CHICAGO — The laundry industry has never offered more ways to build a business.
For decades, the traditional self-service laundromat stood as the dominant model. Today, owners have a broad menu of potential models that includes wash-dry-fold service, pickup and delivery, commercial laundering, and even pursuing dedicated production facilities focused entirely on servicing business customers.
The challenge isn’t simply choosing a model. It’s understanding which model best fits an owner’s goals, market, resources and appetite for complexity.
During the CLA webinar “One Size Does Not Fit All: The Pros and Cons of Various Laundry Business Models,” operators Rob Maes of Express Laundry in Texas and Randy Roberts of Columbus Express Laundry in Ohio shared lessons learned from building businesses that have evolved beyond traditional self-service operations.
Although their businesses have taken different paths, both operators emphasized a common theme: successful expansion happens when owners understand their capabilities, focus on customer needs and grow deliberately rather than chasing every opportunity.
DIFFERENT PATHS TO GROWTH
Maes and Roberts arrived in the laundry industry from similar backgrounds. Both spent years in corporate careers before deciding to pursue entrepreneurship.
Maes entered the laundromat business in 2008-09, opening two stores in the Houston area during the depths of the Great Recession. Over time, he expanded to four laundromats, each offering self-service and wash-dry-fold services while also serving commercial customers.
Roberts entered the industry in 2021 after a career leading national sales organizations. What began as a wash-dry-fold venture quickly expanded into a substantial pickup-and-delivery operation. At the time of the webinar, his company was operating two laundromats and a dedicated production facility, with a larger 4,500-square-foot processing plant under development.
Their businesses look very different on paper, but both illustrate how operators often evolve beyond their original concepts.
“We began in the wash-dry-fold business, and it grew so rapidly that we ended up closing the second facility to the public,” Roberts explains. The former laundromat now functions entirely as a production facility supporting commercial and pickup-and-delivery work.
Maes, meanwhile, has remained heavily focused on maximizing the utilization of existing laundromat assets.
“We spent all this money on a building, washers, dryers and so on,” he says. “Anytime we can get more utilization out of that equipment, that’s going to give us a better return on our investment.”
Those differing approaches demonstrate an important reality within today’s laundry industry: no model is universally “correct.”
COMMERCIAL ACCOUNTS REQUIRE BUSINESS MINDSET
One of the strongest messages delivered during the conversation centered on commercial laundry service.
Many operators view commercial accounts as an attractive growth opportunity because they often provide recurring revenue and larger processing volumes. However, both men cautioned that business-to-business laundry service requires a different mindset than serving retail customers.
“If you’re going to be in the commercial business, you need to run it like a business and interface with your business customers like a business,” Maes says.
That means more than simply washing linens. Commercial customers expect professional invoicing, dependable scheduling, consistent quality and reliable communication.
Operators must also understand their capacity limitations before pursuing larger accounts.
Maes described scenarios in which hotels suddenly needed hundreds of rooms’ worth of linens processed after equipment failures. Such opportunities can be lucrative, but only if an operator has sufficient labor, equipment and production capacity.
“You have to be prepared to handle that volume,” he says.
Just as important, owners need to appreciate which types of accounts fit their operation.
A restaurant account, for example, may sound appealing until operators discover the challenges associated with removing grease and food stains. Depending on the equipment available, some laundromats may struggle to achieve the water temperatures, chemical dosing and wash formulas required to consistently clean heavily soiled restaurant linens.
Rather than attempting to serve every possible customer, Maes recommends identifying a niche.
“You’ve got to define what your capabilities are and know what they are and be good at it,” he says.
For Express Laundry, that niche involves providing highly personalized service for customers supplying their own goods.
Large industrial laundry operations excel at processing massive volumes efficiently. Smaller operators often win by delivering specialized services those larger providers may not offer or care to provide.
For example, Maes’ company prepares complete sheet sets for hospitality customers by bundling fitted sheets, flat sheets and pillowcases together. The process saves time for housekeeping staff and creates added value beyond simply cleaning linens.
Roberts employs a similar philosophy.
“We want our customers to feel like our partners,” he says.
That partnership approach has led his company to perform services ranging from staging linens for specific rooms to individually packaging uniforms and delivering them directly into employee lockers.
Those additional touches require labor and attention to detail, but they also create differentiation that helps smaller operators compete against larger providers.
Check back Thursday for Part 2: Why logistics becomes the real business, and the importance of route density
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Bruce Beggs at [email protected].
