Uber-like landscaping app launches in Detroit

Seeing a demand in the Detroit area, Gene Caballero launched his three-year-old Nashville-based landscaping application, GreenPal, in Detroit last month.

The application operates similarly to Uber, connecting homeowners and renters with local vetted landscapers.

Customers can upload a picture of their lawn with a description of the service needed, and lawn care professionals can bid on the property, allowing the homeowner to choose a vendor based on quoted prices, reviews and ratings.

“We designed this as the first true operating system for landscaping professionals,” Caballero, the co-founder of GreenPal, said. “So basically all they need to do is bid on properties, go mow them, take a picture after they’re done, and then they get paid.”

After witnessing the launch of applications like Uber, Lyft and AirBnB in 2012, Caballero says his background in landscaping, plus the difficulty of finding a landscaper for his home in Murfreesboro, led him to start the on-demand lawn care service with Bryan Clayton and Zach Hendrix in 2015.

“It was a bit of a learning curve for those three years,” Caballero said.

The application has serviced more than 1 million houses through more than 30,000 landscaping professionals in 48 states.

Caballero said he decided to launch the app in Detroit based on demand. “Every year, we take a look at our data. Our data lets us know where homeowners are signing up but we are not in operation, that is the reason that we decided to launch into the Detroit area because we saw that homeowners were signing up,” Caballero said in an email.

GreenPal has been live in Detroit since July 20. The service also operates in Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, Oklahoma City, San Antonio, Los Angeles, San Antonio, Phoenix, San Jose, Fresno, New Orleans, Sacramento, Miami, Louisville, Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Denver and St. Louis.

“In three to five years, we just want to be the default way that homeowners find their landscaping guy,” Caballero said. “We ubiquitously say ‘let’s get an Uber. ‘Let’s get a GreenPal,’ that’s our goal right now.”