When most peo­ple in T&T think about valet park­ing, their main ref­er­ence may be a scene from a movie or the odd in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence.

For An­na Thomp­son, it has been a mar­ket she de­vel­oped for the past decade.

Last Fri­day, her com­pa­ny Yel­low Um­brel­la Valet Park­ing Ser­vices cel­e­brat­ed its 10th year of op­er­a­tions with a small gath­er­ing of staff and friends for a cock­tail event at the Samaan Es­tate in St Clair.

No­tably, her brand has grown with­out sig­nif­i­cant mar­ket­ing through tra­di­tion­al me­dia out­lets.

“We start­ed as a valet park­ing com­pa­ny, and we start­ed to add ser­vices as clients start­ed to de­mand more ser­vices from us. So 10 years lat­er, we’ve grown sig­nif­i­cant­ly, and we have a group of ded­i­cat­ed clients. Some 90 per cent of our clients are re­peat cus­tomers. So when they re­fer us to oth­er peo­ple, we just keep grow­ing that way. We don’t do a lot of print ad­ver­tis­ing or ra­dio ad­ver­tis­ing,” Thomp­son told the Busi­ness Guardian at the event.

Still, it took some time for the mo­men­tum to build.

“It took a while, be­cause when we start­ed as a com­pa­ny, it was al­most as if we cre­at­ed the valet park­ing sec­tor for want of a bet­ter way. Yes, valet park­ing was done, but peo­ple might have an event, and they might call two “fel­las” to park for them,” she said.

How­ev­er, Thomp­son felt she could cre­ate a bet­ter ser­vice for cus­tomers, which would give them greater peace of mind af­ter hand­ing over their keys to her staff.

“This is a ser­vice that of­fers ac­count­abil­i­ty. I can tell how long a valet at­ten­dant took to get a client’s car. So there­fore, I could know to in­ter­vene if some­thing isn’t go­ing right, and thank­ful­ly that hasn’t hap­pened. I could tell how many cars the valet park­ing at­ten­dants have parked. So that helps me with per­for­mance man­age­ment,” said Thomp­son.

She ad­mit­ted the ser­vice had tapped in­to a niche mar­ket and has at­tract­ed sev­er­al high-pro­file clients, who have grown to see the ser­vice as a se­cu­ri­ty in­vest­ment for events.

Thomp­son said over time as her brand grew, there has been less re­luc­tance from cus­tomers in terms of hand­ing over their keys to valet at­ten­dants.

This grow­ing trust has been help­ing with the in­cor­po­ra­tion of tech­nol­o­gy in­to the ser­vice. Cur­rent­ly, be­fore hand­ing over their keys to an at­ten­dant, cus­tomers have to sign a form with an at­ten­dant who will then send a no­tice to the cus­tomer’s phone. That would al­low users to track and re­quest their ve­hi­cles at their con­ve­nience.

This has be­come a great com­fort for her clients amid con­cerns about the crime sit­u­a­tion.

“We of­fer, as you say, a full ser­vice with host­esses, etc, and we have a tech app,” she said.

“More peo­ple are ac­cept­ing it. And I will tell you some­thing in terms of the safe­ty of the ve­hi­cle, it’s ac­tu­al­ly safer us­ing valet park­ing, be­cause your car is tak­en from here to wher­ev­er the des­ig­nat­ed park­ing area is, and it comes back to you at the front of the event where there are peo­ple. So, you’re not walk­ing to the car and there is less risk of some­body hold­ing you up, or you’re go­ing to the car and see­ing your car dent­ed or bro­ken in­to. We take care of that side of things,” Thomp­son added.

She said the arrange­ments she has out in place are ac­tu­al­ly sup­posed to in­spire even more con­fi­dence in cus­tomers. As a re­sult, more and more peo­ple are be­com­ing fa­mil­iar with the com­pa­ny’s ser­vice and its rep­u­ta­tion is be­com­ing more wide­spread.

The ser­vice was re­cent­ly used at CW Busi­ness’s Plat­ed event at the Forge in El So­cor­ro South and proved a pop­u­lar op­tion for pa­trons who would oth­er­wise be un­fa­mil­iar with park­ing op­tions at the new show­case kitchen.

While many may not have en­coun­tered the tra­di­tion­al valet park­ing ser­vice, the com­pa­ny has branched out in­to oth­er trans­porta­tion ser­vices for events which have been used by a larg­er sec­tion of the pub­lic. For pop­u­lar Car­ni­val events, in par­tic­u­lar all-in­clu­sive fetes, Yel­low Um­brel­la has been hired to pro­vide shut­tle and park­ing ser­vices as well.

“We do shut­tle ser­vices for cor­po­rate clients, as well as for big events. So we worked for the Com­mon­wealth Games, we were one of the shut­tle ser­vice providers. For ICC Crick­et, we were one of the shut­tle ser­vice providers, that kind of thing. So we tend to work with large cor­po­rate clients and with the Gov­ern­ment, but the valet park­ing is usu­al­ly for more high-end clients,” she said.

“Last year we did QRC’s (Fete Roy­al) shut­tles. We did An­gos­tu­ra’s big par­ty. And, I mean, they were so im­pressed, they sent us a let­ter with­out us ask­ing them, com­mend­ing us on the ser­vice that we of­fered. We al­so do park­ing man­age­ment. So for like CPL games and stuff, we man­age the park­ing at the South carpark.”

She said the com­pa­ny is look­ing for­ward to good busi­ness over the course of the Christ­mas and Car­ni­val sea­sons as cor­po­rate Christ­mas cel­e­bra­tions and ma­jor Car­ni­val events are set to use the ser­vice.

Thomp­son while giv­ing a toast at her an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tion, ad­mit­ted that the com­pa­ny did suf­fer a bit dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic as the en­ter­tain­ment and many oth­er sec­tors were shut down. How­ev­er, it was al­so dur­ing this pe­ri­od, she found the re­solve to in­vest fur­ther in the busi­ness and push for its ex­pan­sion when re­stric­tions were lift­ed.

She al­so point­ed out it is no­table that a black-owned busi­ness found­ed and run by a woman was able to find such a lane to be suc­cess­ful.

Thomp­son said the com­pa­ny is al­so fo­cused on giv­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to young and up­com­ing adults, as she not­ed the chal­lenges they face in the cur­rent eco­nom­ic land­scape.

“I use young uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ates. All the staff are con­tract staff but I give young peo­ple who are seek­ing to get ad­di­tion­al in­come, or peo­ple who want oth­er in­come op­por­tu­ni­ties,” she said, ex­plain­ing that she would al­so have an added pro­fes­sion­al­ism by hir­ing fire of­fi­cers who are avail­able.

“I have a lot of peo­ple who are fire ser­vice of­fi­cers who have the flex­i­bil­i­ty in terms of time. So when they are not on shift, they work. So you have that added el­e­ment,” she said.