Here's
how valet parking apps are going to take over the world
· by
JULY 1, 2015, 12:00 PM EDT
An emerging crop of
valet apps have big plans that don’t include just parking.
It’s
Friday night, you’ve gone out to celebrate a friend’s birthday, and lo and
behold, you’ve had one to many whiskeys. Driving home is now out of the
question.
Instead,
you pull out your smartphone and, a few taps and an hour later, a polite savior
in a blue jacket shows up at your car and drives you and your car home.
Last
week, valet parking app Luxe Valet unveiled new
service that does just that for San Francisco customers. Its
flagship service dispatches a valet that picks up a customer’s car in any
location and parks it in privately owned garages for a fee.
But as
good of an idea a designated driver service might be, what’s it have to do with
a valet parking service? A lot. In fact, it’s the first glimpse into what Luxe
and its small band of upstart competitors are likely plotting.
Sure,
Luxe and other similar valet services like Zirx, Caarbon, Vatler, and
ValetAnywhere are a luxury — even in big cities, where parking is a hassle. So
are the additional services they provide like washing cars in their care and
filling them up with a full tank of gas.
But the
same can be said of Uber’s original black town car service, which caters to
wealthier clients who wanted to ride in style. But it served as spring board to
all sorts of additional options for transportation including rides in basic
cars, SUVs and carpooling.
Other
on-demand services followed similar strategy of establishing a core business
and then branching out. Grocery delivery startup Instacart offers multiple
tiers of service based on speed while delivery service Postmates added a
special menu of restaurants it would deliver from for a flat $5 delivery fee in
certain cities.
And
that’s exactly what these parking apps will do — expand into other businesses.
A
couple of weeks ago, Redpoint Ventures partner Jamie Davidson explained to me
exactly this. Though Luxe, in which Redpoint invested, is currently focused on
its core — valet parking — there’s no reason why it won’t eventually add lower
and higher-end services, he said.
Last
fall, I also spoke with Mark Lawrence, co-founder and CEO of SpotHero, a
Chicago startup that lets customers book a parking spot in a garage or lot
through the app and park themselves, explained the same thing. His company is
sticking to self-serve parking right now, but it does happen to partner with
some parking lots that already have valet stands. In fact, Lawrence has
explored the idea of establishing valet service at temporary spots on street
corners — like what Vatler is doing — and valet services like Luxe and Zirx
that will pick up your car most anywhere and park it.
Self-service
parking could easily become the lower-end option. So while these apps are still
focusing on their core business, it’s only a matter of time before they start
to expand to other services.
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