Need a ride, but don’t have a car? It’s no problem if you have a smartphone — just hail an Uber virtually and off you go. But what if, like many in the older population, you don’t have (or even want) a smartphone? That’s where GoGoGrandparent comes in.
GoGoGrandparent is a phone service that connects older adults without smartphones with Uber or Lyft rides. By calling a central hotline, users can request and pay for rides without needing to use a ride app. Users press 1 for a car to their home, 2 “for a car to where we dropped you off last,” or 6 to order a ride with an operator.
Once the ride has begun, GoGoGrandparent monitors the service and keeps family members in the loop with automated text messages. The company charges $0.23 per minute from the time the operator starts monitoring a ride, which is added to the Uber or Lyft total. The bill is then charged to the credit card on file with GoGoGrandparent.
Where are riders going? “I like to joke that people are using us to go to hospitals, and to hair salons. It’s about 50/50,” says CEO and co-founder Justin Boogaard. He says the service is already catching on in Madison. “I see a lot of folks visiting the VA Hospital, restaurants like Ha-Long Bay, markets like HyVee, and of course hair salons.”
One Madison-area user is Dick Murphy. “My daughter lives here, but she’s busy, and my wife and I need rides,” says Murphy. “I took a [GoGoGranparent] ride today. It’s terrific. You just give them a call and they’ll be there within 15 minutes.”
According to the Pew Research Center, only half of adults aged 65 and older currently own a smartphone. Many technology companies overlook the older population, but they can benefit from on-demand ride service. Boogaard says it was his grandmother, Betty Lou Luce, who came up with the idea for GoGoGrandparent. She doesn’t drive, but is still active in her community and wants to live in her home independently. “She had a late-night social event and couldn’t get there herself. I was living with her, and I didn’t have a car, so I was Ubering around. So she said ‘What is Uber’s phone number?’ and I said ‘Well, they don’t have one.’ I was working on a business idea that wasn’t going so well at the time, so grandma said, ‘Well, maybe you should do this instead.’ And she was right, as always.”
Although the service is only available to English speakers right now, GoGoGrandparent is branching out to Spanish with GoGoAbuelito in April. “We want to make the service more accessible to grandparents who speak different languages,” says Boogaard.
Potential users — or perhaps the offspring of potential users — can sign up for GoGoGrandparent at gogograndparent.com, or by calling 855-464-6872.