TAMPA, FL — A Village Post Office (VPO) has opened in the Circle Food Mart, 601 Mandalay Avenue in Clearwater. The official Grand Opening ceremony will take place at the VPO on Wednesday, January 16 at 10:00 a.m. Postal Service executives and local officials will participate in a Ribbon Cutting Ceremony.
This VPO is the first in the U.S. Postal Service’s Suncoast District and the 112th VPO in the nation. As a VPO, Circle Food Mart provides a range of popular products and services, including First-Class Mail Forever stamps, prepaid Priority Mail Flat Rate products, Priority Flat Rate boxes and shipping, Canadian and International postage and a mail collection box. It is also listed as a Certified Postal Provider on USPS.com.
The VPO is open seven days per week, from 7 a.m. until 11 p.m., offering added convenience for customers wanting access to Postal Service products and services outside postal hours.
According to Greg Patel, owner of Circle Food Mart, the store has been in business since 1962. He became the owner in 1998. “I wanted to open the VPO to provide service to customers in Clearwater Beach. Customers are telling me that they love the convenience and the fact that the prices are the same as at the Post Office,” said Patel.
The Clearwater community expressed an interest in retaining a postal presence when the Clearwater Beach Postal Station moved to the Clearwater Cleveland Station in January 2012. The Circle Food Mart VPO offers access to Postal Service products and services in Clearwater Beach.
Last year, the Postal Service introduced the VPO model as a way to increase access to postal products and services. VPOs are operated by local businesses contracting with the Postal Service. VPOs offer Postal Service customers time-saving convenience, and in most cases, longer hours than regular Post Offices.
“The Village Post Office is a terrific way for businesses in rural America to provide their customers with convenient access to postal products and services — becoming the ultimate convenience store,” said Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe. “We’re pleased that VPOs have become a way to extend postal access while supporting local businesses.”
Business establishments interested in applying for a contract with the Postal Service to start a Village Post Office in their local community should contact: vpo.inquiry@usps.gov
The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.
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A self-supporting government enterprise, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that reaches every address in the nation — 151 million residences, businesses and Post Office™ Boxes. The Postal Service™ receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations. With 32,000 retail locations and the most frequently visited website in the federal government, usps.com®, the Postal Service has annual revenue of more than $65 billion and delivers nearly 40 percent of the world’s mail. If it were a private sector company, the U.S. Postal Service would rank 35th in the 2011 Fortune 500. In 2011, Oxford Strategic Consulting ranked the U.S. Postal Service number one in overall service performance of the posts in the top 20 wealthiest nations in the world. Black Enterprise and Hispanic Business magazines ranked the Postal Service as a leader in workforce diversity. The Postal Service has been named the Most Trusted Government Agency for six years and the sixth Most Trusted Business in the nation by the Ponemon Institute.
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