse. You can then schedule Doorman to deliver your packages whenever is convenient for you—from 6pm to as late as midnight.

After delivering more than 50,000 packages in San Francisco since 2013, Doorman is now also live in Chicago. Cofounder Zander Adell notes that "in urban areas, like Chicago, 20 percent of package deliveries fail on the first attempt. This number can be as high as 50 percent in certain zip codes." That's a pretty dismal statistic.

Doorman's next stop is New York, where residents face similar problems getting packages. (I am currently in a blood feud with my local post office, which is one of the most bleakly apathetic, Kafkaesque entities I have ever encountered.)

The service costs $3.99 per package, or you can pay $29 for a monthly subscription. It should also be noted that Amazon does allow users in select areas to ship packages to storage containers called Lockers that are located in third-party locations like convenience stores. Other startups, including Postmates and Instacart, do also allow users to schedule delivery at more convenient hours.