Jordan Berry [00:00:00]:
Hey. Hey, what’s up, guys? It’s Jordan with the Laundromat Resource podcast. This is show 216, and it’s destined to be the greatest show of your life here talking all things Laundromat related. And let me tell you why I’m so pumped you’re here today is because the Mr. Cope is on with me today. Waleed, the man still distinguished as the longest podcast interview in Laundromat resource podcast history, which may or may not be in the Guinness Books and one of the most popular ones still to this day. So you have got something in store today and it is a treat for you. I had to pop back in here real quick because I forgot to mention in the intro here, which is hopefully where this is getting inserted now that Waleed and I.

Jordan Berry [00:00:50]:
First of all, you’re gonna be blown away by this interview. Number two is Waleed and I are doing a live kind of Q and A slash Laundromat geek hangout on Thursday, September 18, 2025 at 4:00pm Pacific, 7:00pm Eastern. It’ll be on YouTube. It’ll be on LinkedIn. I’ll be sending out emails, so make sure you’re on the email [email protected] and you’ll get an email with a link and everything, too, in case you need that. But feel free to make sure you subscribe if you’re on YouTube and hit that notification bell and that’ll let you know when we’re going live. And then also keep an eye out for an for a link to go live and chat with Waleed Cope, the Mr. Cope on Thursday, September 18th, 4pm Pacific, 7pm Eastern.

Jordan Berry [00:01:43]:
And for those of me in Hawaii, 1pm Hawaii. All right, we’ll see you guys on September 18th. Come join us. It’s going to be a good time and worth your while for sure. Real quick, before we jump in with Waleed, I want one quick announcement that actually has to do with Wally. This is not sponsored. This is just something I’m excited about is Waleed is putting on the Laundry CEO forum. It’s happening in October in Dallas, and you got to be there.

Jordan Berry [00:02:12]:
Make sure you check out laundry CEO.com to do that. You got. Listen, you got to be there. I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again. Last year’s was the best Laundromat conference that I’ve been to, and I have it on good authority that he’s working real hard to make this one even better, even though I can’t Even imagine how he’s going to pull that off. But if anybody can do it, it’s Waleed Cope. So, without further ado, check out laundry CEO.com and let’s.

Jordan Berry [00:02:41]:
Let’s jump into it with the man, the myth, the legend himself, Waleed Coat man. How you doing?

Waleed Cope [00:02:46]:
Doing great, Jordan. I don’t know how I’m gonna follow that. Great intro you just did, but thank you.

Jordan Berry [00:02:52]:
Wow. Listen, I have no doubts that you’re gonna exceed all expectations here, but, dude, I’m super excited that you’re back on here. Ever since our very first conversation on the podcast and then running into you all over the place at different laundromat events and stuff like that, I just have been dying for you to come back on just so we can mostly just hang out. Honestly, like, who cares if anybody’s listening or not? I just love hanging out with you.

Waleed Cope [00:03:20]:
So you just hang out and talk laundry?

Jordan Berry [00:03:22]:
That’s right. That’s right. If anybody wants to listen in, feel free, but if not, I will have a great time either way. But listen, man, when you came on last time, I think you blew a lot of people’s minds because we talked a lot about pickup and delivery. You were only doing pickup and delivery. If you haven’t listened to that episode, go back and listen to it. I’ll make sure to drop a link in the show notes if you’re listening on the podcast. If you’re on YouTube, we’ll make sure it’s down below in the description because it genuinely is not one that you want to miss.

Jordan Berry [00:03:52]:
It is genuinely one of the most popular episodes. And I’m not just saying that because he’s here. That’s true. But I mean, we. We dove deep into.

Waleed Cope [00:04:01]:
We did talk for a long time.

Jordan Berry [00:04:03]:
It was. But it didn’t feel long. You know what I mean? Didn’t feel long.

Waleed Cope [00:04:07]:
It’s like two hours.

Jordan Berry [00:04:09]:
I think it was like two and a half. Yeah, it was great. It was great, man. It didn’t. It barely felt like 2 hours and 15 minutes to me, so. No, but we talked a lot about pickup and delivery in that one. And I think you blew people’s minds in the way you approached the business in pickup and delivery. And genuinely, I think that that was one of the episodes that started a big.

Jordan Berry [00:04:32]:
A big push for a lot of people in this. In this industry, in not just implementing pickup and delivery in their businesses, but also in the level of service and the level of detail that. That you’re putting in. I think it really elevated that for A lot of people. So first of all, thank you for coming on and sharing all that stuff. However. However, things have changed in some ways. I mean, you’re still doing the pickup and delivery.

Jordan Berry [00:05:00]:
You’re still crushing it over the soapbox.

Waleed Cope [00:05:02]:
I just got more gray hair. That’s the only thing that.

Jordan Berry [00:05:05]:
Yeah, me too. My kids tell me all the time, you got gray hair in your beard. I’m like, I know, I know, man.

Waleed Cope [00:05:11]:
You gave it to me.

Jordan Berry [00:05:12]:
That’s what I tell them. You gave it to me.

Waleed Cope [00:05:14]:
Blame it on the kid.

Jordan Berry [00:05:15]:
That’s right. You have ventured back into self serve. Your story last time wove you out of self serve into pickup and delivery, and now you’re weaving yourself back into self serve. So I’m excited to dig. Dig into that. But real quick, can you give us, like, how’s Soapbox doing that pickup and delivery stuff? Are you still doing it? Are you still crushing it with that? Are you still liking that? Do you still think that’s a good direction for us in the industry? Enlighten us.

Waleed Cope [00:05:41]:
Yeah, so listen, it’s been, you know, you bring up a good point. Now that I think about. You mentioned self service. I’ve probably been out of self service for like eight years now, give or take. So it’s been a good break. But one of the things I missed the most about self service was the community, like, interacting with people in the store. You know, people good, bad on different, people complain. But when you’re in that store, you build this bond and relationship with the clients, and it just has a totally different feel.

Waleed Cope [00:06:10]:
With pickup and delivery, it’s all. Some customers I never talk to, I never see. I just see a name on the screen and, you know, how many orders they made. So it’s a more personal relationship bond building there. So, you know, things. Things have been different with pickup and delivery since we talk last. And what was that like? I don’t know. Three years ago we talked.

Jordan Berry [00:06:31]:
Yeah, maybe that episode four. I’m gonna look it up while you’re talking.

Waleed Cope [00:06:36]:
But the. The market has changed a lot. And part of it is there are players in the market that we don’t even know about. And when we really think about it, people will think about the. The marketplace players that have these platforms, like an Airbnb, they’re basically a marketplace. So people go on, look for the service and then they connect them, get the order, and then partner with a local laundry facility. That’s what people traditionally think of like the pop lens or, you know, rents, et cetera. But no, we’re we’ve really seen more and more players who come in who are totally independent, like almost like the ghost kitchen restaurant model where they’re in their own car driving around picking up laundry.

Waleed Cope [00:07:23]:
They do it at their house or they do it at a local laundromat, etc. And I believe that’s changed the dynamics of the market a lot. And I still believe in pickup and delivery. I believe there is a big opportunity in it. But right now I feel, and just from some of the conversations I have that the market is kind of a little flooded right now and it’s thrown off the economics, you know, when, when we look at supply and demand.

Jordan Berry [00:07:51]:
Yeah, that’s interesting because I mean, that is for sure true. Right. Like there’s big money trying to come in and sort of utilize, you know, people, you know, the Uber for laundry model, the poplins and the rinses and you know, that, that kind of stuff, which is really interesting model. I’m not sure of the long term viability of it, but we’ll see, I guess. But like you said, there’s a lot of independent people and then I’m, you know, there’s franchises coming in with the pickup and delivery model. Yeah. Focusing specifically on that. So there’s a lot.

Jordan Berry [00:08:26]:
I mean, it’s kind of a little bit of a wild, wild west right now and it’s. I don’t know, I mean, do you feel like it’s a race for market share and that eventually a lot of these kind of smaller operations will peter out and less larger operations will win out or what do you feel like we’re heading here? Obviously nobody has a crystal ball, but I’m just curious what you think.

Waleed Cope [00:08:48]:
I wish I had one. It’s, it’s just so weird, Jordan. You know, when I look at it from the high level view versus being in the trenches doing it, when I take a step back, like I look at my feed sometime on social, whether it’s like Insta, LinkedIn, especially on LinkedIn, I’ll see people running these fundraiser campaigns saying, hey, we’re, we have this software platform and we’re the Uber for laundry. We’re, we’re reinventing laundry. I’m like, Jordan, if I hear one more person tell me they’re reinventing laundry, like, how much is there to reinvent? Well, I’ve heard some people say what they open in Laundromats and they’re like, we’ve reimagined laundry. Listen, there is nothing proprietary about doing laundry self service or pickup and delivery. Last Time I checked, it’s some hot water, cold water, some machines, some soap. The thing is the experience and the service, that is where you either win or lose in this game.

Waleed Cope [00:09:44]:
So the market is like, I feel it’s really murky right now. Your question about people shooting for market share. Some are, I just don’t see at the present moment a big enough pie for people to grab. Now we talk about laundry, they talk about it’s a $6 billion industry on our side, not counting dry cleaning industry and all that stuff. When you think about it, that 6 billion encompasses all that’s going on right now. Self service, pickup and delivery, light, commercial, not industrial. The challenge, I believe with the market share becomes the education of the consumer. How many people are really outsourcing their laundry right now.

Waleed Cope [00:10:30]:
So if more and more players come in, if the market is not opening up more, if more customers aren’t coming into the market saying, hey, I want my laundry picked up and delivered back to me, then we’re just fighting for these slices of. If we use the pizza pie as an example, there’s only eight slices in a New York style pizza. I’m not sure over there in Hawaii how your pizza is set up.

Jordan Berry [00:10:51]:
We just put pineapple on. However many slices we have, we just throw pineapple on it.

Waleed Cope [00:10:55]:
Pineapple and bacon, right?

Jordan Berry [00:10:57]:
Yeah.

Waleed Cope [00:10:58]:
To each his own. But a New York style pie has eight slices in it and we’re just dealing with that same pie. And more and more people are coming to the table to say, hey, I want to get in it. And it’s like a kid’s party. You start cutting those slices into smaller strips so you can give it to more kids. But after a while it like, how much more can you cut it down? So until we see more customers coming into the market who are outsourcing their laundry, it’s, it’s going to be a constant battle.

Jordan Berry [00:11:26]:
Do you, do you think, I mean, I’m curious on your opinion, I guess. Do you, do you think the pie is going to continue to grow at the rate maybe we’ve seen the last four or five years, or do you think that it’s going to be like a more incremental GR growth or we’re plateaued now or what? What are you thinking? I mean, again, I’m just curious. Your opinion. Obviously nobody’s. Don’t, don’t bank on what Waleed says here entirely. Although it’s probably a safe, it’s probably a safe bet to do it anyways, but don’t do it.

Waleed Cope [00:12:01]:
Listen, don’t don’t record me saying this and don’t put it on the Internet. Okay?

Jordan Berry [00:12:05]:
Yeah, totally.

Waleed Cope [00:12:06]:
You know, it just, it’s weird around. So, you know, your question is have we plateaued? Are we going to see an increase in this market or decrease? I believe there’s going to be increases, but I think they’re going to be these smaller incremental increases. We’re going to see these small bump ups. And what people really have to understand is what is the economy doing that’s going to affect our business? And if you think about self service compared to pickup and delivery, self service, doing your laundry becomes a necessity. Sending it out becomes for pickup and delivery. That’s almost like a luxury. Like you think about somebody walking into a laundromat and doing their clothes versus I’m just going to hit a button and pay a premium for somebody to come get it. It’s kind of a luxury.

Waleed Cope [00:12:52]:
People will cut that out first to save money when times are rough and just go do it themselves and in the laundry room in their building or the local laundromat when we think about it. And that’s one of the things we’ve been trying to wrap our heads around, which is why we decided to bring in an economist at our event this year, the Forum, to talk about where do you see there’s like a lot of talk of this vanishing middle class and then how it’s affecting the lower economic class with finances, what the economy is doing and we don’t hear a lot of conversation about that. And our customer base for self service is that working class. And if they’re being affected hard in the economy, that’s going to translate back to us. I don’t care how much people talk about laundry, is a recession proof business, etc. Listen you, I’ll be the first to say it’s not recession proof. It’s insulated somewhat more than other businesses in the recession because people need laundry done, you need clean clothes. But listen, people could start wearing the same thing over and over and get away with it.

Waleed Cope [00:13:58]:
Like let’s use your blue jeans an example. How many times do you wash your jeans? Every time you wear them.

Jordan Berry [00:14:04]:
Yeah, well, I don’t wear blue jeans anymore because you know, you’re in Hawaii. I did all the time, California. And I probably wore them many a times before I washed them.

Waleed Cope [00:14:15]:
Yeah, right. You know, somebody might tell anybody this is us, right? Yeah, right. It’s just nobody’s listening to us. But if you think the average person probably doesn’t wash their jeans Every time they wear them, right? So some people are like, well, you know, Jordan and Wally, people are not going to do that with their underwears. Like, okay, well, maybe they wash them at home. Like, they just wash them in the bathtub or in the bathroom to save a couple coins here and there. See, like, you really got to think about it from the larger perspective when it comes to the economy and how it’s going to affect consumer spending.

Jordan Berry [00:14:48]:
Yeah. What, what I love about this conversation, what I love about the fact that you have an economist coming out to just talk some macroeconomics on at the, at the Laundry CEO forum. Laundry CEO.com, by the way, you should be at that event. I’ll promote it for you because I.

Waleed Cope [00:15:05]:
Believe I join it. Come join us.

Jordan Berry [00:15:07]:
Jordan and I will be there. Yeah, yeah, just get a picture of both of us. You know what I mean? Like what? That’s, that’s just, you know, just edit that out.

Waleed Cope [00:15:20]:
Edit that out, please.

Jordan Berry [00:15:23]:
Okay. Anyways, what I love about it is, number one, we don’t, we don’t talk macroeconomics in this business very often. Like, nobody’s thinking about that. I shouldn’t say nobody, but not very many people are thinking about the macroeconomics because we’re wrapped up in our businesses and trying to make sure our businesses are running right? So I get that. So having some help thinking bigger picture is, I mean, it’s huge. It’s a big deal. So I love that. But also, you know, the reason I love this conversation is it’s like, you know, and in what you do in general on your platform, right, is there’s some easy clickable things that we can say about this business that we know will drive clicks, we’ll drive dollars, we’ll drive people buying courses, we’ll drive consulting, we’ll drive all that stuff, right? And that’s things like passive income, passive business.

Jordan Berry [00:16:19]:
That’s things like recession proof. Guess what? Nothing is recession proof. Like zero. Things are recession proof. Right? But these things are appealing to us because we want fast, we want easy, we want handed to me, we want turnkey. You know, we want all these things, right? And it’s easy to sell those things, but you know, to, to be a platform, you know, in a, in a brand, not just Laundry CEO, but you while you cope, right? Who’s willing to kind of say, hey, you know, the reality of it is, is that we’re affected by what happens in the world. Some of that’s out of our control. A lot of that’s out of our control, right? We’re affected by the business that we have and its limitations.

Jordan Berry [00:17:05]:
Right. It’s not going to be passive. It’s not going to be entirely recession proof. You can’t just sit on your hands when everybody else is struggling around you and just expect the money to roll in. Right. You gotta adapt too. And I think that’s, it’s so easy, like, the temptation is so easy to go the other way. So, you know, and say, hey, here’s how you can get passive income.

Jordan Berry [00:17:27]:
Hey, here’s, you know, and I get, I get invited. I’m sure you do too, on, like to go on other podcasts or do, you know, webinars with people or whatever. And they’re like, laundromats are passive or whatever. And like, in the webinar, I gotta, like, kind of corre it a little. Right. But I appreciate that about you because you’re, you’re letting people know, like, really what this industry looks like and what it’s about, what it means to be an owner and operator and understand what you’re walking into. So you’re not blindsided when you expect to just come collect coins and ride every downturn while you’re cruising on your yacht doing nothing, which is kind of what you do, I think. Right.

Waleed Cope [00:18:04]:
Yeah, I’m, Yeah, I’m on my yacht Tuesday. I’m filming this on my yacht right now.

Jordan Berry [00:18:07]:
Like, you know, in the background, you’re kind of going like this a little bit, you know the way.

Waleed Cope [00:18:12]:
Yeah, we, we had to put the stabilizers on the camera because of the waves, so. Yeah, like, totally. I don’t want you to know where I am. Yeah, but I mean, you, you, we’ve got to tell it like it is because the last thing you want, like, we’re at an industry event or just in the street, like, somebody walks up to you and be like, you know, you sold me a dream. I was, I was at an event and someone happened to be sitting next to me at a dinner. And it was, it was a business event. And he’s talking about how he owned a laundromat and he said he purchased it, but he purchased it under the pretense of somebody selling him that passive dream. And he said it was a horrible experience for him.

Waleed Cope [00:18:46]:
And he sold it like a couple years later. And he was so happy to be out of it because somebody represented what it isn’t. And if we don’t tell the truth. And then too, like, I gotta sleep at night, Jordan. Like, I’m not trying to sell somebody on a dream. I Make money on laundry. The stuff we do, you know, on our platform, like with the forum or our newsletter, Wash weekly, that, that’s extra. We do that to share our experiences, the successes we’ve had.

Waleed Cope [00:19:14]:
And I want to see other people win. Like, honestly, otherwise, why even share it? Like, we can just keep it to ourselves and do it.

Jordan Berry [00:19:22]:
Yeah.

Waleed Cope [00:19:22]:
And it just brings us all. It brings us all closer together and it just gives us even more to talk about. When I, when people walk up to me, like when we talked years ago and I mentioned on the podcast how we do sock straps, we wrapped the socks and we talked about presentation and really wowing the client and that whole experience. And then people started DMing me and sending me pictures of them, like, how do you do the sock straps? How this. And then people showing me the pictures of how they’re doing it and posting it on their social media. And I was like, that was awesome. Like something as small as that. And people tell me how big of an impact.

Waleed Cope [00:19:56]:
I just had somebody at Clean show walk up to me and tell me, yeah, we’re using them too. We just started it. Like, our customers love them. So those things matter, man. And it’s better to help people than mislead them.

Jordan Berry [00:20:10]:
Yeah, well. And quick, quick little side note, this episode is coming out four years in one day after your last interview. Episode 69, by the way, is when it comes. Go check that one. Four years in one day. Look at that, man. We could have graduated from college in the time between these two interviews. So we gotta, we gotta do things together more often.

Jordan Berry [00:20:36]:
Yeah.

Waleed Cope [00:20:36]:
Okay.

Jordan Berry [00:20:37]:
Well, no, dude, I appreciate you sharing your perspective on pickup and delivery. So, I mean, are you planning on getting out of pickup and delivery at all or are you still.

Waleed Cope [00:20:46]:
No, we’re still like, I’m still bullish on it, but we’re just taking our foot off the gas a little bit right now. Now that we’re back into self service, a model with each store is very simple. We start self service, focus on the store, the team, the customer experience. Get that up and running to a certain point. When we hit our certain KPIs that we’ve set up, then we’ll say, okay, now we’ll add wash and fold to the store. Then we’ll just allow drop off in the store, get that going, get it to the place we want, make sure our team members are comfortable with it. We’re giving out the good service. And then we say, okay, let’s bring in pickup and delivery.

Waleed Cope [00:21:25]:
And then when that reaches a certain point, we Take the pickup and delivery out of the store completely. But that’s another episode for us to talk about.

Jordan Berry [00:21:33]:
That’s what I’m talking about. I like it. I like it. Yeah. Okay, so, I mean, you kind of already have talked about this a little bit, but you know, why the. Why the transition back? Like, you. Your family was in and you were in self serve eight years ago. You’re out of self serve, focusing on pickup and delivery.

Jordan Berry [00:21:50]:
What prompted the. The swing back to. To the self serve side? Other. I mean, maybe it. Maybe it’s just the community aspect of it, and that’s what it is. But I’m curious, you know, why you sold us all pickup and delivery.

Waleed Cope [00:22:08]:
Everybody on pickup and delivery. I just went all in.

Jordan Berry [00:22:10]:
Well, not on. Well, I mean, yeah, that’s what. That’s what excited us. That’s what sold us. We’re like, yes, Wally. He’s crushing it. Let’s go do it too.

Waleed Cope [00:22:18]:
Yeah, so somebody said that to me. He was like, yeah, you always talk about pickup and delivery. Now you talking about self service. What’s going on, man? Yeah, we’re still doing it, but the. Well, you know the story, when we talked about on your podcast originally, what. We were heavily into pickup and delivery. We opened up that second location, we branded it, and then my landlord, AKA my dad, when, you know the story, when Alice was up and he was like, oh, here’s your new lease. And I was like, I ain’t paying that, my man.

Waleed Cope [00:22:45]:
We went all in on pickup and delivery. So the. The inverse has happened with self service, which is hilarious. Like, I’m driving home one evening, leaving the office, and my brother, who’s my business partner, he calls me and he’s like, hey, I got this store. It’s in New Jersey. We should look at it for a Laundromat. He’s like, time to do self service. And I’m like, yeah, I don’t know.

Waleed Cope [00:23:11]:
Send me the address. Let me look at it. So I Google it. And it’s like 50 minutes away from my house, and that’s 50 minutes with no traffic, Jordan. Right? So I’m in New York, the stores in Jersey. And I’m just like, all right, I’ll check it out. So I was like, I drove, I googled it, looked it, did the whole Google map, walk around, looked at the area. I was like, the area looks okay.

Waleed Cope [00:23:32]:
But I was like, man, it’s far. And you know, and that. That. I’ll come back to that, because that is something that is very important. You’ve had Other guests on the show. And it just falls into mindset and what we produce traditionally been thinking or seen other people do in our industry and follow behind. But I’ll circle back to that. So I tell him.

Waleed Cope [00:23:54]:
I was like, man, I don’t know, 50 minutes. Like the store is maybe too far from me. Something goes wrong. He was like, well, you better figure out how to make it work because I’ve already got the lease for it. And I’m like, what? So the lease has come back to get me to. This is two times the lease has gotten me. One with my dad and now with my brother. So.

Waleed Cope [00:24:13]:
So one lease got me out of self service. The other leases got me back into self service. So listen, from there on, I drove out there a couple of times, I looked at it, and that’s when I’ll circle back to that point when we talk about the mindset. And you’ve talked about this a lot. I’ve heard you talk about that group. I don’t want to screw up the name, but it’s like, go bundance. I think I heard you speaking about a couple of times. Right.

Waleed Cope [00:24:36]:
And surrounding yourself with people of different mentalities on different levels and wanting to excel and not just keep doing what you’re doing, but say, how do you do more? And there was this mind shift when I was walking that site and it’s an existing laundromat. They had been there for 30 years and they just weren’t renewing their lease. And when I walked around there and I was looking at the map and I’m like, why does the store have to be within the rule that they say 30 minutes is typically what I hear people in the industry saying on the forums and the groups. Yeah, that clicked in my mind. I was like, why does it have to be 30 minutes? Why can’t it be an hour? Why can’t it be 3, 4 hours? Why can’t it be 8 hours? Right. Why does it have to be that? And I listened to the episode you had when you had I don’t want to screw. I want to say Sean Lumpkin.

Jordan Berry [00:25:30]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Waleed Cope [00:25:33]:
He was talking about how he drives around and he was picking up equipment from here. And he goes to the store, like, I want to say, like Louisiana. And some other places. And I’m just like, like, wait a minute. This guy is like driving 8, 10, 12 hours sometime to go to these different stores. And he’s picking up machines and putting them in himself. He doesn’t even have a crew doing it. And I was like, if he’s doing that, what else is possible? And then you look at, you know, other people in the industry that have multiple stores, right.

Waleed Cope [00:26:02]:
And they have a team, like Dave, who’s been on your podcast plenty of times, and he’s got a collection of stores and he’s got a team. He talks about how he has a general manager. There’s the Willifords, who have numerous stores. Is John Schimmel, who’s got, what is he got 21 plus stores now in five.

Jordan Berry [00:26:21]:
I guess he’s buying them every day. Yeah. So I don’t know what he’s up to now.

Waleed Cope [00:26:25]:
We got him coming to the forum. I can’t wait to put him in a corner and just start downloading all that. That data from him. But he looks at it different and it’s. When you really boil it down, it’s your. It’s the mindset that you want to approach this business with. So listen, that was the impetus of me going back into self service. One lease got me out, this lease got me back in.

Waleed Cope [00:26:46]:
So I’m all in on self service again. Nice.

Jordan Berry [00:26:49]:
So when did you guys pick up that store?

Waleed Cope [00:26:52]:
We don’t.

Jordan Berry [00:26:54]:
Is it up and running now?

Waleed Cope [00:26:55]:
No, this was. So this one, another store we opened in between this one. So we got that lease. We were negotiating it, but then my brother’s like, yeah, there’s a suit. We should do the store in Maryland. And I’m like, huh? And then I’m like, well, that’s four hours away from me. But then I pull up like, I’m like, it’s four hours. Like, all right, I’m gonna have to drive three and a half hours.

Waleed Cope [00:27:15]:
But then I was like, wait a min. Let’s really. We talk about mindset. I was like, wait a minute, the Amtrak station is 15 minutes away from the store. I was like, I can get on Amtrak at 7:00 clock in the morning. And by like 9:45, 10:00am, I’m in Maryland. I hop into Uber. 10 minutes and I’m at the store and I can work the entire time I’m on the train on my laptop, et cetera, et cetera.

Waleed Cope [00:27:42]:
I was like, what’s the difference between me going to the office and sitting down and doing work? So like we. So we worked on that one. That one opened July 2024. So in between that, we decided to renegotiate the lease at the Jersey location because the space next door became available. So I shouldn’t say renegotiated. We asked the landlord, could we get the space next door, they said yes. So then we. We amended the lease, got the space next door, so now it’s under construction.

Waleed Cope [00:28:09]:
So it took us a while to come to an agreement on that, but, you know, fingers crossed, that location should be open by the end of this year.

Jordan Berry [00:28:18]:
Yeah. That’s awesome. Well, and it brings up a good point, too. Just I wanted to kind of point it out because speaking of, like, unrealistic expectations, these transactions can take a while sometimes. Yeah, you can buy one and close in 30 or 45 days or whatever, but a lot of times these things drag out a little bit longer. The escrow takes longer. Lease negotiates, negotiations take longer. Lawyers always take a long time to get back.

Jordan Berry [00:28:42]:
If you got lawyers involved, negotiating agreements, like stuff can kind of lengthen out. Lenders can take longer. So, you know, you gotta have. And. And around this time of year, and it’s happening right now. Like, I’ve been having a lot of people, you know, wanting consulting because they’re like, hey, it’s September now, mid September. I’d like to get something. I’d like to buy something before the end of the year, especially now that bonus depreciation is back and they want to take advantage of the tax advantages of buying real estate and.

Jordan Berry [00:29:18]:
Or the Laundromat and the equipment and all that stuff and being able to depreciate it this year. Right. But you really got to push to close by the end of the year at this point in time, because sometimes these transactions can take a long time. So this is a good kind of reminder.

Waleed Cope [00:29:31]:
People got to be careful, too. Like you. Do you really want to deal that bad where you’ll push it and end up with some bad terms, whether it’s in the lease or if you’re perching in a store? I. I’m not saying move slow. You know, I get joked about that by my brother all the time, but I’m not saying slow where you blow the deal, but you don’t want to move too fast where you take a bad deal.

Jordan Berry [00:29:50]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So see, the lease got you back in, but it wasn’t actually the. The thing that got you back in. It just opened the door for you to get back in. It was really this other one that you got kind of in between that got you back in. Got you back in with the doors open. How is, how is that one going so far?

Waleed Cope [00:30:13]:
We, you know, it took us a while. We had a lot of issues with inspection. So when you talk about time, inspectors really went back and forwards that dragged on for several months. But the. We’ve broken every and every goal we set. The store has six either hit it or passed it, which we’re see.

Jordan Berry [00:30:33]:
Did.

Waleed Cope [00:30:33]:
Super happy. Yeah, like we’re super happy about it. It’s to give, you know, give you background on the story. It’s five. It’s roughly 5,000 square feet, 56 washes, 56 dryers in it. We’ve got a little bit, you know, we got a little bit too much equipment in there for space wise than we really like. But it’s working for now. The, the challenges, which I’m sure you’ve heard and we’ve all heard people say over and over, I wish I had more space because I need.

Waleed Cope [00:31:07]:
I can use a few more machines in that store because we hit capacity when it, when it gets busy, it gets busy in there. And that’s a, you know, that’s a conversation that comes up not often, but I’ve heard it a few times. Do you build the store for your busiest time or do you build a store for, I guess, your midpoint and then you worry. You. I don’t know if you worry about it or figure it out from there. I’m to the mindset, listen, I’m trying to build a store for the busiest time because when you have those busy times, most stores are making their revenue on the weekends. That’s when they make the bulk of their money on that Saturday, Sunday. If you’re really crushing it, then you’ve got it happening during the week too.

Waleed Cope [00:31:49]:
So.

Jordan Berry [00:31:51]:
Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, I think that’s. That’s a really good point. That is a debate that’s ongoing on what you build your store for. And there’s people on both sides. I’m not sure necessarily there’s a right or wrong, but I probably lean the same way towards you because what I’ve found just, I mean, like I look at Laundromats all day, every day. That’s what I do for myself. It’s what I do with consulting clients all day, every day. It’s what I do when I do these podcast interviews.

Jordan Berry [00:32:19]:
And I just find that busy stores that have enough capacity to handle those busy times tend to have more frequent busy times, which means more revenue. Right. More money. Yeah.

Waleed Cope [00:32:34]:
Like think about it. If. Do you really want. If I built the store for like my, my mid, let’s say the middle point of the store when it comes to being busy versus my peak time and customers come in, clients, I should say, come in and then they gotta wait or they’re like, you know what, nevermind. They leave, what’s the chance they’re gonna come back versus I bill for the busier time and their wait time would be shorter. Maybe it’s a 5 minute, 10 minute wait versus if I’ve got less equipment because I built down for that, that time frame and now people gotta wait 20 minutes or 30 minutes to get into machines they want. So yeah, I lean towards what you said. I’m willing to build for the busier time.

Waleed Cope [00:33:17]:
I know it’s more money, you got more equipment, you’re going to have a higher note, et cetera, et cetera. But I want to satisfy that client. And listen, throughput is really important for us. I can’t speak about other people and that’s another thing that’s really not talked about much, but it plays a big role.

Jordan Berry [00:33:34]:
Well, why don’t you explain what you mean by throughput? Because I mean, I think it is hugely important and it’s not talked about. We’ve maybe hit it once or twice on the podcast, but, but I think it’s a underserved topic. And especially, you know, you since day one, since I’ve met you, well, probably way before that even. But in, in my life since I’ve met you, customer service has been number one. Right. And that is proving to be a super smart train to hit your wagon to in this industry. And it was honestly like, it was pretty counterintuitive at least, you know, early on in the podcast here it was like pretty counterintuitive. There weren’t a lot of people talking about customer service and going above and beyond and paying attention to these details at that point in time.

Jordan Berry [00:34:22]:
But you know, now we’re starting to see bigger names kind of come in, bigger money coming in. We’ve got tide, we’ve got, you know, all these franchises, we’ve got PE trying to roll up stores right now with various degrees of success. And that customer service is only going to get more and more important as we, as we go forward here. And you have been on it day one. Day one.

Waleed Cope [00:34:48]:
Yeah, I appreciate that. You know, we’re okay at it. Like we, we’ve got plenty of room to improve. There’s always room for improvement in it. But the, you know, to go back to your question about throughput, it’s just the simplest way I explain it to the team or I’d say to anyone else. It’s how fast you can get somebody through your store from the time they need to wash from them washing their clothes, drying it and folding it and they’re back in the car. So those clothes leaving their car, coming in the store dirty and leaving the store clean and getting back in the trunk of their car, the back seat, wherever they’re putting it. And I would say if you’ve ever been to a Chick Fil A or any fast food restaurant, compare it to that.

Waleed Cope [00:35:27]:
How fast are they getting from the time you walk into the counter to take your order, prepare your food and put it in your hands and get you out the door. That’s throughput.

Jordan Berry [00:35:37]:
Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. That just kind of made me think like, I wonder if that should be one of our KPIs as a, as laundromat owner, like you think of Chick Fil A or one of those of. I mean this is just us talking, but I mean they have, they literally have like counters, like clocks above the windows. Right. They want to, they track how long somebody stays in the drive thru and how long they can, you know, how quickly they can kind of get them out but still maintain a high, high quality service, high level of service there. So that’s interesting.

Waleed Cope [00:36:11]:
It’s a conversation I was having with an owner actually earlier today and we were talking about the numbers of the store, which I find so interesting. Our industry that, and it’s slowly changing and I hope it changes faster because when I look at other businesses that we’re in and other industries, the conversations we have around business are far more open than the conversations we have in laundry. I think it’s still some of that mentality of I don’t want to share too much because then somebody will open a store in my area or you’re going to be my competitor. Like I, I still don’t wrap, I can, still can’t wrap my head around it because if somebody want to open, I’m in New York City right now.

Jordan Berry [00:36:50]:
Yeah.

Waleed Cope [00:36:51]:
If somebody wants to. There are stores across the street from each other here in New York. Not too far from my office, like literally went from where I’m sitting now. I can point down the block. Actually, no, it’s right here at this corner. There’s one laundromat here, a fairly newish one, a couple years old, maybe 3,800 square feet, give or take, right down the block from them. There’s two more laundromats across the street from each other. So it’s three laundromats within a block and a half of each other right here.

Waleed Cope [00:37:19]:
If somebody wants to open one, they’re going to do it regardless of, you know, whatever I say or don’t say so, you know, I just hope we get better with that in conversations to share that business knowledge, to expand our knowledge base as an owner operator. And then those who are either coming into the industry or growing with us, like you’re in California, I mean, you’re in Hawaii now, but you know, somebody can be in Jersey, even though we’re in Jersey now. But like you could be on the other side of the county. That doesn’t make them my direct competition. I just will never understand that, you know, But I, I say all that to say when we, the two of us were talking about that and we were talking about throughput, we were talking about turns per day, which I’m not a huge fan of, but we’ll use that because that’s the industry measurement for.

Jordan Berry [00:38:09]:
Spells to change too.

Waleed Cope [00:38:10]:
But yeah, like, and you know, we were talking about turns per day and he was asking us and I was like, listen, the throughput is super important. It’s how we got to 10 plus turns a day. And you know, we, we were diving into that and talking about it. I was like, the customer service and throughput is super important. And I’ve had a couple other people ask me since we got back into self service, how are we doing that? What does it look like? And I’ve gotten to the point now I’m just packaging it all up and putting it in my presentation at the forum and just open up, you know, talk about how we do it and the approach we take. But the throughput and customer service go hand in hand, which directly affects the turns. And we’ve seen it at our store where we tracked it over time. Every time we introduce something new or we worked with the clients this way when they were coming in the store, helping them carry their bags or whatever, those little things we kept doing.

Waleed Cope [00:38:59]:
I noticed the turns kept going up. And obviously the turns are going up. The dollars were going up along with it, which is clearly what we want.

Jordan Berry [00:39:07]:
Yeah. So, okay, so I need to stop talking to you for a second. So just, you know, days off or whatever, like my wife does when I’m trying to talk to her. She’s like, no, she’s not saying anything. Important stuff. I need to talk to you. Who’s listening or watching this for a second. I don’t know if you caught that.

Jordan Berry [00:39:25]:
You kind of casually mentioned that he’s packaging that, that throughput framework that he’s using and, and presenting it at the forums. Like, I am always of the mindset, like people I’ve had I’ve had people, lots of people email me and say, hey, I’m thinking about going to this laundry CEO form. And by the way, let me just mention, like, I’m, I’m not getting paid to promote this or any. Like, this is. No, this is my genuine guidance.

Waleed Cope [00:39:54]:
I’ve got no checks to write. You joining?

Jordan Berry [00:39:56]:
Yeah, yeah. So I just wanted to say that, because what I’m going to say is I get people who ask me, like, should I go to this thing, is it worth it or is it not worth it? And you know, different people feel different ways about, you know, how much it costs to go.

Waleed Cope [00:40:10]:
I get it.

Jordan Berry [00:40:10]:
My, my. I don’t. Okay. And here’s why you can say that that’s fine. I don’t get it. Because here’s, here’s my thought, here’s how I think about it, is the what Walid just said he was going to package up and present at, at the forum is going to be worth five times whatever the ticket costs and the travel costs and whatever it is to get there. It’s gonna be worth five times that. Like, guaranteed.

Jordan Berry [00:40:35]:
I, I’ll guarantee it for you here. And that’s just one thing that’s happened at the forum, right? So if you can’t figure out a business and in order to recoup your money for an event like this, you just have to improve your business by just this, like, it’s very small improvement here. You can’t figure out a way that’s not on the event or the presenters or that’s on you. Right. For not being able to do that. And I think that’s another thing we need to like, adjust in this industry is our, our mindset around some of this stuff. Now I know there’s people selling all kinds of stuff out there now and a lot of people who nobody’s ever heard of are selling courses and stuff like. So you do need to be discerning about what you’re buying.

Jordan Berry [00:41:21]:
But listen, if you’re serious about this business, if you’re really trying to grow your business, you’ve got to invest in yourself, number one, and invest in your business, number two. And I can’t think of better ways than to do get in a room with a bunch of people who are thinking about the same things that you’re thinking about deeply, who are sharing different ideas where only one idea or one new introduction to somebody new can, it can change your life. Like you could literally, it can change your life. So I just wanted to say that because you kind of casually mentioned yeah, we’re talking about throughput, you know, and you’re talking about some of these numbers and stuff. And I’m like, well, dude, that was not a casual thing that you’re going to be dropping. That was like a legit thing. So I just wanted to pause and say that because that’s a big deal, man. That sounds awesome.

Waleed Cope [00:42:12]:
I appreciate it. Yeah, you know, I didn’t plan it at first. And two, listen, this, this event is not about me. It’s about the people in the community and which is why we did it. Like, one of the impetus for it is I just love hanging out with people in laundry. And we do have some events throughout the year. A lot more of them are like local, like distributor shows, but we do have some of the major ones Clean show CLA does excellence in Wash dry foal. But I was just like, I, what else can we do? And then what kind of event could we have where we’re talking about the business of laundry where there are other events that are very like micro, which is excellent, like wash dry folders I think is awesome.

Waleed Cope [00:42:55]:
I’ve gone every year. We, you know, we’re talking about the business of wash, dry, fold from packaging, folding. All those different things get covered in those different sessions. But then there’s like, all right, you mentioned earlier plateau. If I’m been in this business for a while and I kind of feel like I reached a plateau, what’s next in the business? Who do you know? Where do I go for those kind of conversations to talk about it? So we just wanted to create that platform around that. And I didn’t plan on doing the presentation at first. People asked me, you know, it came up, I posted something on social about it and then I was like, you know what? Again, my brother calls me and is like, you need to talk about, you know, what we’re doing and share that to the community. And I’m just like, yeah, you know, oh, all right.

Waleed Cope [00:43:38]:
So we put it together. Listen, I just want people to see, understand, use it to the best of their knowledge. And you said it earlier, if somebody can get one or two nuggets from this event, go plug it into their business directly and then see that improvement on the top line as well as the bottom line, then, you know, it’s, it’s a win for everybody.

Jordan Berry [00:43:59]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. One thing I wanted to go back to that you were also talking about because I wanted to kind of one up you a little bit on you were saying you want, you’re, you’re hoping we get better at sharing data and stuff and, and not really understanding that like oh, somebody’s going to come build a laundromat across the street for me and compete with me if I share my numbers mentality. I, I, I agree with that but I want to one up it because I not only am hoping that we do that, I think we have to do that in some form. It doesn’t necessarily have to be in conversational form, but I think that we have got to start sharing ideas, numbers, data, at least in a broad sense. We’ve got to start sharing that stuff with each other because there’s other people who do have that data and there’s, I won’t, I won’t make this like a laundromat political here, but there are certain companies who have wielded that data for evil against independent owner operators. Right? That’s, that’s way more of a threat than Walid saying hey, here’s how much money my laundromat’s making and some random Joe Schmo coming and saying oh, I’m gonna put a laundromat across the street. Then like sharing that with each other is only going to help all of us do better, right? Setting benchmarks for each other so that we can say, hey, I didn’t really realize it but my store is underperforming in wash and fold in terms of revenue for my size store in this region or my store is underperforming in its net based on the gross like or my utilities are actually really high compared to other laundromats doing similar business in my like we’ve got to start sharing that data in one form or another in order to help each other but also in order to be able to compete with this big money that’s coming in.

Jordan Berry [00:45:56]:
You gotta believe they’re not coming in here willy nilly, they’re coming in here to get the data and to build businesses with the express purpose of outperforming your businesses, our businesses. Right. That’s what their goal is to do. And in order for us to as independent owner operators compete, I not only hope we start sharing some of this stuff more and I do think we have moved, you know, closer to that direction, but I think, I think we have to start doing it more. That’s my like hot take Strong, strong on that.

Waleed Cope [00:46:30]:
I mean listen, you definitely one up me on that one. You, the point you bring up is the most critical point when it comes to the data. How do you know that you’re getting quoted decent on your Insurance, how do you know you like your workers, comp, your utilities, et cetera? If you don’t, if I don’t have something to measure it too, how do I know I’m getting a fair number? Like you get a quote from a distributor, if you don’t go get other quotes. Like we do it in every other industry but this industry, if you remodeling your house, you will get a bunch of quotes from different contractors. You can go to Home Depot, Lowe’s or wherever and you can look at the material and say, how much does this material cost? If we don’t share that data to a certain degree, as you said, how do we have benchmarks? How do we know when we’re getting over, we’re getting overcharged, or we got a really good deal or it’s on par like that? Without the data you’ve got nothing. And only certain parties have the data right now. And more and more people talking about, you know, switching to card systems in their store just, I got a card system, no problem. But again, who has the data? Like that data is not being shared amongst all the owners, operators, managers, whatever term we might put on ourselves of those card owned stores.

Waleed Cope [00:47:56]:
Like imagine if you had access to that data just in a cleaned perspective to say in this region, this is what we see almost like the cla does when they send out their survey and then they share that data from the survey. Imagine being able to look at that and saying, wow, in this area these are the typical VIN prices or these are the typical turns, et cetera. And we can’t just look at it from a national because our market, our industry, our business is so fragmented. It’s local, it’s community based. Like you need to see the micro data for that to really drill down and make a decision.

Jordan Berry [00:48:32]:
Yeah, yeah. And the capabilities there, that’s what, that’s what’s frustrating I think for me is like we have the capability like, you know, obviously we’ve got a lot of like coin stores still around and it’s harder to get data on the coin stores. Not possible, not impossible, but it’s harder to get data. But there’s a whole lot of digital payment options now that we could collect that data and compile it. And the tools that are available to us now to be able to not only collect the data but also to figure out how to look at that data in helpful ways for our businesses are readily available and super cheap. Right.

Waleed Cope [00:49:13]:
Other industries are doing it all the time. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:49:15]:
And, and it’s really frustrating that we don’t have that capability. Now, I know we have started way behind the eight ball in that, you know, from other industries in a lot of ways. And it is encouraging, like how much technology is coming into our industry right now. But with that said, I think probably the biggest thing that we can do in our industry to affect our bottom lines is to figure out a way for independent owner operators to, to, to bring data together in, In a. It can be in a. I mean, it should be obviously in a, in an anonymous way, in a way that can’t be tracked back to your store. But compile that data together and to be able to analyze it and organize it in ways that will help us, number one, determine how our stores are performing compared to other stores so that we can figure out where we need to improve and how to improve and number two, so that we can analyze our own stores and figure out how to improve our own stores based on our own stores data and our customer patterns and habits and, you know, all those things. So big, big room for growth there and hopefully that’ll be coming in the near future.

Jordan Berry [00:50:31]:
We’ve got the capability, we have all the information that we need and we’re getting more of it all the time. So somebody’s got to put it together.

Waleed Cope [00:50:39]:
Absolutely. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:50:40]:
Yeah. Okay. Rant over. Sorry.

Waleed Cope [00:50:45]:
Listen, I had to get it out. It’s okay.

Jordan Berry [00:50:47]:
I had to get it. I had to get it out. I had to get it out. Dude, this has been, this has been so good. I appreciate you kind of running through, talking through pickup and delivery because I do think, you know, at least on the podcast here, you’re most known for pickup and delivery, I think probably in general. So it was good to hear your thoughts on pickup and delivery. And now that you’re kind of merging back into self serve, out of curiosity, do you have like aspirations to go get more self serve laundries? What’s. Are you just kind of taking it as it goes? Yeah.

Waleed Cope [00:51:18]:
So, you know, I just had this conversation earlier today and it’s awesome. And we have this internal conversation about the number of locations. And I don’t think it’s anything wrong with. Some people say my goal is to have X locations.

Jordan Berry [00:51:32]:
Everybody wants 10 or more. I did surveys and everybody wants 10 or more. Yeah.

Waleed Cope [00:51:36]:
And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Your goal is your goal and you should stick to it.

Jordan Berry [00:51:39]:
Yeah.

Waleed Cope [00:51:40]:
When we think back to, we were talking about mindset earlier and then we have to look at the markets because you could be in a market where A laundromat, you know, probably averages. Well, let’s. First of all, let’s back out of this a little bit. They say it’s about a 5, $6 billion industry. The laundry side of it, not counting dry cleaning. So let’s just say it’s 5 billion. They estimate it’s about 29,000 laundromats out there. We do the math that.

Waleed Cope [00:52:08]:
That’s $172,413 gross per laundromat in the U.S. gross. Gross.

Jordan Berry [00:52:16]:
Gross. Oh, yeah.

Waleed Cope [00:52:17]:
Now if we get generous and give them like a 27, 30% profit margin on that, 172, it’s like $42,000 a year, roughly like $900 and something dollars a week in profit. Now, everybody’s different, and that’s. We’re talking about if a store is fully staffed, et cetera, et cetera. Some people want to work in their business, they buy in it and that becomes their job, and there’s nothing wrong with it. But we, we took a step back and looked at all these different angles to say, getting back into self service. What is the real goal? Like, what do we want to accomplish? And if this is the goal, what markets are we going to be in? And then how do those markets affect that goal? And then what steps do we need to take? So if you look at like John, John’s got 21 plus stores, but he’s in like South Dakota, I think, in like, no, he’s in like two or three different states. It’s a different socioeconomic group there. Right.

Waleed Cope [00:53:13]:
So your gross is going to be different. But if we’re looking at the, you know, the, the industry standard as the whole, that’s 172,000, roughly. You know, that case, I got to get a lot of stores to meet whatever financial goal I want to have. If I’m only bringing in, you know, 900 and something dollars a week in profit, like I got, I got to get a lot of stores, my man. So our goal is to step back and say, how can we create stores that are ultra high performing, that puts off the revenue that we need without having a whole bunch of stores. Now, don’t get me wrong, Joan. I’ll take 100 stores. I’ll take 50 stores.

Waleed Cope [00:53:53]:
I’ll take 30. I’ll take 40. If they fit the profile we want. I don’t want to, you know, have a bunch of stores in a portfolio in the markets that we’re in. I’m not talking about other markets, because you could be in another market and do five or six turns and like you’re ecstatic looking at the data from the markets that we’re in. Like, I need a high turn rate and I get a high turn rate. Now I got a higher dollar amount. I can have less stores, less work.

Waleed Cope [00:54:23]:
Like, I like. We just filmed this episode we were doing in a video and we were talking about, I know one store owner who has like, I think he has like eight stores. And I can’t remember off top of my head, but I broke down how he has eight. And there’s another owner that has four stores and his four stores bring in just as much money as the other guy’s eight stores. And they’re in similar demographic areas. So, you know, income wise, population wise, very similar. But he manages those four stores totally different than an owner that has eight stores. So he gets more throughput, higher customer service.

Waleed Cope [00:54:59]:
He’s got higher vin prices, except he’s charging, I don’t even want to say a premium. He’s charging a price for the value that he is delivering to his clientele and people will pay for that and that. Now you got me on a rant. The people. What we don’t understand, and we’ve yet to understand is customizing our businesses to the customer. How many laundromat owners, you know, Jordan, or laundry service business owners, and they say, I want to build my business this way. It’s always been my dream to do X. The client don’t give a damn about our dreams.

Waleed Cope [00:55:38]:
The client cares about going in the store and the machines do what it is. The price is what it’s supposed to be. The products are there for them to use, they have a good experience, the store is clean, it’s well lit, etc. It’s about the customer, aka the client. It’s not about us. And when we start customizing our businesses for the customer, you see a different return. You see more turns on the business. You’ll see a higher roi.

Waleed Cope [00:56:04]:
It’s proven. But for some reason, we as entrepreneurs sometimes get stuck in what we think is best or what we really want. We’re building the business to what we want. So listen, we’ve got at our store in Maryland, there are about six stores around us, competition six. And we were the last ones to come to market in that place. And two of them have retooled since. One retooled, I think, before we opened, and then the other one after. And then somebody else is opening a new one.

Waleed Cope [00:56:39]:
That’s like a car wash and a laundromat we still perform at a higher level. Labor Day, we had our highest grossing day yet. Like, I so just want to, like, put our numbers on the screen right now so people can understand the importance of treating the client the way they want to be treated. And I’m not saying. And somebody out there is going to be putting in the comments or saying at yelling at the screen. What about those clients that come in and they ask for the world, the customer’s always right, et cetera, et cetera. We’re not talking about those. Those are the outliers.

Waleed Cope [00:57:15]:
We’re talking about the people who visit locations on a regular basis, every other week or every week. You’re loyal, you’re super consumers that we talk about. Those are the ones that I’m talking about. Are you building the experience for them? Because that’s where your revenue is coming from. Like, how many of us are really, you know, we can talk about card system or electronic payment. How many of us are really tracking the data that we have in our stores? Like, we, you and I talked about this in the last podcast when we were talking about the POS system and pickup and delivery and the data in it. Like, and I’m guilty of it to a certain degree, too. I am not slicing and dicing that data as much as I should, but we working on some stuff.

Waleed Cope [00:57:52]:
And with AI now, oh, my God, I’m able to cut my workload so much faster when it comes to looking through the data and then asking AI to look at my data in ways that would have took me time to build these complicated spreadsheets or ask my accountant or somebody else to do it. Like, are we really taking the data that we even have access to and using that to the fullest ability? You got a card store and you got people. Are we having people register the cards, cards and then collecting their email addresses? Like, Matt, listen, the data we get from that, we had somebody steal somebody’s wallet, throw it in our store, we pull up the CCTV cameras. I look and I’m like, the guy dropped his wallet on the couch. The lady came, looked around, picked it up, and walked out. Right away, I saw her coming from the Value Ad center because we have putting money on her card. As soon as I saw her do that, I was like, hope she has this card registered and I can figure out who she is. I went back, looked at the transactions, pulled that data.

Waleed Cope [00:58:50]:
She had her email address and her phone number. We called her from the store and was like, can you bring us the wallet back? She panicked on the phone drove immediately back to the store and brought the wallet. We give it to the customer, he’s ecstatic. And that’s just a small way of using the data. Like we were fighting crime in that sense.

Jordan Berry [00:59:07]:
Yeah, you’re kind of a superhero, right?

Waleed Cope [00:59:09]:
But I mean, like, that data became super useful. And not to knock quarters, because we had quarters for years in our store. If I’d have had quarters in the store, we would have never been able to do that and track that lady down and get his wallet back. But the expression on that client’s face when we handed him his wallet, he was over the top. He’s never going anywhere else. Like, he’s a client for life in our laundromat because. And that goes back to what we talked about earlier, the experience. What experience are you delivering to the people? It’s super important.

Waleed Cope [00:59:40]:
And because of that, we’re able to outpace those six, whatever it is. Six, five laundromats that are on the strip that our competitors. And we came to market last, like, literally Jordan, Saturday, Sunday, and I believe, what’s our other busy day, Thursday. We literally have people lined up waiting to use machines. Literally lined up. And like, we asked them, like, why do you stay? Why do you not go anywhere else? They said, because of the way you treat us. The place is nice, it’s clean. That’s another conversation to have.

Waleed Cope [01:00:11]:
This whole laundromat is clean and it’s bright. Like, that should be the standard. That’s the basics. Why are we not doing that on, like, we’re bright bragging about that. Don’t, whatever. We can talk about that another time. But like, that experience means a lot to people. And that experience allows you to do more things in your community and allows you to become that dominant player in your market.

Waleed Cope [01:00:34]:
And if somebody wants to open up across the street for you, God bless them. The question is, will they out customer service you? Because I know our competitors aren’t. And maybe they’ll watch this episode and be like, like, challenge, game on, you know, whatever. Challenge accepted. And they start doing it. Well, if they raise the level, so be it. I’ll figure out another way to raise a level at our store and do it even more. But those things matter more.

Waleed Cope [01:00:58]:
And we don’t talk about it. You talked about that. It’s becoming more and more of a conversation, but it should be. And we’ve had this, this, this stereotype of the communities that stores are in. We’ve heard it over and over. Large mats, low income neighborhoods, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah. Like, let’s be clear, people in low income neighborhoods spend a lot of freaking money on stuff.

Waleed Cope [01:01:22]:
Like if you look at retail studies, look at the breakdown of their consumer base and who’s spending the money, and there’s a lot of dollars that come out of those neighborhoods into those businesses. And let’s be absolutely clear, I don’t care if someone makes a million dollars a year or someone makes $14,000 a year, year. They deserve to be treated like anyone else. There’s that saying, treat the janitor like you treat the CEO. That’s the difference between. And all things being equal now, like, we’re not talking about a crappy location. That’s the biggest difference between a winning laundromat and ones that are sucking air trying to survive. How are they treating the people that come in there and spend their money, no matter what their income level is or what, what socioeconomic group they belong to? And I’m going to shut up now.

Jordan Berry [01:02:19]:
This is a master class. You know what I mean? Like that.

Waleed Cope [01:02:21]:
Like, we’ve been conditioned, man. Like, I hear owners. It is so frustrating to me. I was in a owner’s store, Jordan, and. And the lady comes up and ask him, a older lady clothes in the dryer. He is clearly annoyed that she has asked him a question about the dryer and like how to work it and adjust the temperature so it gets hot. And I’m looking at him like, bro, she’s spending money in your store and you’re bothered by the fact that she’s spending money. I would be hugging this lady.

Waleed Cope [01:02:54]:
I’m ecstatic. Like, I don’t like, I get it. You’re entrepreneurs, we have businesses and things drive us crazy. But at the end of the day, if you can’t separate that, your world, your frustrations from serving the client well, like, that’s the difference between an A player in this game and a B and C player. Because even when you having a crappy day, you walk in your store and you still give people excellent service. You still make them feel like they’re your only client. They’re your number one client. Even though there’s 50 people in your store doing laundry.

Waleed Cope [01:03:27]:
They’re time. That’s the difference. I have a crappy day, I walk in the store. As much as I’m annoyed, it has zero to do with the people spending money. And I look at them and I’ll say, you know what? I’m so happy you here. Every time I see somebody put a card at the machine or I see money or A tap at that vac. I’m happy. Freak it, dude.

Jordan Berry [01:03:50]:
So do you feel strongly about anything at all or.

Waleed Cope [01:03:53]:
I just feel a little passionate about how we treat our clients in this business. Just a little. Little.

Jordan Berry [01:03:58]:
I mean, it’s a, it’s such a big deal, right? Like you, like I said, like, you have hitched your wagon to that train since I’ve known you and probably before that, and it’s. It turns out to be the, the wagon. Right? To or train, whatever you’re hitching it to turns out to be the right thing to hitch a wagon to.

Waleed Cope [01:04:17]:
Yeah, it’s so important. Like people, like, people like, I can’t wait to like peel back the playbook in October when people come. Like, I’m going to like put everything out there because I really want people who are really die hard into this business and understand like when you put that effort in, you will reap the reward. Like it’s so important.

Jordan Berry [01:04:39]:
Yeah. Well, can I say too, again, not to you just tune out or whatever you need to do over there, but if you’re listening or watching this, not only are you going to kind of hear that playbook, hear how Waleed is actually implementing that and other people too, I’m sure that are speaking, but you’ll, you’ll experience it because that was exactly how Waleed created that event before. That was exactly how the last year’s event was. Is the attention to detail and the ability for. I know I cut out there, but just, I’m just bragging on you so you don’t have to listen. The, the, the ability of Waleed to kind of go in there, pay attention to the details on how you as an attendee of event was going to experience that event. Not only like the information you’re going to get, but how you were going to feel while you’re experiencing that event and what your experience was going to be like, impeccable attention to detail. So you’ll experience it yourself while learning about it for your business at the laundry CEO forum.

Jordan Berry [01:05:46]:
So make sure laundry CEO.com go sign up. I don’t know.

Waleed Cope [01:05:53]:
Thank you, Jordan.

Jordan Berry [01:05:53]:
It turns out to be my commercial for your event. Somehow. I don’t know.

Waleed Cope [01:05:57]:
But yeah, I don’t know how that we ended up going down that slippery slope. But I mean, like, listen, you came last year and I so appreciate it. And this, the, the goal was simple. Give people. I, I live by this. I believe it. And I should say, you know, I, I force myself. I try to live by it every day.

Waleed Cope [01:06:16]:
Like sometime I Slip. I get it. Sometimes I don’t. But people can come, people can spend money on something and then people spend their time. Those are two things that always happen. I can refund you your money back, but I can’t give you your time back. So it’s like to the point of trying to over deliver. Like you come in and you expect X, Y and Z, whether it’s in our store, it’s at the forum, or just this podcast.

Waleed Cope [01:06:43]:
Like people are giving up their time to watch this episode right now. And if we’re not delivering something that they can take away and say yes, that’s going to help me. Like we just wasted their time and we can’t give it back. So it’s super important for us.

Jordan Berry [01:06:58]:
I agree. I agree 100%. All right, man. Well, listen, this has been incredible. I did not mention in the beginning, but maybe I’ll go back and try to have my editor splice it in. But we’re actually just going to be live talking all things Laundromats. If you got questions about anything that we talked about, anything about your business, anything about the laundromat industry, you just want to kind of talk shop with us. We’re doing a live, I guess I’ll call it a queue Q A.

Jordan Berry [01:07:21]:
It doesn’t necessarily have to be that. Maybe hangout slash Q a on Thursday, September 18, 2025, in case you’re listening to this in the future. 4:00pm Best Coast Pacific Time, 7:00pm East Coast Time. And just for those of me out here in Hawaii, it’s one o’ clock Hawaii time. Just in case you’re out here with me, if you’re in like Australia or Europe, you’re just, you have to do the math. So sorry, I’ll try to work on that. But 4pm Pacific at 7pm Eastern September 18th, we’re gonna be live and at it, get getting after it, man. We’ll be on all platforms, hang out.

Waleed Cope [01:08:00]:
Talk, you know, talk business, talk laundry, whatever it might be like, just get on and have a good time and, you know, share some wins, some road roadblocks, bumps in the road, whatever it might be, losses. That’s how we all get better. Just it. That dialogue.

Jordan Berry [01:08:15]:
Yeah. Cannot wait. I get to hang out with you like twice in one week.

Waleed Cope [01:08:19]:
That’s like I’m looking forward.

Jordan Berry [01:08:21]:
Pretty good. That’s pretty good, man.

Waleed Cope [01:08:23]:
Then a couple weeks and then blessed.

Jordan Berry [01:08:25]:
To be in your presence. I know, man. This is, this is.

Waleed Cope [01:08:30]:
We might have my life, I don’t know, depending how many people show up from Laundry Mat Resource podcast. We might need to just do a little separate something at the forum just with you, you and the people from the laundry Laundromat resource community.

Jordan Berry [01:08:47]:
That I love.

Waleed Cope [01:08:48]:
That could be something.

Jordan Berry [01:08:49]:
I love it. I love it. All right, well, if you’re, if you’re going to the Laundry CEO event, you’ve already signed up or you’re about to sign up right now@laundry CEO.com, shoot me an email and let me know that you’re coming. And obviously we’ll meet up and say hi kind of in passing and stuff like that, but maybe we’ll throw something together. That’d be fun.

Waleed Cope [01:09:08]:
I got some ideas already and I got a meeting right after we, we’re shooting this with the events team. I’m going to put a bug in the area. Like that would be pretty cool if we, we do something like that. So yeah, email Jordan, put it in the comments, whatever it is, let Jordan know and let, let’s figure out who’s coming from the laundromat resource community and let’s do something special.

Jordan Berry [01:09:29]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome. All right, well, I can’t wait for that. Can’t wait to hang out with you. September 18th, that’s Thursday 4 Pacific 7 Eastern for the Q and A and then in Dallas. What are the dates? October 5th and 6th.

Waleed Cope [01:09:43]:
6Th and 7th. It’s going to be. Yeah, first day is like a half a day. We’ve got, we’re doing the laundry kids event in the morning. Free laundry day. It’s going to be awesome. Then the afternoon, we’re going to a 20, I think it’s roughly 20,000 square foot laundry facility. We’re going to get a private tour.

Waleed Cope [01:10:01]:
It’s going to be bananas. That’s the best way I can put it for now. And how they’ve incorporated a lot of technology into that. So we’re going to get a behind the scenes look at that and then we’ll have a welcome reception after that. Good times. And then the next day, starting bright and early, we’re going to hit the rooms. Going through the session, we got a lot of great people coming to share insights from their business and inside the industry and then people from outside the industry, which I believe is super important. We’ve seen a lot of success in things that we do in our businesses.

Waleed Cope [01:10:34]:
Taking it from other industries and then layering and learning laundry. Which is why we, we wanted to bring some people from other industries to share their best practices and get us thinking different about how do, how do we do this laundry business. Thing.

Jordan Berry [01:10:48]:
I love it. It’s going to be transformative. So make sure you’re there. Laundry CEO.com I’ll stop saying that now, maybe for a little bit after we stop recording. Laundry CEO.com only. Man, you are the man. I appreciate you taking the time to come on. I know you’re busy right now prepping for this event event and getting all things ready.

Jordan Berry [01:11:07]:
So really double appreciate you coming back on and sharing for an hour. Plus, I mean, it’s a little disappointing.

Waleed Cope [01:11:16]:
This time, you know?

Jordan Berry [01:11:17]:
Yeah. But maybe the, maybe you broke the record of best looking guest again. So even, even more seasoned now. You know what I mean? It’s great.

Waleed Cope [01:11:25]:
Yeah, it’s, it’s a great thanks.

Jordan Berry [01:11:27]:
Yeah. Well, I appreciate you, brother. And thank you so much. Yeah. On the, on the 18th.

Waleed Cope [01:11:33]:
Absolutely.