Valet Drivers On Demand: I Tried The New Zirx App
This team is solving a HUGE problem for drivers in cities.
|| Written for The Berry Farm, a Medium Publication for stories about startups. ||
“OMG”
That’s the first phrase that pops into my head as my virtual valet hops in my car and takes off. “That was so easy, I’m…I’m speechless.”
I love city life. And I love driving. And those things don’t mix very well. When it comes to meetings in the busy parts of San Francisco, this usually means a stressful experience when figuring out where to offload my car. My strategy has previously involved one of these three tactics:
- Take a loan out to pay for parking. Preferably low interest and no collateral. Pray to the parking gods that a space exists, somewhere, in this universe or an alternate one.
- Abandon my car in a yellow zone and claim it as stolen. Seams civically responsible enough.
- Park in the less busy areas of the city like the Mission, and take the BART in to the city core.
All three options are consistently horrible. This is why I was so enthusiastic to try Zirx for the first time.
Valet parking is incredibly convenient. However, despite even owning a valet company in college, I rarely ever take advantage of it. Why?
Well, only a select number of restaurants and hotels actually offer valet. If I am headed to Tacolicious and not Ruth’s Chris, I am out of luck. It’s really awkward to pretend I’m going to one restaurant and then run across the street to another. This usually involves a decoy and a disguise.
Second, it’s alarmingly expensive. Call me cheap, but there is something unsettling about paying an effective hourly rate that outpaces more than the U.S. Minimum Wage simply to park my car.
This is where Zirx comes in. Zirx has assembled a team of valet attendants around the city’s busiest areas, ready and able to run over to a car that needs parking. They are called agents.
When I was outside of the city and en route, I pulled up the app and entered my destination. While I had some initial angst about how to time the valet request, Zirx had me covered. Once I entered my destination, the app would run in the background and automatically summon a valet as I approached my drop off spot.
I pulled up to the curb, right in front of the building where my meeting was scheduled, and Sabina greeted me with a smile, decked out in official Zirx attire. She verified who I was with a 4 digit code that displayed on my phone, and then I tossed her they keys and she was off.
I couldn’t believe how easy that was. Here I was, right in front of the door of where I needed to go, and my car was whisked away, almost as if magical elves were responsible. I can imagine the only thing that would top this would be skydiving in to my meeting.
I was at my appointment for two hours, and it only cost me $12; $5 for pickup, $5 for drop off, and 2 hours at $1 each. It’s significantly cheaper than any other paid option, even including street parking. When it was time to go, I fired up the app, requested my car to be returned, and a few minutes later, it was brought back to the exact spot I dropped it off.
It doesn’t get any better than that.
If you live around San Francisco, and you drive a car, even occasionally, you’ve got to try Zirx out. Here’s $15 to get you started. Check to see if they are up-and-running in your city.
Written by Greg Muender, cofounder of fatberry.
Greg on Twitter | Greg on Medium | fatberry on Twitter
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