Welcome Wagon is gone, but greeters carry on

YORKVILLE, Ill. -- Some people here seem resigned to the idea that growing Yorkville will lose its small-town intimacy. Mary Unterbrunner is not one of them.

Unterbrunner runs "Hometown Hello," a seven-woman Yorkville business that pays personal visits to hundreds of new Yorkville residents every year. Sporting signature fuchsia vests, Hometown Hello's greeters arrive at barely furnished homes with packets of information and a warm smile. ("Cheer," Unterbrunner says, is part of the job description.)

Almost every town in the Fox Valley has at least one self-employed greeter. They scour real estate listings and keep an eye out for new mail boxes. They visit new homes bearing information from local merchants -- who pay for the publicity -- and a wealth of community knowledge.

"I can explain how the garbage pickup works, what elementary school your kids are going to go to," says Jennifer Zack, whose one-woman business, Welcome Home, serves newcomers to North Aurora and Batavia.

All reiterate that they're not doing it just for the money.

As more people move in who work outside town and who lack roots in the community, a friendly welcome, says Unterbrunner, is "one of the few things ... that are going to keep Yorkville feeling like the small town that it was."

A dying art

Some would call Zack's and Unterbrunner's vocation a dying art. Both women are alumnae of Welcome Wagon, a company that once supervised home visits nationwide. In 1998, after nearly 80 years of those visits, Welcome Wagon summarily fired its network of more than 2,000 greeters, by employee estimates.

The company cited "an increase in two-income families that meant fewer people were home to accept visits."

Demographic change, in other words, had doomed the greetings industry. Welcome Wagon, where Zack and Unterbrunner had honed their personal touch, switched to distributing information by mail.

Instead of admitting defeat, Zack, Unterbrunner and other Welcome Wagon alumnae across the Fox Valley set up independent greetings businesses in their homes. They respect each others' turf and share tips on how to catch up with the working couples Welcome Wagon found so elusive.

They've learned to knock on doors on evenings and weekends. They pride themselves on refusing to just leave information packets on doorsteps. Instead, new residents come home to a "sorry we missed you" note containing contact information and an offer to schedule a more convenient meeting.

"It's the weirdest part-time, flexible-hour job," Unterbrunner says.

Once they succeeded in contacting new residents, Fox Valley greeters found that busy, two-income families need their services more than ever.

"People commute to work, they don't go out and explore," said Vicki Schuler, whose business, Hometown Greeting, covers Sandwich, Somonauk and Plano.

Zack says her "number-one surprise" about running seven-year-old Welcome Home "is that the majority of the people invite me back if they don't have time right then."

And Unterbrunner, like a true businesswoman, has even managed to turn the demise of the Welcome Wagon home visit into a pitch to local merchants.

Hometown Hello, she says, "is the only way for a business right now in Yorkville to walk their business in the door with a friendly greeting."