Two weeks ago, on May 19, my wife picked up three copies of The Apopka Chief in our mailbox—one each for May 2, May 9 and May 16.
If you’re thinking we went two weeks without checking our mail, you would be wrong.
If you’re thinking three papers at once is not how it’s supposed to work, you would be right.
Needless to say, we’ve had some delivery challenges as we’ve navigated the transition to new ownership over the last three months. Full disclosure: Some of those challenges have been due to our own mistakes and the sheer volume of change as the Chief made its first ownership transition in 45 years.
With that said, some of the challenges have been outside of our control. I thought it would be helpful to lay out the process and the steps we’ve taken to address the delivery issues.
First, it’s important to note that the number of paid subscribers to the Chief had dropped below 500 as of January. The switch to a free newspaper model was in part necessity: We needed to increase circulation to 10,000 to make advertising viable again. That’s how we got Publix inserts in the paper each week.
Distribution occurs in three ways: single copy, home delivery, and mail delivery.
Single copy: We deliver about 2,000 papers to racks and boxes at businesses throughout Apopka each week. Those deliveries are completed by 5 p.m. Friday. You can see the list of locations on page 2A, or online, where we have the locations listed along with an interactive map.
Home delivery: We began home delivery in the heart of Apopka (north 32703 and south 32712 zip codes), drawing lines to catch as many paid subscribers as possible. These 8,000 papers are delivered by Friday evening.
Mail delivery: For those who live outside the home delivery area, they can pay to have the paper mailed to them. We are continuing to honor mail subscriptions started under the prior ownership (even though we did not receive the revenue for these subscriptions), and we’ve been mailing about 400 each week.
Because more than 95% of all papers are delivered Friday to businesses and driveways, we no longer needed to print addresses directly on all of the papers. Instead, we label those by hand and deliver them to the Apopka Post Office on North Park Avenue each Friday morning.
Easy, right? Wrong.
Initially, we simply put standard addresses on the labels thinking they would be delivered. When we heard from some of you that the papers were not arriving in a timely fashion, we inquired with the Post Office and were informed that carrier route numbers needed to be included, so we added those.
Later, we were told we also needed to separate each route and bundle them together with rubber bands, which we did. We received no further instructions from the Post Office, but we continued to receive scattered reports of inconsistent delivery.
On May 2, we were informed that the Post Office had been taking the papers we’re dropping off in Apopka and shipping them to Orlando, where they languish for days and sometimes more than a week.
They requested that we sort the papers, which includes the following:
- Label papers with different route numbers than we’d been using
- Add a bar code
- Add tray numbers
- Bundle each route’s papers with rubber bands and place them in sequential order in trays
- Label all 18 trays
- Sort the trays to separate Apopka and non-Apopka deliveries
After executing all of these tasks, the papers still went to Orlando. We learned that there was some confusion about whether Apopka papers, even sorted, could be delivered without first going to Orlando.
As of late May, we’ve been told the confusion is cleared up and the Apopka Post Office will immediately put the papers out for delivery. That means everyone should have received their paper by Saturday each week.
I’m happy to say that happened for me for the first time this past Saturday. If your paper does not arrive by Saturday, please let us know (email subscriptions@theapopkachief.com). And if you have missed one or more deliveries in the last three months, please let us know that as well. We will extend subscriptions appropriately to compensate for missed papers.
We appreciate those of you who have reached out to let us know about delivery interruptions or delays. Each report has been important intel that helps us better work with our partners at the Post Office.
We appreciate your patience as we have worked through these challenges. We are committed to fully resolving them and encouraged to hear the increasingly good reports from the community.
