Postal Service expands access

• By STEVEN WARD
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Jun 23, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Holly Hoffpauir can stamp an envelope, wrap an international package and check out a customer clutching the latest Brad Pitt DVD in no time flat.

Hoffpauir is the assistant manager at Video USA at the corner of Bluebonnet Boulevard and Burbank Drive.

When she’s not checking out movie customers, Hoffpauir shifts to the left side of her store’s counter and positions herself behind a traditional blue U.S. Postal Service display.

That’s when Hoffpauir quickly switches service hats and utilizes her Postal Service training.

“We have had customers come in here, look over there and say, ‘What’s that?’ ”

“And our lines are usually no longer than two or three people, and that’s just because someone has a couple of boxes,” Hoffpauir said.
Video USA is one of seven small businesses in Baton Rouge that offer a full-service Postal Service station inside.

The stations are called Contract Postal Units and were opened in the city as a response to the population surge in East Baton Rouge Parish since Hurricane Katrina, said Judith A. Brining, customer relations coordinator for the U.S. Postal Service in Baton Rouge.

“Like our online services, Contract Postal Units are just another access channel for our customers,” Brining said.

An eighth Contract Postal Unit will open inside a new Climate Control Storage store under construction on Tiger Bend Road by the end of the summer.

U.S. Postal Service officials refused to divulge any details about the cost of the contracts because they said it would compromise their ability to negotiate.

The Postal Service provides equipment and most of the supplies for the business while the business owner and employees run the units, Brining said.

The Contract Postal Units can provide any service a post office does except post office boxes and U.S. Postal Service money orders.
The businesses buy the stamps they sell, said Video USA District Manager Peggy Whitting said.

Employees of a business with a postal unit receive four days of training by the U.S. Postal Service.