Concierge biz offers ‘mom away from mom’ for kids away from home
Service is the mother lode
Like any good mom, when one of her kids calls, Tammy Kumin comes running — no matter the time of day or night.
The biological parent of three and grandmother of six from Boston does it all, even in her seventies — emergency grocery shopping, cooking, and laundry.
She’s even jumped on a plane in the wee hours to bail one of her youngsters out of a Miami jail, and has rushed to bedsides in New York emergency rooms.
However, Kumin isn’t the actual mother of the kids whom she caters to in 911 binds.
She’s simply their rent-a-mom.
‘Total support system’
“I’m a mom away from mom — a total support system for students,” Kumin, the founder of Concierge Service for Students (CSS), told The Post.
“We get kids in pre-boarding schools, boarding schools or college,” she said, “and we take care of their practical needs, medical needs, mental-health needs and beyond.”
The momtrepreneur launched the concierge service in 1993, wanting to offer a helping hand to both US and international students throughout the Northeast. The service comes with a price tag of $10,000 per academic year.
For their money, parents can depend on their away-from-home offspring receiving regular food deliveries, academic assistance, beauty and spa appointment bookings, aid in making dinner reservations and signing up for gym memberships, apartment-hunting, furniture building, party-planning, doctor referrals, summer storage, as well as banking and bill-payment support — just to name a few.
From the CCS offices in Massachusetts, Kumin and her team of four “moms,” who all evenly share the responsibilities of their clients, are oncall to their students 24 hours a day, seven days a week, at the ready to act as substitute parent when the kid’s actual mother and father are states, or in some cases oceans, away.
And for homesick scholars studying outside of the Boston-area — a student at New York City’s Parsons School of Design and at least one NYU undergrad are current CSS customers — the hired moms dispatch their vetted staff of local “errandrunners” to fulfill basic requests like grocery and laundry services.
But for the big stuff, like health issues or legal tangles, Kumin’s feet are on the concrete.
“There are all kinds of things that come up for kids who are studying away from home,” said Kumin. “We’re there for them and they know it.
They’re totally comfortable to let us know what they need — all five of us — we all know exactly what’s going on with each kid, how they live, their families, everything.”
However, her job isn’t to replace a young adult’s mom. Instead, she says she’s merely an extension of their mother’s love.
The specialized service is much like that of 34-year-old Brooklynite Jen Glantz, a professional bridesmaid, who’ll stand-in as a bride’s bestie on her big day for a cool $2,500.
‘Always there’
However, it’s much more wholesome than other human rental businesses such as the “girlfriendfor-hire” venture that earns Mexico-based content creator Kiirmy a whopping $12,000 a month.
And since the dawn of Concierge Service for Students, which has taken on clients strictly via word-of-mouth, rather than formal marketing, for the past three decades, the not-their-real-moms have accommodated the big and small needs of 30 kids per year.
The moms have maintained contact with most of their “kids” well after they’ve transitioned into adulthood.
Salman Al Kabbani, 36, who now lives in Midtown Manhattan, tells The Post that Kumin and the moms offered him an emotional safe space when he first relocated to America from Saudi Arabia in 2003 at the tender age of 16.
“I came to US to attend Tilton boarding school in New Hampshire, and Tammy and the moms did a really great job at making me feel like family,” said Al Kabbani, who patronized CSS for 10 years as he matriculated through high school, college and postgrad work.
He said he footed the hefty bill for the service himself, using scholarship monies.
“Myself and a few other students would go to [the mom’s] houses and have home-cooked meals sometimes,” he recalled. “And if I needed transportation, got into any trouble or just someone to talk to, they were always there.”
In fact, Al Kabbani said that Kumin was one of his first calls after he suffered a medical emergency in 2010.
“I had to have a very serious surgery,” he said. “And I talked to Tammy about it prior to talking to my mom because I felt like I was free to confide in her.”
‘Such a comfort’
Alexander Hochberg, 18, and his mother Jacqui, from the Upper East Side, agreed that the moral support offered by the group of for-lease moms made learning away from home a breeze.
“If I was homesick or needed a haircut or a point of comfort, and my parents were four hours away in New York, Tammy was there in 15 minutes,” said Alexander, a high school senior. “On Jewish holidays, if I couldn’t make it home, she’d invite me over to be with her family.”
He and his older brother, Harrison, now 20, first became Concierge Service for Students clients as preteens when they left the Big Apple for pre-boarding school in New England in 2017.
And while the family no longer uses the service due to the boys’ abilities to care for themselves, Kumin still shows up for them — as any doting member of the family would.
“Even after my kids [were out of the program], Tammy would drive up to their boarding school and visit or attend their basketball games,” Jacqui, a sports marketing executive, told The Post. “She really cares and that’s such a comfort.”
And to naysayers who worry an all-in-one, on-duty mommy might hinder a tween or teen’s ability to mature into a self-sufficient, contributing member of society, Kumin tells The Post that haters need not fear.
“We’re not here to limit our students or spy on them for their parents,” she said. “We’re here as lifelong friends who give kids and families peace of mind.”