Brewing Up the Right Combination (Part 2)

Brewing Up the Right Combination

STUDIO CITY, Calif. — In the ever-evolving world of laundry services, businesses are redefining the experience by pairing it with complementary offerings like café-style comforts and gourmet coffee. The approach not only elevates the ordinary chore of laundry but also creates inviting spaces for customers to relax, connect, or work while waiting for their cycles to finish.

Businesses like California’s Laundry Bar, Illinois’ Laundry Cafe and South Carolina’s Green Laundry Lounge strive to weave together the warmth of a coffeehouse or café with the efficiency of a modern laundry facility. Their concepts are setting new standards for customer experience, proving that the right blend of convenience and community can transform the mundane into the enjoyable.

The Laundry Bar in densely populated Studio City is a dedicated wash-dry-fold service that also offers a great cup of coffee.

It’s located on Ventura Boulevard, about a half-mile from University City, home to Universal Studios. The concept is a high-end wash-and-fold operation with a gourmet coffee bar.

“I first saw this kind of concept down in Cape Town (South Africa),” says Laundry Bar owner Karen Marriott, who also manages the day-to-day operation. “I thought this was really good, because Cape Town is really known for coffee. You saw a really nice brick wall … and it looked more like a restaurant with a coffee bar, and they just had a scale at one end of it and through the curtains you could see a washer and dryer.

“The whole premise was, ‘Come in and drop your drawers, grab a coffee and we’ll text you when your laundry is done.’ They’d come in the next day to grab their laundry and another coffee.”

So Marriott returned to California and started working on developing the concept locally. Her biggest challenge, she says, was finding the right location that would accept coffee service and wash and fold “because it had never been done before here.”

Four years passed between the time she first envisioned the Laundry Bar and it opened for business in early 2020.

Her plan is to ultimately franchise the concept, and she’s received interest from at least two other parties about opening others.

“The whole intent is not to open one, it’s to open a hundred,” she says.

The leased space within a shopping plaza covers roughly 1,075 square feet. The coffee bar is public-facing, while the laundry services portion of the business is hidden from view. There are only two small tables inside, so customer traffic is mostly come and go.

Marriott says she and her partners were adamant that the business not resemble a coin laundry or a dry cleaner.

“We didn’t want it to look like laundry,” Marriott says of the Laundry Bar’s décor and layout. “Or, if you did see the laundry, it was always very neat and clean and finished. There’s been a learning curve because people don’t know what we are, who we are.”

There is no self-service laundry option here: “We are 100% private machines, and we control everything about the aspects of the wash and fold.”

The back-of-house laundry area includes three Continental washers and four dryers, with room for another washer and two more dryers without the need for renovation. An ozone system sanitizes customer goods while they’re being cleaned. There’s also a Continental flatwork ironer used to iron or press all sheets and linens, which The Laundry Bar does at no charge.

Laundry Bar employees—which currently number six but Marriott is looking to expand staff based on service demand—are cross-trained so they can serve java out front or deftly handle laundry in the back.

“All of our employees are trained in (preparing and providing) coffee. We find that is an added bonus, they like to be baristas. They like to get away from the monotony of folding. Although, the people that I hire … love to fold laundry. It’s very therapeutic. We do it color-coordinated, very neat, tidy, and wrapped in craft paper.”

While the separate halves of the business draw their own fair share of customers, Marriott acknowledges that laundry accounts for “96-97% of our business.”

“From a financial perspective, laundry is the money maker,” she says. “It would take (selling) a lot of cups of coffee to get an $85 laundry load.”

At the outset, the Laundry Bar was 100% drop-off but had to adapt once the COVID pandemic hit just six weeks after opening.

“Me and a couple of my partners, we knew we had to do something, so we got into the pickup and delivery game,” Marriott says. “It hasn’t increased until the last three months. Our numbers are stronger in the pickup and delivery than the drop-off.”

The Laundry Bar also takes in drop-off dry cleaning to better serve its time-is-precious entertainment industry customer base.

Strikes within that industry over the last couple years severely impacted her business, Marriott adds, and the Laundry Bar is really just reaching pre-strike levels again.

The Laundry Bar has been “shy” in marketing and has relied on word of mouth. It recently listed the business on neighborhood app Nextdoor.

“People are learning what we are. Our loyal customers love us, and we’ve had them for four years.”

The Laundry Bar sells California-based Verve coffee, which Marriott says will be infusing some dollars into the business for marketing promotions starting soon.

But moving forward, among the next steps to be discussed is whether to sell coffee or not.

“Because that’s an expense to open, and you pay two different taxes. … Again, it gets back to ambiance and, honestly, I think (the coffee bar) makes a big difference, so we’ll still argue among ourselves whether the coffee is going to stay or not.”

While challenging at times, developing the Laundry Bar has also had its rewards, Marriott says.

“It’s very artistic to develop a concept, as much as maybe doing a house for yourself. That has been very rewarding. But probably the biggest surprise and most rewarding is how well you get to know your customers … and I’m not talking about their underwear.”

In Tuesday’s conclusion: Looking forward to having a comfortable space at the Laundry Cafe

STUDIO CITY, Calif. — Verve-powered wash-dry-fold service on Ventura Boulevard

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