NJ Beach Caddy Back for a Second Year in Ocean City

Ocean City, NJ -- Danielle Pizza and her husband were on their way back from the beach with their two children, ages 1 and 3. Her husband was lugging along two hands full of stuff when she looked back and said “How much do you think we could pay someone to do this for us?”

“We were joking around, but the point was that in the moment, you would pay anything for someone to help you get off the beach faster,” said Pizza, one of the co-owners of NJ Beach Caddy.

A year later they were having dinner with Todd Serpico and his wife when they revisited the idea. Once they committed to the idea, it quickly became a reality.

As of Memorial Day last year, families visiting Ocean City for the summer could hire a caddy to carry their belongings to and from the beach.

Last year, the company, which is actively run by four families, hired 22 caddies between the ages of 14 and 22 years old to assist families to and from the beach each day. They assisted 175 families on over 300 trips and 1,000 people have downloaded the app used to book their caddies. The app accepts credit card and paypal payments.

The owners all have families and, as Serpico said, “share in the struggle of getting to and from the beach.”

He said many of them are teachers, and know the importance of safety for the caddies and the families, and said caddies develop “relationships” with the customers. Serpico is a teacher in the Radnor School District in Pennsylvania.

Caddies aren’t permitted to go into a customer’s house or their cars. They even received requests for services outside Ocean City. Serpico said they had to tell those people that they were only available in Ocean City, and Pizza said she’d like to eventually see the service expanded into other Jersey Shore towns.

To this end, NJ Beach Caddy is making several improvements this year, including a crowdfunding campaign that, among other things, allows for possible investors and the expansion to other beach towns.

“We are developing several enhancements which will ease the of use our app for our recurring customers, specifically for our customers with seasonal and or multiple day vacation packages,” Serpico said.

He said they are working on improving communication between customers and their caddies, and a special “check-in, check-out special,” in which caddies will unload customers’ vehicles to start their vacation and end it by transporting their luggage back to their cars. This wasn’t available last year.

They are also hiring and training new caddies, and updating their best practices for returning caddies to improve the experience for customers, Serpico said.

Caddies will assist customers with one cart for $15, and two carts for $30. Various packages are also available, ranging from a three-day package for one cart at $84 to unlimited season passes for between $1,500 and $3,000. Full information on all packages is available at njbeachcaddy.com.

The attached images were provided by Danielle Pizza