Photo by Can Türkyilmaz
Post morning traffic, you arrive at work only to realize you left your iPhone at Starbucks. Argh! To make matters worse, you have a cold, coworkers have depleted the Kleenex supply, the printer is low on toner, you have a day full of meetings and you’re in charge of tonight’s soccer practice snacks.
First, call the baristas and have them hold your phone. Then call Aron Northington McDonald at her Lake Highlands-based Aron’s Errands. For as little as $20, she can grab the phone, Kleenex, vitamin C, office supplies and even fruit cups for the team. Heck, have her grab some bagels for those meetings, too. You’ll be an office hero.
A former consultant for Accenture, McDonald has fine-tuned organizational and time management skills, and she loves running errands, she says.
“I like driving around … listening to XM Radio or The Ticket.”
A little over a year ago, when her youngest of two girls started elementary school, she began floating her idea for a business providing “general errand service from grocery shopping to transportation and much more” to her peers, who responded positively. It took several months and help from marketing-savvy friends to put the concept into action, but she launched right before Christmas 2011.
Promptly, the owners of Cake Ball Company employed her help delivering holiday orders. McDonald feels her services could be especially useful for older folks, for example, who don’t drive but who need groceries, prescriptions and the like; she can pick them up if they’d like to get out, or just run the errands for them. Her grandparents, who are in their 80s, live in the area. Her own family’s readiness to help one another, in fact, prompted the business idea.
“When I had foot surgery and was in bed, my family was there to help. I had no worries, but I realized that other people could use that type of help.”
She knows it will take some time to build business.
“I have to reach friends of friends and friends of family — I mean, I can’t charge Grandma [for errand service] — and get them comfortable with the idea.” Social media, she says, has helped things along. “Something like this possibly could have existed without social media, but it would have taken a lot longer.”
• Aron’s Errands charges $20 an hour (one-hour minimum) for in-city errands (Lake Highlands, Lakewood, Preston Hollow) and $30 for trips 20 miles outside of Lake Highlands, Monday-Friday from 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Check out the Aron’s Errands Facebook page for details and tips, call 214.455.3780 or visit aronserrands.com.
