Alfred (HelloAlfred.com) is a shared neighborhood real-life butler service. Members have a personal butler who visits their home each week to carry out chores as directed. The company gets its name from Batman’s personal butler!
The company was formed in 2013, and at the time of writing this, the service is available in New York and Boston, and coming soon to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, and Austin.
(I’m in the San Francisco suburbs and got a “coming soon” message when I tried to sign-up.)
Table of Contents
About Alfred
The company assigns a staff member, known as an ‘Alfred’ to each client that signs up to their service. Their Alfred then carries out everyday chores from both a preassigned list, and any spontaneous requests.
The company is best described as a “shared neighborhood butler service.” Chores can include picking up your groceries, putting them away in your kitchen, taking out the trash, doing your laundry, and so on.
The company’s objective is to take care of those many small but time consuming tasks, freeing up more of your time to spend with your family, work on your business, or do with as you wish. Alfred has recently secured a large amount of capital through Series A Funding and are looking to “step on the gas” as CEO Marcela Sapone stated, so expect the company to expand into more cities.
Hello Alfred Press Video
Services
The service is broken down into two plans. You can either have your Alfred visit your home once or twice a week. They do a tidy up of your home and take care of your errands as directed.
The core services they carry out include:
- Picking up and dropping off groceries
- Taking care of your laundry
- Cleaning your home
- Tailoring
- Posting out mail and packages
- Pharmacy collections
- Special requests
The limit to what an Alfred can do for you is almost endless (within reason of course). The rule of thumb that you shouldn’t expect your Alfred to do anything you wouldn’t be doing without their help.
Plans and Pricing
There are two different plans.
Alfred Basic, which costs $32 per/wk. With this plan your Alfred visits your home once a week to tidy up and carry out some basic chores. You can also use them to carry out other chores by submitting the request.
The other plan is the Alfred Service, which costs $59 per/wk. For this you get two visits a week instead of one.
If you are using your Alfred to pick up your groceries the company works in partnership with large retail stores like Whole Foods, CVS and Walgreens. They don’t mark up the price of any items or charge a service fee.
Additional services do of course come with a fee. For example, cleaning services range from $65 for a one bedroom apartment to $105 for a four bedroom home. The prices for individual items being washed and dry cleaned, tailoring and other bespoke tasks are all listed on their website.
The subscription fee is charged every four weeks. You are also billed for any goods or services you have received weekly. They provide all the receipts along with the invoice, so you know exactly what you are being charged for.
Alfred Alternatives
Hello Alfred seems to be a combination of on-demand services like TaskRabbit, Instacart, Handy, and others, though squarely aimed at busy urban working professionals for the very specific functions listed above. If keeping your fridge stocked and your home tidy is a constant challenge, Alfred may be worth checking out as they expand across the country.
Your Turn
Have you worked with Alfred? Please be sure to leave a review of your experience below to help others with their decision.