Jordan Berry [00:00:01]:
Welcome to Laundromat News Today. I am my mother’s favorite Laundromat news anchor, Jordan Berry, coming at you with news from around the globe, all things Laundromat related. And today we have a super good episode coming right off of the Clean show and a little bit of a shake up in a big company in our space. And we’re going to get to all that. But let’s start in Hell’s Kitchen. There’s a new Laundromat that has popped up in Hell’s Kitchen called the Dry Clean Depot. And shout out to Jay Bagwell and best of luck to him and his team for opening the newest Hell’s Kitchen Laundromat over there, serving that area. Very cool.

Jordan Berry [00:00:46]:
And love to see Laundromats showing up in neighborhoods that need people, bringing good businesses, good service, instilling value in the community there. So congratulations to you guys and best of luck. And let’s head over to Doughy Duck, which is a bakery that has been living and working in the back of no Name laundromat in Brockton, Massachusetts for 42 years. Pretty cool partnership, no Name Laundromat with Doughy Duck Bakery serving the baked goods out of the back of this laundromat. And it’s a drive through bakery again. Creative ideas happening all over the place, going all around. So we’ve heard of cafes, bars, hair salons. We’ve got a bakery now.

Jordan Berry [00:01:43]:
There was a stolen parrot for a little while that we followed that saga. Lots of cool stuff happening at Laundromats. Listen, don’t be afraid to try something new, make some waves, get outside the box with your laundromat business. Who knows, you could have a lot of fun, you could serve a lot of people and you could make a lot of money. All right, let’s jump over to Orlando, where I just got back from the Clean Show. And if you don’t know what the Clean show is, that is the largest convention in our space. So it’s not only a Laundromat related, it’s Laundromats dry cleaning, industrial machines. There’s all kinds of very intimidating looking machines in there.

Jordan Berry [00:02:23]:
But I think this year we had a really strong showing in our industry. I think overall numbers were down, I heard for the convention, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Laundromat specific numbers were up this year. There’s a lot of really great energy, a lot of people trying to do new things and innovate in our industry. I’ll highlight a couple of them here. Know Stealing the show talk of the town was the robotic arm folders happen in there. Now I’ve got to say I’m just going to shoot straight here. They learned over the weekend, which was kind of cool seeing them get faster and better. But you know, reality of it is is right now they’re still a little slow.

Jordan Berry [00:03:04]:
The quality is not quite what we’d want it to be, but these things are, you know, these things are trained by AI and they learn fast by doing hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of repetitions. And I could foresee in a not so long future where we might start having conveyor belts with these folding robots folding these clothes and, and other laundry things for us, you know, so keep an eye on that. Again, we’ve got to pay attention to what’s happening in this industry. I don’t know if these things are ever going to come, you know, into our laundromats or be commercially viable for us to use or not, but they might. And listen, you’re going to benefit from, from these innovations in our, in our industry here. So you know, sticking on the theme of AI, we have, you know, we’ve, we’ve been talking about it here for the last couple months, but AI call centers, a few different companies coming with that. There was more marketing representation than I’ve seen in a really long time. And really quick going back to the robotics.

Jordan Berry [00:04:08]:
Congratulations, the Preso team. Preso was on the podcast not too long ago and I think we’re probably going to have them back on again because they’re still utilizing their knowledge and know how and robotics to bring new products and services to us into our laundromat. So if you remember, they have the Preso machine which is sort of kind of like a single item dry cleaner box that you can use in your drop off or pick them delivery service but you can also vend it and allow your customers to use it, which is kind of cool. And this they whipped up. And when I say whipped up, they whipped it up really quickly. A spot cleaning machine that was incredibly impressive to see. So make sure you check out Presto and keep an eye out for a future episode here with the team over there at Presto because they’re continuing to push the boundaries and trying to help us out, put more tools in our tool belt to help our customers, you know, even, even more. Some other kind of highlights of the show again I kind of mentioned there’s a multiple different marketing companies going out.

Jordan Berry [00:05:17]:
And listen, I’ve been saying for like five years now, if you’re not marketing your laundromat, you’re going to lose out to businesses that have adopted marketing. So find a laundromat marketing company or just a regular marketing company to help you get the word out about your business. Now, I don’t recommend you do that until you have a, an operation that you can be proud of. So do that first if you don’t have that, and then get out there and find somebody to help you get the word out about your business. Drive more revenue for your company. Okay. Because again, there’s some movers and shakers out there right now. All right.

Jordan Berry [00:05:59]:
I also wanted to highlight, you know, there’s more and more operators who are doing bigger and bigger business, especially in the, in the pickup and delivery side of things. And one of the things that some of these larger operations are bringing into their business are these giant ironers and giant folders. And I just wanted to highlight that one of the best ways to decrease your expenses is to buy an ironer. Okay. That was the. You decrease it, you get decrease. You take the creases out because you iron it. Okay, never mind.

Jordan Berry [00:06:39]:
But anyways, there really are, there were some really impressive ironers and folders and things going on in the clean show. So all kinds of fun stuff. Sorry for the really bad joke. Actually, I’m not sorry because, you know, until you start sending me better jokes, you’re just gonna get what you get here. So I’m doing my best. I’m just not funny, as my kids like to tell me. Okay, so let’s jump over to Eastern Funding. President of Eastern Fund Funding is Nancy Robles and was recently added to her title of president.

Jordan Berry [00:07:09]:
She’s maintaining that role, but also the role of CEO of Eastern Funding. In case you’re not familiar, Eastern Funding is industry specific lender they service. I think mostly laundromats and car washes funding over there. And you know, that’s a big, big move. So congratulations to Nancy and we’ll see if that has any measurable impact on us or how Eastern Funding is operating, but something to keep an eye on. And let’s just wrap it up with this. You may have heard that I’m in Hawaii right now. Kind of a full circle moment.

Jordan Berry [00:07:46]:
If you listen to episode one of the podcast where I tell my story, you might know that I tried to buy a house in Hawaii and instead my wife suggested we buy a laundromat and we did that. So it took me more than a decade to actually get out here. But while out here, I met somebody doing big marketing business in our laundromat space. Ryan Borneman with fresh leads marketing. And we started just chatting together and we said, hey, why don’t we bring out some people who are serious about their businesses, serious about growing their laundromat businesses and empires and why don’t we bring out some speakers? Why don’t we put together some sessions that are practical that allow serious laundromat owners to get in the room with other serious laundromat owners and mastermind together and plan together and listen. We’ve put together what I think is an incredible four day event for a ridiculously low cost which also consequently is tax. Write off a ball or write off a bull check with your cpa, but you can write it off as a tax expense here in Hawaii. And not only that, it’s our goal with it is to be very practical and very tactical and you should walk away.

Jordan Berry [00:09:12]:
No matter if you’re just buying your first one or have recently bought your first one or if you’ve got 20 plus laundromats you should walk away. You will walk away with a 90 day action plan to increase your uh, I’m super duper excited about that. We’ve got some incredible people lined up for you including an operations expert in Amanda Barkey and an owner that owns 30 plus laundromats is going to come share spill the secrets on that and it’s going to be very interactive and we’re going to have hot seats and we’re also going to do the Hawaii thing. Let’s just be real, we’re in Hawaii so we’ve got some incredible events planned that are just also Hawaii specific things that you’re not going to get anywhere else. So if you’re interested in that called the Laundromat accelerator Hawaii, check out laundromatresource.com Hawaii and come out and hang out with me and let’s have a good time and let’s figure out a way to make some more money. All of us together at the same time. I love it. Build each other’s businesses.

Jordan Berry [00:10:12]:
I’ve been saying it since day one. We’re all better when we’re working together. And time for me to put my money where my mouth is and let’s get people together and be better off. All right. Lmresource.com Hawaii we’ll see you there. I should mention spots are super limited for that. We want that to be an intimate event. It’s first come first serve so get signed up.

Jordan Berry [00:10:36]:
Laundry.com hawaii all right, we’ll see you there. And that is it for Laundromat news today. We’ll see you next week.