5 Lessons Learned From 1 Year of Owning a Laundromat

I'm Keira Hamilton and I own The Laundry Corner in San Francisco, CA. In this video, I break down 5 lessons I've learned after a year of owning and operating a laundromat.
Timestamps:
00:00 Start
00:39 Lesson #1: Laundromats are not passive income
05:00 Lesson #2: Work in AND on your business
09:01 Lesson #3: Flexibility is key
11:33 Lesson #4: You can't foolproof a laundromat
13:26 Lesson #5: Beware of the zombiemat
Connect with me: ⁠LinkedIn / ⁠ | ⁠Twitter⁠ / keirahamilton | [e-mail]
#laundromat #smallbusiness #ETA #passiveincome

[@splashemoutlaundromat]

Very good video. Congratulations on your laundromat, we wish you many years of success.

[@seph4667]

God bless your channel.

[@redbonescorpio79]

Love this!

[@briandillon5436]

How do you regulate the opening and closing of the business? Do you automate the opening/closing or does someone physically lock/unlock? What is a good size (sq ft) if you were to start from scratch? FYI, i'm in the midwest. $10 psf triple net is about the going rate here.

[@Keira_Hamilton]

Our door is on an auto lock/unlock. So it unlocks in the morning and the first customer in just opens the door. We have an employee who closes at night (the door auto locks but does not auto close). I think the ideal SF really depends on what you want to do. My laundromat is fairly small (about 1000 sf). It's in San Francisco, so that's not too uncommon. The main thing I would be concerned about space wise with a new location would be having enough room to both serve the self-serve customers and also have a wash & fold component. We actually took out some old washers and created more folding space because there were times we didn't have room to do the wash & fold orders. If you had a separate area for wash & fold, say a large office with a couple machines and folding space dedicated specifically to wash & fold that could help too.

[@Whoville814]

@Keira Hamilton I am looking to get into this business as well. Do you have any advice on what brand of machine is good? say If i want to do credit card plus coin or just coin laundry? How often does a particular brand need to serviced compared to others? To be honest I'd like to ask a ton of questions, but l don't want to take up a lot of your time

[@Keira_Hamilton]

We have Dexter and Speed Queen and I think both those brands are solid and make equipment that lasts a long time. We use PayRange on both of them for electronic payments, although I would guess they integrate with other electronic payment options as well. I’m not sure about which types of brands need to be serviced over others, but I would not recommend going with a lesser known brand because it will likely be harder to find techs that can work on them. For example, there aren’t as many techs who work on Wascomats, at least in my area. Feel free to ask more questions!

[@austinpaul2178]

Where do you look for a decent laundromat?

[@Keira_Hamilton]

Hey! I actually talk about how to find a business for sale in Part 2 of my How to Buy a Business series. :)

[@austinpaul2178]

@@Keira_Hamilton thank you very much I’ll watch that real soon

[@tonycasillas9258]

Does crime play an issue in owning your laundromat???

[@Keira_Hamilton]

Great question! We have not had significant issues with crime. We recently had someone try to drill the locks on one of our changers, but they weren’t able to get inside. That’s the only time something like that has happened since we’ve owned it. There were a lot of laundromats we passed on because they were in neighborhoods we weren’t comfortable with.

[@bernadineglow]

Do you live in San Francisco? I'm trying to buy a laundromat I'm afraid it's too far away from my house

[@Keira_Hamilton]

No, we live in Oakland which is across the bay and distance has definitely been a challenge for us. Personally, if I were to buy another laundromat it would need to be less than a 30 minute drive away. Now we're at a point where we only go in usually once a week, but there are times when we need to go in more frequently and spending over an hour sitting in traffic is no fun.