The Laundromat Personality
You many think that the laundry business is about clothes, but what it’s really about is people. It’s a service business, and like any service business, you need to treat your customers well if you want them to return to your shop.
If you are friendly, your customers will want to use your store. By taking the time to talk to them, you will also be able to learn about their laundry needs and preferences for services. Ultimately, this kind of information will help you improve the quality of your business so that you can attract even more customers.
Even if you decide to hire employees and leave the customer relations to them, you still need good people skills to hire and supervise employees. The more closely you work with them the better they know and like you, the better job they’ll do.
If you have an unattended laundry that you visit twice a day to clean and collect coins from the machines, you still need to greet customers with a smile on your face and an attitude that’s ready to help.
So if small talk with strangers leaves you cold, you can’t stand the thought of answering customers’ questions (often the same ones over and over), the laundry business may not be the one for you.
However, if you think you’ll like meeting new people, helping them work the machines, and listening to them talk while they wait for dryers to finish, you’ll find this business rewarding. Lehmbeck believes customer interaction is very important.
“If you get to know your customers, it’s offers huge spin-offs. My staff is on a first name basis with many of our customers, and I put this down to good customer service!
Word-of-mouth is the best advertising you can get, if the message is positive…and the most destructive if service is poor. In reality this business is not just about laundry as much as it is about offering brilliant customer service.”
What are the day-to-day operations involved in running a laundry business
So what’s it really like to own a laundry business? Whether you do all the work yourself or hire someone to run it for you, there are tasks you will need to take care of on a daily basis.
You will need to open and close your shop promptly each day, clean it, collect money and fill vending and change machines. You will need to keep track of which machines are being used and how often.
Those laundry owners who have employees will have other duties, too.
They will be hiring and supervising those employees and overseeing additional services such as wash-and-fold or ironing.
Laundries are generally open between 7am and 6pm seven days per week. Because weekends are usually the business days for laundries, you should definitely keep your doors open on a Saturday and perhaps even on Sundays.
In some instances, you many want to adopt alternate hours, especially if the market you serve or the location of the laundry lends itself to having its doors open at other times of the day.
If you own an unattended coin operated laundry in an area that is close to a university, college, gym or business district you could operate on extended hours because students and some executives are notorious for keeping odd hours.
Your first duty of the day is open your laundry, and you must be on time because customers may plan their day around getting their laundry done at a certain time.
In South Africa most drop-off laundromats close at 6pm. “They are more popular than coin operated self-service laundromats”, says laundry business owner, Tracey Lehmbeck.
The coin operated Laundromats can close later than drop-off laundries, sometimes as late as 10pm, but you should consider locking the door at 8.30pm, leaving enough time for the last loads of laundry to be finished.
You can either let the customers out yourself or install a lock system that allows them to leave, but prevents others from coming inside.