HYANNIS, Mass. — A number of vended laundry projects are completed around the country each year, resulting in brand-new or rejuvenated stores primed and ready to serve customers.
As a way to celebrate the hard work that goes into designing, building and equipping a modern self-service laundry, American Coin-Op created this Portraits of Success feature to recognize memorable projects of recent vintage.
And so equipment manufacturers were invited to tout their brand’s latest and greatest vended laundry projects, like this one:
Jeb Balise built his brand and reputation on customer convenience, express service and community value. And the owner of multiple car washes and a large auto dealership group is comfortable chasing opportunity. He found himself asking, “Why couldn’t I be a laundry operator?” In the span of a year, he became one.
Love Your Laundry is a high-speed laundry designed to outshine the competition and give back to its community. Balise’s 3,500-square-foot store opened in September 2021.
Developed with help from Daniels Equipment Co. in Auburn, New Hampshire, it showcases Continental high-speed ExpressWash® Washers and ExpressDry® Dryers; a San-O3-Wash ozone sanitization system; a Family Read, Play & Learn literacy space; drop-off wash/dry/fold (WDF) service; and the Card Concepts Inc. FLEX payment system.
“The Daniels team went above and beyond to help us understand the laundry business,” says Balise. “Their level of service is phenomenal, and their insight into the market helped us maximize this opportunity.”
Daniels ran demographic studies, pro formas, and competitive analyses on this store and another that Balise developed in Springfield. “Both spots offer great visibility and a high density of renters,” says Daniels Sales Consultant Tim Avallone.
Love Your Laundry showcases an equipment mix of high-speed, soft-mount washers in 20- to 130-pound capacities. They improve customer turnover, cut laundry processing time and reduce utility costs for more profit per square foot, says Avallone. Simultaneously, the 13-load mega machines work to attract customers with large families and bulky loads.
The soft-mount washers generate extract speeds reaching 400-plus G-force when compared with hard-mount washers that produce 75-200 G-force, according to Avallone. By comparison, ExpressWash soft-mount machines cut resulting dry time by up to 50%, reducing natural gas and electricity usage for lower overhead costs.
“Our high-speed washers and dryers really set us apart from our competition,” says Love Your Laundry General Manager Tony DeBarros, “by enabling customers to get in and out in under an hour and allowing us to serve more customers per day.”
The ozone system is designed to kill 99.9% of bacteria, viruses and molds in customers’ laundry by automatically injecting environmentally friendly ozone into every washer. “The sanitization makes the store smell fresh and clean,” Balise says. “Customers get educated in our store and it’s a happy surprise and value point of sale that locks them in. Retention is really strong.”
The payment system allows customers to use a loyalty card, mobile app or debit/credit card to operate machines. Meanwhile, there are multiple store-management capabilities, including programming machines, running promotional specials, altering vend pricing, and tracking everything from daily revenue to average turns.
For customers preferring full service, Love Your Laundry provides drop-off WDF for residential and commercial accounts. Each customer’s washing preferences are carefully followed, and laundry is folded by item type and packaged for pickup.
“Our service is simple and efficient,” says DeBarros. “We have a great point-of-sale system that keeps us organized, manages workflow, prints receipts and offers customer communication tools via text.”
In its early months, Love Your Laundry hit “a home run compared to the pro forma,” Balise says of its sales and customer loyalty, adding, “We can’t wait to see where this goes.”
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Bruce Beggs at [email protected].
