Don't want to hide Easter eggs this year? Palatine sisters have your back
Sisters Keely and Samantha "Sam" McEnery know how they will be spending the night before Easter: driving throughout the Northwest suburbs to hide colorful plastic eggs in residential yards so children can have a delightful surprise the next day.
The Palatine sisters' business, Easter Eggers, is all about making Easter easier for families. The sisters take orders to fill eggs with candy, snacks, toys or cash, and will then hide the eggs so their clients can have stress-free egg hunts.
It's only been a week since they launched on Facebook and it's going so well that "it already seems like a long time," the sisters joked.
Keely, 20, is a sophomore at Harper College who will be getting her associate degree in the spring. She hopes to transfer to the University of Houston, which has a top-level entrepreneurship program.
"I just really love the idea of starting a company," Keely said, adding she had practice with a business incubator class at Palatine High School, from which her sister also graduated.
Sam, 22, is a junior at Northern Illinois University, where she is studying industrial and systems engineering after getting an associate degree from Harper.
"The whole concept is making things more efficient and find the best way to complete a task," Sam said. "For me, (Easter Eggers) stemmed from trying to take all the stress off the parents."
The sisters combined their skills - entrepreneurship and efficiency - to put together a plan of action with pricing and logistics in late February.
They already have about 20 orders, which can range from 12 eggs for $15 to 72 eggs for $65. The most popular choice is 36 eggs for $35.
Easter is April 4. The sisters will take no more than 100 orders by March 28. They have enlisted the help of friends to assist them in hiding eggs from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. the night before Easter. In exchange, they will provide their friends with dinner, breakfast and a free T-shirt, they said.
The sisters said they grew up having egg hunts with great family celebrations for Easter. Keely remembers the thrill of finding the one egg with $10 inside. "The hunt was a lot of fun," Sam agreed.
This year, they plan to set up an awesome egg hunt for their 7-year-old brother.
Both sisters are juggling their new venture with work. Keely has an internship at a digital marketing company Mondays through Thursdays and works at a restaurant Fridays through Sundays. Sam works five days a week for a hydraulics company.
If things go well this year, they said, they plan to create a website for Easter Eggers and offer more add-ons like baskets and larger eggs next year.
Easter Eggers is on Facebook at facebook.com/eastereggersisters. Registration is open for homes in Arlington Heights, Palatine, Inverness, Kildeer, Barrington and Rolling Meadows. The order registration form is at https://forms.gle/Hoi5QBABhGuZagvZ6.