Child Care When You Need It Most

You love your kids. Really, you do. But regardless of the affection you have for them, every parent needs some grown-up time.

The East Valley Tribune reported that while daycares or neighborhood babysitters provide some sort of relief, they are seldom available when they are needed most. Scottsdale stay-at-home mom Tina Ryder noticed this while working out while her 2- and 3-year-old children played in the gym's nursery. She wished she could grab lunch with her friend after their workout without the kids in tow but, like many such operations, the gym only provided child care services when the parent was on the premises. It’s because of this that Ryder plans to launch Maui PlayCare, a service she said is sorely needed for stay-at-home moms who need child-free time sometimes but not on a regular basis and for working moms who have variable hours or sitters on vacation. Parents will be able to drop off children ages 2 to 8 for an hour or a day at a time on an as-needed basis with no membership fees or reservations.

The concept of a drop-in day care makes sense, Ryder said, but the how-to isn't so easy to figure out. So she bought the franchise rights for the name and concept from Bonnie McCarthy, who spent six years solving the inherent bugs of the business. Six years ago and an ocean away, McCarthy found herself similarly strapped to find safe, dependable, but only occasional, child care for her four kids so she could grocery shop or go to a doctor's appointment without bringing the troop along.

"I was in Maui (Hawaii), where no family was near," McCarthy said. "I needed help and there was nobody to help me. I didn't want to pay for a month at a day care when I didn't need it except for a few hours to go grocery shopping. And I knew there were other people like me."

McCarthy started Maui PlayCare after nearly a year of research, she said. She opened in a shopping center, a place where people were likely to need child-care services, she said. She developed a business model with special physical security features, three full-time day-care workers always on staff and a large list of qualified part-timers on call to handle peak times, she said. All employees are fingerprinted, background checked at a federal and local level, drug tested and CPR and first-aid certified, she said. After fine-tuning Maui PlayCare for six years, she said she is ready to launch the concept on the mainland. McCarthy thought the Valley was a good bet for the first franchise, because "your economy looks a lot like ours," she said. Ryder bought the rights to the Scottsdale and first-refusal rights to another four planned for Arizona.