The next time you need to get your dry-cleaning done, look no farther than your BART station.
Two pop-up shops opened Friday morning on the concourse at San Francisco’s Embarcadero and Montgomery BART stations. The company behind them, Blinq, is touting itself as a concierge service for the busy commuters who use BART and MUNI every day. According to BART’s latest ridership numbers from October, an average of nearly 450,000 riders used BART’s 44 stations every weekday.
Blinq offers everything from Grubmarket, a farm-to-table market, Greener Cleaners, an eco-friendly dry cleaning service, and also an interactive display showing announcements and train times.
Marin-based company and Blinq partner, EO, is also planning on selling to the thousands of commuters that trek through the BART stations daily. The company, which makes organic soaps, serums and lotions, will be opening their BART outfit soon, according to a news release.
“I would think if it’s more convenient to drop off dry cleaning or having something fixed, that would be good,” said Jodi Mainwaring of San Francisco. “I don’t know if I would actually hang out and do something here but if it’s more convenient, I would definitely look into it.”
The concept stems from Hong Kong, where founder and CEO Alexis Wong grew up. According to the company website, she wanted to offer similar services and goods found around the urban mass transit systems in Hong Kong.
So far, it’s gotten a good reception from Bay Area commuters who spoke with NBC Bay Area, including P.J. Forgione of Pacifica, though he said he’d probably pass on the dry cleaning.
“I think it’s pretty awesome,” said Forgione. “It seems convenient here on BART when I’m riding in on BART regularly and get everything all at once.”
For Tiffany Altieri, time is everything. She commutes from Livermore to San Francisco everyday.
“Everyone here is on the go so I can see how that would really work, especially in the city with all these delivery plans because people just don’t have time to do things.”
Blinq was hoping to open in all 44 BART stations eventually, but an employee told NBC Bay Area that the SFO deal fell through. The next stations to get Blinq “pods” are set to be Civic Center in San Francisco, 12th and 19th Street stations in Oakland, and Downtown Berkeley. The hope is to have those in by the end of the year.
