Village Post Office Opens in Southern Stone Co.

It’s no secret postal rates have continued to climb for the last two decades. A major reorganization of the U.S. Postal Service was announced three years ago. The result was downsizing and closure of many rural post offices.

A new strategy now allows local businesses to partner with mail services. Residents in southern Stone County can now send and receive mail via their local grocery store. Addie Sumrall is a long time resident of the Big Level community in Stone County. He says the new village post office located at the Big Level Grocery will make sending mail easier for the rural area. Sumrall says, "It’s great. We can get our packages here and we don’t have to drive the ten miles down to Perkinston and I think it will be real convenient for us."

The new village post is the third one in the state, and the first one to open in south Mississippi. Perkinston’s postmaster, Shane Hodges, hopes the concept catches on and more locations are added. Hodges says, "We provide the customers an opportunity to come to the store instead of traveling to town 20 to 30 miles away, buy stamps, mail packages, and buy a Coke on the way home."

One of the best perks about this new post office is that if you’re not home to receive a package, the mailman will bring it to the grocery store and leave a key in your mailbox so you can come get it at your convenience. Monroe Stewart, owner of Big Level Grocery, says, "If you’re a working person, it’s hard to get to a post office during their business hours, where here you can get it 24 hours a day."

With the Christmas season on the horizon, the post office will now get a little extra help from the village post during its busiest time of year. Hodges closes, “Our packages are increasing year after year. We’re more into the packaging delivery, the mail continues to drop throughout the years, but the packaging service is going to be our bread and butter stone, or our corner stone of our business."

The Big Level Grocery Store will be open from 4:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., much longer than a normal post office. Since 2011, the U.S. Postal Service has opened 100 village post offices around the United States.