Dan with Mama’s Laundry has grown his wash and fold business by TEN TIMES in just TWO YEARS with the Curbside Laundries POS and pickup and delivery solution. Dan discusses his explosive growth, which he says he could not have achieved without Curbside. He discusses the pros and cons of attended versus non attended laundromats and why he is focusing on laundry pickup and delivery!
Speaker 1:
And if you’re CEO, you you’d get a big raise. If you increase business 20%, this is over double. And then the following year, it looks like 10 times the, the growth
Speaker 2:
It’s been, as I said, it’s been ex explosive. I’m looking at trying to focus everything on pickup and delivery with the growth that we’ve had. We’ve done no marketing.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to state of the laundry industry with laundry, Matt episode, 26, 10 times washable growth in just two years. I’m super excited about our guest today. I would like to welcome Dan pack with mama’s Lama over in Leesburg, Virginia, and he’s got quite an operation. He’s had explosive growth. I think it’s beyond what he even expected and looking forward to learning about how he’s grown his business and how a curbside has been able to help him as well.
Speaker 2:
Curbside has helped us to grow at a rate where we did not expect our original business model revolved around self service customers and also offering wash and full, but didn’t expect our washing fold to grow this much. And this fast now it’s becoming our main focal point. You know, curbside also owns and operates their own laundromats. So because of that, I feel like curbside is more of a company that understands where I, as an owner and operator come from.
Speaker 1:
What brought you into the laundry business?
Speaker 2:
Originally? My family were all, uh, small business owners and we, we started out with a small restaurant in a small town. Parents came here as immigrants with nothing, and they slowly worked theirselves up, purchased that restaurant. And after 10 years we decided it’s time for a new new business. And by chance we stumbled upon a laundromat. We haven’t looked back since.
Speaker 1:
Wow, that’s fantastic. I mean, that is so cool to be able to go from basically nothing. And then within one generation, you’ve been able to help take this business to a whole nother level.
Speaker 2:
I used to work as a, uh, federal contractor. I did help my mother on the weekends at the laundromat, cuz she obviously needed some help. Uh, as a single mother over time with the growth of our first laundromats, I decided that I had to quit my job and join her ever since then. We’ve expanded to four locations now I definitely would never go back to a corporate night. <laugh> we’ve done restaurants. We’ve done. Dels we’ve done car washes and the laundromat industry has been the most rewarding.
Speaker 1:
Oh, that’s great to hear. Yeah. Yeah. We’ve got kind of a similar story. So parents were running the laundromat and my brother came in to help out. And then he just took the business to a whole nother level, bringing in technology, the software website with online presence, paying attention to the cus customer’s journey business just exploded. And then we realized we needed software to manage the process we realized pick up and deliver. So it’s just, the timing was fantastic. And who would’ve known that Lamas would become high tech
Speaker 2:
And curbside has done that for me. Definitely
Speaker 1:
Taking a look at your growth, your revenue back in 2021, actually 2020 was fantastic. I mean I think any laundromat doing wash and fold would be happy with that. And then if you look at one year later, year over year in March, the revenue looks like it over doubled. I mean these numbers are just astronomical because if you look at one year to the next, what other business goes up like that, normally you’re looking at 10% increase 20%. I mean, and you’d be happy with 20%. If you’re CEO, you you’d get a big raise. If you increase business 20%, this is over double. And then the following year, it, it looks like 10 times the, the growth
Speaker 2:
It’s been, as I said, it’s been ex explosive and a lot of that’s I think helped out. I mean, COVID 19 affected everybody. I think we launched pickup and delivery just in time, right before COVID because everybody wanted to have the contact list service. We saw a lot more people trying out that service. And I think that also attributed to our success along with that, the processes that we put in, uh, the way we trained our employees to ensure that we can retain those customers that all had a huge play, uh, as well as the, the software itself without the curbside software. I can’t even imagine where I would be right now. I, I think we would still be relying on trying to survive with self service customers.
Speaker 1:
I do a video on <laugh> our system. We had our paper system or whiteboard and dry erase and the employee who wrote all these crazy notes, <laugh> on the whiteboard. And I think everybody kind of developed some type of system. And I think what people didn’t realize is with pickup and delivery, it is an individually customized orders on a massive scale because every single order is different. You know, you’re picking it up at a different day, different time. You’re delivering a different day, different time. They have their own wash and fold preferences. They have their own delivery notes. I mean, I remember drivers so often before the curbside software would go out and then it says, oh, there’s no laundry there. Then the notes somewhere got lost along the way saying, oh, did you look next to the chimney? You really need to have something in place that helps keep it organized. Otherwise it just doesn’t scale. That’s where software really comes in handy. So as far as the growth, how have you been able to manage all this? Because you’ve got multiple laundromats. I mean, that can’t be too easy.
Speaker 2:
Great question. So this, this was our third site. We actually built this laundromat from the ground up. It wasn’t an existing laundry that we took over. It was really scary for us to try a new location, uh, let alone offer pick and delivery, wash, and bolt. We still had multiple competitors around the area and we still had great huge competitors for the wash and bolt pickup and delivery. The original reason why I went with curbside was because I wanted to simplify my job, which was tracking the wash and bolt orders, doing inventory management, making sure that cash drops from employees were correct. And that was my main challenge. Running multiple stores is trying to manage all that. So I was really looking for a software program and I stumbled upon curbside. But with using curbside, my job has been so much easier at this site. I mean, I can’t say that I’m hardly here, but it significantly reduced my time and I can track everything from my home, my phone anywhere I am. It’s been great.
Speaker 1:
We’ve been putting a lot of development time into multiple locations from one login. You’re able to look at store a or store B store C. You could see any order. The driver could drop off the laundry out store a or store B just makes it real easy just to track any order. The number one thing that we used to get hit with before software was customers would say, Hey, you know, this order got mixed up or this happened or this happened and just have all that information. Being able to say, okay, their order is this many pounds. They’ve dropped it off on this day. This person washed it. I mean, just having that knowledge is so powerful. We’re able to resolve issues before they become an issue. You know, we even knew they picked it up at this time, like in one case and they claimed they never picked it up and were able to look at the security cameras down to the exact timestamp.
Speaker 1:
We’re using paper tickets. Good luck. I think when customers know that you have this information, they’re a lot less likely to make these false accusations because they know you wait on the end when they drop it off, they know you wait when you drop, when they pick it up, just having a good system in place, it’s good protection. It helps prevent some people try to become entrepreneurs and shake down. Laundromats. One thing I see is especially multi store owners. It’s a big decision whether to be fully attended, whether to even offer wash and fold because there is additional overhead. And it’s just wondering what your thoughts are on that. As multi store owner,
Speaker 2:
I’ve visited many laundromats that have been unattended. There are pros and cons to both, as you said, overhead is a huge issue. But with unintended laundromats, what I see a lot is the machines break down faster. There’s no accountability from the customers to tidy up the laundromats, especially from myself, coming from a self-service customer background. I want to create an environment where it’s clean, it’s safe. It’s, it’s bright for customers to come and they’ll know, I can do my laundry here without issue, but a lot of unintended sites that I’ve visited, just walking in. It’s a place where I don’t want to be too rowdy. It’s trash everywhere. Even though it’s cleaned occasionally, you’re not gonna be able to get the same dedication as a attendance store. And then with attendance, if even if you hire them, you can make that overhead back. You know, as you said, through wash and folds through retail sales, through vending supplies, I mean all these things that can attribute to customers, spending more money at your store as a multi-store owner. Yes, it is hard to manage all those employees, but if you hire and train correctly, I think that it’ll pay
Speaker 1:
Off. I saw a recent discussion between some laundry owners and they’re saying, well, if you could have the additional revenue from being attended, pay for the attendant, covering the cost and it’s quote free. So now the question is, is it worth a headache? Why even breakeven, you know, we’re in business to make money. And that’s one of the reasons like curbside, we’re not just softwares. I know you’ve called me multiple times. We’ve had lots of discussions, you know, about like how, how to grow your business and all those types of things. And I think, and, and you’d be successful no matter what, but I think we’ve been able to work together and be even more successful in a way like coaching. We’re talking to a lot of different laundry owners. We’re all working together. I’ve learned so much from you and from other laundry owners and you know, we’re just kind of working together to help everybody’s business thrive. I don’t think it’s enough just to cover your costs and washing fold. I think it’s with washing fold. It’s like, okay, if you’re gonna be managing employees and you’re gonna be paying the rent and paying for the machines and all this stuff, like let’s make some money, you know, let’s grow it. That’s what I find just so amazing with, with your numbers is you’re doing a whole bunch of things, right? No, you’re just bought another laundromat. Are you gonna be doing pickup and delivery over there?
Speaker 2:
Yes. With the success of curbside that we’ve seen here at mamas, uh, we want to implement that same service to our newly acquired laundromat continuously to grow that’s that’s the name of the game, right? Just continuously grow.
Speaker 1:
And what would you say to somebody considering getting into pick up and delivery?
Speaker 2:
You’ll never know until you try. And even if you have a lot of competition, as long as you can provide the service to the customer that is on par with what you would expect, just trying it out, doesn’t hurt.
Speaker 1:
It’s interesting about how you brought up competition. I see that as something that holds people back, there’s saying, oh, I missed the boat or there’s already people in my area doing it when I did commercial real estate. And there’s three different pizza places on a corner. What do you open up on, on the fourth corner? And the answer is a pizza place because that community likes pizza. It actually works out well. Like we’re doing better than ever at super sets. And we have way more competition. It used to just be like us. And now there’s pages and pages and pages on Google showing pick up and delivery, wash and fold. But the market is grown and I’ve got somebody on the flip side in a really small town of about 20,000 people. His business is going off the hook. He was actually excited to hear a competitor advertising on the radio. Why? Cause now more people are thinking about pick up and delivery. If there’s competition. That’s a good thing. And the, yeah, just sort our final question. What your expectations were when you signed up with curbside and where you’re at today?
Speaker 2:
My expectations with curbside was originally. I just wanted a software to track my washing pulled orders and do my inventory management. That was my original expectation. Once I got talking with Matt, uh, he introduced me to the concept of pick up and deliver. At that time. I wasn’t a believer. I was really reluctant to launch it because I knew that there would be headaches along the way. I learned a lot. Now I’m looking at trying to focus everything on pick and delivery with the growth that we’ve had. We’ve done, no marketing, everything has been through word of mouth with this new growth I’m planning to do more marketing this year, seeing how much farther we can grow. I’m very, very pleased with the way curbside developed their software and their tech support. Everything is just amazing,
Speaker 1:
Well, much appreciated. So yeah, we’re, we’re excited. We’ve got, we’ve increased our development team. So we’re pumping out new features all the time. Thank you for being curbside client and I’m yeah. Super excited about your growth and continued growth. It’s surreal. My brother and I, we will be eating lunch. We will kind of reflect upon the, the success our clients are having and it’s, it’s life changing and it, and it’s just really cool to be in this situation where we’re able to help out and got top notch operators like herself who are willing to take a chance or try something new. It’s easy to be content with what you got, but you say, Hey, let’s push things and let’s grow things. And I think as a result of that continued curiosity or desire to grow, I mean, that’s, you took this opportunity and it’s paid off. So just wanna thank you again. I wanna check in again, like maybe a year from now, you know, and maybe it would do update on the podcast because I can’t imagine the year over year growth. And I’m just so curious what next year bring, I just wish you had continued success.
Speaker 2:
Thank you very much
Speaker 1:
To learn more about the curbside laundries wash and fold point of sale and pick up and delivery solution and how we could help you go to curbside laundries.com. Don’t forget to click like or subscribe and see you next time.
