HONOLULU – At the GCI Express convenience store, customers can pick up milk, mascara and mochi crunch – and mail a few packages, the Honolulu Star Bulletin reports. The convenience store has become another U.S. Postal Services contract postal unit, which offers consumers metered mail postage, stamps and other postal services with the exception of post office boxes or money orders.

“We wanted to be more of a service to the neighborhood,” David Lee, who owns the shop with his wife Grace, told the newspaper. Four of the store’s nine employees received training by the USPS to man the postal counter.

Postal services have long been a staple at rural town general stores, and the practice of USPS contract postal units in area businesses, such as convenience stores, has been catching on across the country. Customers like having the convenience of mailing letters and packages without the hassle of waiting in line at the post office. For the convenience store, having postal services helps to drive in-store traffic, which can lead to higher sales.

“I think the people that provide the service are not going into it necessarily to make a lot of money, but it provides additional service to their customers,” said Duke Gonzales, USPS public affairs officer in Hawaii.

For its contract postal units, the USPS supplies, for free, the counters, drawers, signage, register, meter, scale and the basic hardware. The convenience store owner provides the build-out and installs the equipment.

The operator pays to lease the unit and buys its postal supplies from the USPS, which pays “them a percentage of their sales every month,” Gonzales said.

The Postal Service also markets the new service location with postcards sent to people in the nearby area.