Rent-A-Grandma? Nothing like 'experience,' firm says.
Rent-A-Grandma provides child care in Los Angeles. Now, it's starting to franchise Rent-A-Grandma around the United States.
Despite the coaxing of grandmother Margarita Rivera, Dylan Galvan, 15 months, couldn't get away from two dragons fast enough during the Children's Day/Book Day event April 30, 2011, in El Paso, Texas. A Los Angeles company, Rent-A-Grandma, is capitalizing on grandmothers' experience by hiring them for child care and has a tentative franchisee in Texas.
Victor Calzada/El Paso Times/AP/File
A Los Angeles-based employment service that specializes in providing senior women for domestic staffing needs has just launched a national franchise program. Even though the ink on the disclosure documents is barely dry, Rent-A-Grandma has already reached tentative agreement with a Texas entrepreneur to roll out five franchises in the Lone Star State.
The service provides carefully screened women age 50 and over for roles including child care, elder care, housekeeping, cooking, estate management, pet sitting and other domestic staffing jobs. The advantage that older women bring is their extensive age/life experience, Todd Bliss, the company's founder and CEO, told BusinessNewsdaily.
"Women in their 50s don't text or tweet while they're watching your kids," Bliss said. "There's no replacement for experience."
Because of the large number of senior women who are looking for work or to re-enter the work force on a part-time or permanent basis, there is no shortage of eligible candidates, Bliss said.
"Finding the grannies is the easy part," he said.
The company currently has 40 to 45 women working in the L.A. area working at rates that range between $16 and $23 an hour. The women pay the company an employment fee and/or a percentage of their hourly compensation.
Prior to founding Rent-a-Grandma, Bliss had worked as a studio teacher in Hollywood tutoring children in the entertainment industry on location. The idea for the company came to him in part, he said, from overhearing the conversations of the parents of his students complaining about the difficulty of getting competent domestic help.
Bliss, a transplanted Angelino who grew up in suburban Long Island in New York, said that he has already received about 25 inquiries about franchising. The cost of a franchise, he said, is approximately $23,000.
"It's less than the cost of buying most new cars," Bliss said.