RALEIGH – Need someone to take care of your yard? Don’t want to deal with screening providers? There’s a new app in Raleigh to help you find help.
GreenPal, a startup based in Nashville, launched its service in Raleigh on Tuesday with numerous lawn care providers signed up to bid for projects.
GreenPal
The app gathers information about customers’ yards, including Google street and aerial images, and allows providers to bid for the job.
Customers pay for the service through the app, and GreenPal collects a 5 percent fee.
“Every year, we evaluate what areas GreenPal had homeowners signing up but did not operate in. Raleigh was one market that we knew we needed to launch in early 2018 due to those homeowner sign ups,” co-founder Gene Caballero tells WRAL TechWire.
“Currently, there are over 20 local Raleigh vendors signed up to use GreenPal to grow their businesses.”
GreenPal has been referred to as the “Uber of lawn care.”
“In some instances, lawn care can be done same day,” Caballero says. “There are several occasions in which homeowners have listed their lawns and gotten it serviced in less than a few hours. That certainly depends on what time of day the homeowner picks and how flexible the vendor’s schedule is.”
More than 2,000 vendors already utilize GreenPal across 23 other markets, and 50,000 consumers have signed up for the service, he adds.
In fact, GreenPal’s launch in Charlotte last year helped set the stage for the expansion to Raleigh.
“We actually launched our service in Charlotte last year and it has been one of the fastest growing markets,” Caballero says. “We feel that our launch in Charlotte has directly contributed to the number of homeowner signs up in Raleigh last year.”
Gene Caballero
Here’s how the system works, as explained by Caballero:
“For vendors, it is free to sign with GreenPal and free to bid on all the properties. When a homeowner decides to hire a lawn care company, they are prompted to enter in their credit card information–this just confirms the appointment and nothing is charged.
“When a vendor has finished the work, he then takes one pic of the completed lawn, uploads that through GreenPal and that goes to the homeowner for approval. When the homeowner approves, the funds are transferred to the vendors bank account minus our 5%. The 5% is the only fee that GreenPal receives.”
The firm’s growth comes from its approach of making convenience for both consumer and vendor, Caballero points out.
“We provide the easiest and most convenient way for homeowners to sign up and get quotes for their lawn,” he says.
“With that being said, lawn care professionals love our platform because we are the first true operating system for their industry and don’t charge a membership fee or a fee to bid. GreenPal handles their demand creation, scheduling, route optimization, and payment processing. Coming from a landscaping background, we knew the pain points that needed to be addressed to make our app successful and keep the vendors happy.”
GreenPal has a few competitors that focus on lead generation but not an end-to-end solution, Caballero says.
“[O]ur biggest competitor is still the status quo,” he adds. “Most homeowners do not realize that they can get bids from multiple local vendors from their smartphone.”
