Drop-in day care in Scottsdale

Scottsdale stay-at-home mom Tina Ryder was working out at a local gym while her 2- and 3-year-old children played in the gym's nursery.

"How great is that," she told a workout buddy. "But you can't leave."

She wished she and her friend could grab a grown-up lunch afterward knowing her children were safe and well cared for.

Ryder plans to launch a drop-in day-care center in Scottsdale, 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.

Ryder said she will open Maui PlayCare in north Scottsdale in early 2009. 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.

"I have babysitters I don't do that for," said Ryder. The security aspect especially attracted her to the business, she said.

As McCarthy started building the business, she was able to work out when the peaks were most likely to happen.

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.

Before she was a stay-at-home mom, Ryder was an administrative assistant to a corporate president, and she helped her husband launch his air-conditioning business, she said. "I have great exposure to all aspects of business," she said. "I think this will be a big success."