BALTIMORE — If you're a city dweller, chances are you know the feeling: you get a notification that your package was delivered. But when you step outside to get it, it's nowhere to be found.
"I've actually heard a lot of stories about people who are home, they just don't hear it - they [delivery drivers] don't knock, they don't ring the doorbell, so they don't hear that the package has actually been delivered. And it can get stolen within one or two minutes of it being delivered," Marques Manta, who lives in Canton, said.
Manta was tired of it happening to him, along with his friends and neighbors. And a package lock box can cost you a couple hundred bucks. He came up with an affordable way to solve the problem in his neighborhood. It's called Porch Pair.
"Let's say you're shopping online and you're ready to checkout. You can then head over to porchpair.com, reserve a spot for your package at one of our neighborhood locations, you'd copy the address from there, plug it in to the checkout on the site you're shopping at. The package will get delivered to the neighborhood location. Once it arrives, we'll send you an email, and all you have to do is pick it up," Manta explained.
He went door to door to local businesses in the Canton area, telling owners about his new company.
The first one to sign on was High Grounds Cafe in Highlandtown.
"I thought it was a fantastic idea and any way we can help the community, that's what we're all about here at High Grounds," Josh Pulley, co-owner of High Grounds Cafe said.
It's a win-win: help the community, and drum up business at the cafe.
Pulley says plenty of people have taken advantage of the service in the first month.
"We have a lot of returning customers, a lot of people who are here on the regular. Usually the first thing everyone says is, 'oh my god I can't believe, this helps me so much. I don't have to get an Amazon locker,'" Pulley said.
It's $1.50 to reserve a spot; Manta uses the money to maintain the website, but he says he's probably losing money at this point. But he doesn't mind, he just wants to help.
"It's just an insane number of packages stolen every year. So hopefully, this is a small way for at least our local community to cut back on that," Manta said.
He hopes to expand his company to include locations throughout the city, and eventually put porch pirates out of business.
