Jordan Berry [00:00:00]:
Hey, hey, what’s up guys? It’s Jordan with the Laundromat Resource Podcast. This is show 262 and I am pumped you’re here today because today we’ve got a superpower on the show today. Uh, Paresh from PayRange and more. Uh, I don’t know if you know what’s been going on with PayRange over there, but they’ve been scooping people up, Terns and KiaSoft and all kinds of stuff and creating a, a superpower in our industry over there. And Partridge is going to tell us exactly what they’ve been up to and how you can use it to grow your business. Incredible stuff today. So much wisdom, not just about, uh, we don’t necessarily even focus on the software stuff. We focus on what they’re seeing in the industry and what they’re seeing good owners do versus the average or below average owners and how you can become an above average owner.

Jordan Berry [00:00:53]:
Uh, so there’s tons of really practical stuff in here. This is not, and I, this is always a, a requirement for me, by the way, somebody who has a product or service in our industry, it’s a requirement on my end that it’s not a commercial. So they gotta come with value and Paresh delivers on this one. So definitely tune into this one. Lots of really good stuff. Real quick, I have an announcement, which I kind of already mentioned, but just in case you’re listening to this, right, you know, relatively close to when this is coming out, uh, we’re gonna be at the Vended Laundry Experience on November 12th. in Anaheim. So listen, be there.

Jordan Berry [00:01:29]:
And last week I couldn’t remember the, the promo code, but there is a promo code, LR25. LR for Laundromat Resource, LR25. So go register over there. It’s at, down, it’s at, uh, the Disneyland Hotel, uh, November 12th in Anaheim, Vended Laundry Experience. Uh, we’ll have a link, uh, all over the place. If you’re on our email list, you’ll get an email about it here pretty soon as well. So if you’re anywhere in an area where you can get to The Disneyland Hotel. I know many of you have reached out from all over the country and somebody said that they’re coming from Mexico City just to come out to this Vended Laundry Experience here.

Jordan Berry [00:02:07]:
So be there, come hang out with me. And honestly, you can hang out with me. That’d be great. I would love that. But there are some genuine all-stars coming to this thing and I’m looking forward to hearing what they have to say. And I know— That you’re going to get your money’s worth out of this because, uh, listen, I wouldn’t be there if I didn’t think that. So hopefully I’ll see some of you guys over there. If you’re, if you’re going, drop me a quick note, [email protected].

Jordan Berry [00:02:31]:
I’d love to see, uh, that you’re coming so that I make sure I, you know, put faces to names if we haven’t met before. If we have met, to reconnect. Okay, that’s enough of that. Hopefully I’ll see you guys over there November 12th, Disneyland Hotel Vented Laundry Experience. You can Google it or check the link in the show notes or if you’re on YouTube down below. Uh, let’s get into it. Paresh from PayRange, who is making big moves in the industry and helping you push your business forward. Paresh, thanks for coming on the show.

Jordan Berry [00:02:59]:
How you doing, man?

Paresh Patel [00:03:01]:
Hey, great. Happy to be here, Jordan.

Jordan Berry [00:03:02]:
Uh, I’m excited. We’ve— I feel like we’ve been talking about this for a while via email or, or whatever. So I’m super excited to finally get you on the show here and, uh, and, and hear a little bit more about your story.

Paresh Patel [00:03:17]:
Absolutely. Happy to be here and talk about it.

Jordan Berry [00:03:19]:
Yeah. Awesome. Okay. So, I mean, first things first is, can you just tell us a little bit about who are you? I mean, listen, we all know we’re in like a weird industry here. So I want to know kind of who you are and then how did you kind of wind your way into this business?

Paresh Patel [00:03:37]:
Yeah, no, interesting thing about my story is I started out very early and on the operator side of this industry. So back in high school, I literally was looking for a way to pay for college and started actually on the vending side of this unattended retail industry. Started with one soda machine, placed it out there, and just kept on growing after that.

Jordan Berry [00:04:01]:
Whoa. Okay. So it was your soda machine? Like you—

Paresh Patel [00:04:07]:
Yeah. Bought a soda machine, placed it at a mechanic shop, Started restocking it. And that one machine became 6 and then 12 and then 20 and then 100 and then eventually thousands.

Jordan Berry [00:04:20]:
Whoa. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. So we had somebody who vending was their thing on the show, because I mean, it’s sort of like an adjacent business and sometimes kind of a co-business with laundromats. And so And in some ways I think it could be kind of a gateway drug into our industry. Yeah,

Paresh Patel [00:04:44]:
no, they’re very similar.

Jordan Berry [00:04:46]:
Yeah, a lot of similarities. But I’m curious, you know, in going back to high school, like what made you want to buy a vending machine? Where did that idea even come from?

Paresh Patel [00:04:55]:
Yeah, it’s a great question because the story starts out even before that. So when I was about 10 years old, My parents bought a small motel, local motel, and on that property was a soda machine. And my brothers and I, we worked at the property. We did everything from cleaning the rooms to maintenance to, you name it, answering phone calls. But what my dad also did was gave us the soda machine that was on the property to kind of restock as our mini business. So we’d go to the grocery store with my mom, restock it, and then at the end of the week, take half the money out to buy more product and keep the other half to buy things we wanted. And that’s how we bought our first computer and printer and monitors and things of that sort.

Jordan Berry [00:05:43]:
Yeah. So you guys just, you basically like grew up in business and own it, which is awesome, I think. I mean, I didn’t have any entrepreneurs in my family growing up, so when I ventured into it, it was like a brand new experience, but you kind of grew up in it.

Paresh Patel [00:06:01]:
Yep. It’s in my DNA. And not only did we grow up with it, we basically learned how to do that at a very early age. So when it’s time to go to college, pay for college, my parents didn’t have a whole lot of money, but I had this one machine that had bought all of my technology up to that point. And that’s when I thought, well, if I had one at the property, what if we just had you know, more elsewhere. And that’s kind of where that idea came from.

Jordan Berry [00:06:27]:
Whoa. Okay. So did you use, I mean, I’m assuming, but did you use like proceeds from your vending machine to save up and buy the next one or how did you?

Paresh Patel [00:06:38]:
Yeah, no, exactly. So I think the first one that I actually bought, so the one at the motel was already there, but the first one I bought was like $450 or something like that. You know, we’re talking more than 30 years ago, so it’s a long time ago. Uh, but, uh, it was, it was like $450, uh, put it out there. And like I said, they just started growing after that.

Jordan Berry [00:07:01]:
Yeah, man, that’s pretty, that’s pretty cool. I, I love that because, you know, number one, you know, people are always like, uh, laundromats, that’s a weird business. Not so much now that it’s gotten kind of more popular on social media, but, you know, up until maybe a couple years ago, people were like, that’s weird, laundromats, who Does that, you know, but vending machines even more so. And people would also say a lot of like, and I think people still do, like, how can you make money if you’re just like taking quarters and, you know, that kind of thing? And vending machines probably more so even.

Paresh Patel [00:07:35]:
Yeah, no, exactly.

Jordan Berry [00:07:36]:
Do you know, I mean, how long did you do the vending business? Like as your main—

Paresh Patel [00:07:40]:
Yeah, I did it all through school. So I paid for my undergrad. Eventually we went to a business school, got my MBA. I actually got my PhD. It paid for all of my schooling all the way through. So it was like, you know, like 15 years basically that I was running the company. But eventually I just became frustrated because I was watching my consumers become increasingly cashless, yet my machines were still effectively only cash and coin-based at that time. And I looked at the industry and the technology solutions that were out there, and I just didn’t feel like any of them were addressing the actual needs of the unattended retail industry.

Paresh Patel [00:08:24]:
And I tried to work with the providers to see if there was something better they could do and really seeing nothing. At one point I just decided, you know what, I’m going to sell this and I’m going to jump over to the technology side, use my operator hat and build a solution for operators by an operator. And so that’s kind of what I started to do.

Jordan Berry [00:08:45]:
Yeah. Okay. I mean, now we’re kind of getting into the interesting stuff, ’cause I mean, that’s a pretty big pivot, right? Like, uh, I’d say vending is a fairly simple endeavor, similar to laundromats. Not always easy. And, you know, there’s nuance to it and you gotta know what you’re doing, but it’s fairly simple. You got no employees, you got, you know, little overhead, all that stuff. So, um, but, uh, making a pivot to technology is a big deal. And just, just, I don’t, I don’t think we’ve even said this yet, but, uh, I mean, tell us about the technology that you started.

Paresh Patel [00:09:21]:
Yeah, so PayRange, I’m founder and CEO of PayRange, and what we do is we enable mobile commerce to all sorts of unattended retail. So vending, laundry, of course, but also amusement and other unattended retail segments. Laundry is by far our biggest. And when I say mobile commerce and just digital commerce in general, we’re referring to payments, software experiences, and tools to help operators make more money and reduce their operating costs.

Jordan Berry [00:09:57]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, and it’s interesting too, because I mean, you were in the business, you found you had a need, you had a problem there that there really wasn’t a solution to. So you just, you know, I, Kudos to you for one. I mean, I think making a pivot like that is, that’s tough to do. Not just practically where now you’re in a completely new space. It’s not a simple business anymore. You’re building something from scratch.

Jordan Berry [00:10:25]:
It is difficult to build from scratch. And so not only from that perspective, but just like mentally, emotionally, like just pivoting from something that you’ve been doing for 15 years, put you through school, you know, been making money and you’re going to pivot to do something different. That’s like, that’s tough. Just outta curiosity, because I talk to people a lot who are like, I want to own a laundromat. I’ve had a dream of owning a laundromat and it can be difficult to make the leap for a lot of people to do that. So I’m curious for you, what gave you sort of the The gumption to— whenever you get the word gumption into an interview, like, you know, it’s gonna be good, right? What gave you the gumption to make that pivot? What gave you the courage to make that pivot? Because like I said, that’s a tough one to make.

Paresh Patel [00:11:14]:
Yeah, no, it’s a great question. I was, interestingly enough, I wasn’t trying to do this to build technology for technology’s sakes. I felt I had a passion for this industry. I felt that this industry was not being served with technology to help the industry, to help solve the problems. And when I couldn’t find a solution and couldn’t get incumbents to do that, I felt like somebody had to do it. And I always had an interest in technology. I wasn’t an engineer or anything like that.

Jordan Berry [00:11:45]:
Mm-hmm.

Paresh Patel [00:11:46]:
I was literally an operator, a business person. But I didn’t approach this with technology first. I approached it with the operator And I walked the operator’s shoes, so I knew kind of like how I needed it to work. I knew what my constraints were. I knew like how I would want it all to come together. And then I started figuring out how do we make the technology do that? And this actually worked to my advantage because what I quickly found, and you’re 100% right, it actually was a lot harder than even when I started thinking about it. Because what I needed to do, the technology didn’t exist. What I wanted this experience to be, how I wanted it to be low-cost hardware and all of this stuff, like the technology just did not exist for doing this.

Paresh Patel [00:12:36]:
And then I realized, okay, we’re gonna have to invent this stuff. And so literally I started innovating and that’s when I literally had to start filing patents as well because we were creating new technology where technology didn’t exist.

Jordan Berry [00:12:50]:
Okay. So, uh, this is a laundromat podcast and I do wanna talk about laundromats now. And we’ve, we’ve already said, hey, we’ve got some good stuff to talk about. So if you’re, if you’re here and you wanna learn how to make more money in your laundromat, we’re gonna talk about that here in a second. Yeah. But personally, I’m very curious, like, how did you, how did you do that? Like, how did you just decide, okay, we’ve gotta invent technology. I’m gonna invent technology. Like, how did you know what to do, who to hire, how to start? Like, that seems like, like I’m trying to think like right now, if I was like, okay, I’m gonna build my own card payment system, that path has already been paved and I still am like,

Paresh Patel [00:13:32]:
yeah,

Jordan Berry [00:13:33]:
I don’t, you know, where do I even start?

Paresh Patel [00:13:35]:
Yeah, I, one of the advantages I actually had was that I had no preconceived notions of what things, how things should work like, or, you know, what can’t happen. It was like literally a blank sheet redesign in a sense, right, of the entire flow and how things should work. And I just assembled a small team of contractors, literally just networking and finding people who I could find to help with this, and started architecting literally on a whiteboard how this should work and how do we get the technology to do this. I want this to happen and I want this to happen. As an operator, I want it to work like this. And just started working backwards and then challenged the— didn’t have any employees at the time and just had some contractors and just started working back and said, this is how I want this to work. This is how it should work. This is what the operator would expect.

Paresh Patel [00:14:33]:
And we started working backwards from that.

Jordan Berry [00:14:35]:
Dude, I love that. I love that. And, you know, again, kudos to you for, you know, it’s always, I don’t know, dude, it’s always amazing to me when the, like, the ability of humans to be able to come up with an idea that doesn’t exist and then just bring it to fruition and then make it happen. It’s gotta be a good feeling for you to see now, um, all these laundromats, all these vending machines, all these other retailers, um, who are using your idea that you brought to life. in their stores now. Like, that’s got to feel super good.

Paresh Patel [00:15:08]:
Yeah, it is very humbling, uh, when you think about it. Uh, using the Pairing solution today, about 2,000 people every minute, every minute, start a washer-dry cycle with our solution. About 2,000 people a minute. Um, and that’s throughout the entire day. And so it’s just Very humbling when you stop to think about how many people rely on our solution today.

Jordan Berry [00:15:35]:
Yeah. You know, it’s what’s funny for me, or not funny, but, uh, you know what, I guess what’s, I, I take a little tiny itsy bitsy fulfillment from, you know, just having the podcast, getting to talk to people like you. But I hear a lot like, hey, thanks for having the podcast. It’s helped me out with my business, all that stuff. And for me, I love, you know, obviously helping operators run better businesses and make more money. Uh, that’s, I love that. But also I, I, I like, at least I like to think that I have a tiny minuscule speck of that down the line impact also, right? If I can help you run your laundromat just a little bit better and serve your customer just a little bit better, I’ve made a tiny minuscule speck of a difference in somebody’s life who I’ve never met, right?

Paresh Patel [00:16:25]:
Yes.

Jordan Berry [00:16:26]:
And, and for you, way, even way more so, right? Because you’re, literally this transactional mediator between the business and the customer. And so you’re literally impacting people’s lives, making it more convenient for them, making it easier, obviously helping operators make more money, making a big impact, which is pretty cool.

Paresh Patel [00:16:50]:
Yeah. And it’s very, as I said, also humbling when we get notes from our customers, the end users, the people who are using the solution, And talking about how we’re, you know, because we get people who, of all walks of life, of all kind of physical abilities and all of that, but we get notes like, oh, this is empowering me to do something that I was never able to do before. And it sounds kind of odd, but like, if just imagine if you are handicapped or blind and you’re able to use— our mobile app to pay and you’re not relying on somebody else. It’s such a simple basic thing, but it’s very empowering when someone just can do it on their own.

Jordan Berry [00:17:36]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What a big difference. What a big difference. And technology is, I mean, it’s a tool, right? But it really allows us to do more with less a lot of times. And that’s kind of along the lines of what you’re talking about. Um, okay.

Jordan Berry [00:17:53]:
So I want to, I do want to talk about PayRange and what’s been going on with you guys. Um, and, and all that, but before we do that, maybe we can just kind of zoom out a little bit. Um, and talk maybe a little bit, you know, big, big picture of, you know, one, one thing that’s pretty common. Well, okay. Let me, let me back up for a second. There may be somebody listening to this right now that doesn’t even know PayRange. So can you give us just a rundown? What is PayRange? And how does it work? And specifically in laundromats, how are owners using it?

Paresh Patel [00:18:26]:
Yeah, so we built what we would argue is probably the most comprehensive product portfolio for the laundromat space. Whatever you want to put into that laundromat from a technology perspective, we offer mobile app payment, pay at the machine, kiosk payment, cash kiosk, credit kiosk. Wash, dry, fold software, pickup and delivery service software, helping you build your website, and just managing. So managing your business, clocking people in, clocking people out. So we have a full business management solution, a full payment solution, and a full hardware stack. So whatever type of payment device you want, We can do that. Stored value card, app payment, Apple Pay, Google Pay, whatever it is, we’ve got a comprehensive platform and it all talks together. It all works through one solution effectively.

Jordan Berry [00:19:28]:
Yeah. And I think, so I’m glad you said it, ’cause I think when most people think of PayRange, if they know about it, which I think most owners know about PayRange, they think of, credit card payment system only, right? And you guys have been kind of making some moves over there as well in terms of either acquiring or merging with some other companies or partnering with some other companies and stuff to try to, at least from my perspective, to try to put together this business management solution that’s more comprehensive, specifically for laundromat owners. Um, over there, can you talk about a little bit about how you guys have been putting this thing together?

Paresh Patel [00:20:09]:
Yeah, no, it’s a great, uh, great segue into it because a lot of what I do is from the operator’s perspective. When I think about if I was a laundromat operator, I don’t want to have to talk to this one vendor for, you know, the app payment, another vendor for kiosk, another vendor for the software, another vendor for this, and another vendor for that. And I was like, that’s a lot of complexity to put onto somebody. I would rather extract that complexity away from the operator and let us take that on. So what we’ve done is we started assembling. So we acquired Terns, which a few years ago, which is the software solution for laundromats. And as I mentioned a few minutes ago, that it has everything from the wash, dry, fold, pickup and delivery service to, you business intelligence, even AI is embedded into it now, websites, all of that stuff, and that’s all embedded. Then we, of course, have the mobile app and the mobile payment for the machines.

Paresh Patel [00:21:10]:
But there are people who still want to take cash. And if you want to take cash, we got cash kiosks and we can do things that way as well. And whatever you want to do, and it doesn’t even need to be done all at once. It could be done Lego block approach over a period of time. You build out your laundromat. Maybe you have a new build and you want to just start everything and this is the way you want to do it and you start it out. But maybe you have an existing laundromat and you have certain things in there right now and you want to supplement it with something else and then add this in later. We can help with that.

Paresh Patel [00:21:44]:
And we kind of effectively take that complexity of dealing with all these different products and bring it into one place so you can just deal with one company. and not have to worry about, well, this doesn’t talk to that and this doesn’t talk to that and this doesn’t work with that. Our job is to take that complexity and simplify it so you can just run your business. You can grow your business and let us deal with how everything should talk and work together.

Jordan Berry [00:22:12]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that’s, I mean, why I think that’s genius is because that’s where this industry’s going, right? Like I think of, just even a few years ago, like really not that long ago, like 3 to 5 years ago. And, you know, there were still a lot of owners who were proud that they had 30-year-old machines, right? Yep. And there were still a lot of owners that their stores were just packed full of top loaders. And, you know, there were— there’s still a lot of owners that are coin only, right? And What I’ve seen from this industry over the last 3 to 5 years, more than ever before, is new technology coming into place. I want to talk with you about data here in a little bit too, because I mean, I think data is critical kind of going forward. And I also want to talk to you about the kind of the coin versus the digital payment debate that goes on.

Jordan Berry [00:23:17]:
I’ve sort of stopped engaging in that debate because I, I think I’ll, I’ll give my perspective here in a second. I want to hear yours though.

Paresh Patel [00:23:24]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:23:24]:
Um, and, and, you know, I, I’ve seen the, the solutions that are coming out like PayRange and what PayRange has been building kind of behind the scenes and now in front of the scenes here, um, in terms of giving a whole business management solution. I’ve seen this move towards a more sophisticated owner. I’ve seen this move towards tools and resources that help management of laundromats become easier so that you can manage with less effort, but you could also manage more locations or more services with like a pickup and delivery or wash and fold a lot easier. And I think that it’s really growing the capabilities of operators here, and I think it’s a huge win for us over the last 3 to 5 years or whatever. And I think you guys have been playing a really big role in that and sort of pushing that forward. And kind of with all that said, I’m curious from your perspective as somebody who’s thought through from the owner perspective. I know you’re not, you know, laundromat owner first. You were in vending, which is, you know, side by side, but you’re talking to laundromat owners.

Jordan Berry [00:24:41]:
You’re thinking as a laundromat owner and operator. What do you see as being the big difference between maybe an operator who’s thriving, their business is doing really well, versus, you know, maybe an, and just an average operator, somebody who’s got room for improvement, but is, you know, just kind of floating along? Do you see any big differences or anything that stands out on what a top-notch operator does versus sort of an average or below-average operator?

Paresh Patel [00:25:08]:
Yeah, absolutely. As I’ve mentioned, I’ve spent a lot of time in this industry. I’ve spent a lot of time talking to customers. I’ve visited many laundromats. The way I would characterize this, and let me zoom out one second as well, okay? The way I would characterize this is that In many ways, when we think about a laundromat, it’s a, you know, in a lot of ways it was characterized also as unattended retail. And, you know, it’s only recent years where they started becoming attended laundromats. For many, many years, they were just literally unattended, right? And what happened there is almost a misnomer. This industry got focused on the machine side of the business.

Paresh Patel [00:25:58]:
Whether you were in vending, whether you were in laundry, laundromats, whatever, it was all about the machine. What size machine is it? Is, you know, how many turns per machine you have and how are you pricing the machine? You know, do you have front loads, top load machines? Do you have, you know, 50-pounders and, you know, 20-pound? What would that— it was all about the machines. And the operators of laundromats that focused on the machine side had one view and they kind of optimized for the machines. What I have seen in the last 5 years is that the operators who are more successful have made a shift to stop thinking as much about machines and start thinking about the customers. What does the customer want? What does the customer experience look like? How do they want to pay? How do they want to wash their clothes? When do they want to come? Do they want to talk to somebody? Do they just want to drop off their clothes and get it washed? Or do they want to have somebody come pick it up? Or do they want to do self-service? So when you start thinking about the customer and the customer experience, the machines are just a means to an end. It is not the thing we’re trying to optimize for. What we are trying to optimize for is the customer experience. And here the customer is the user, the, the actual person doing the laundry.

Paresh Patel [00:27:21]:
And, and the, what I have seen, the, uh, the stores that are more successful, you can immediately tell if they have a customer focus or a machine focus. And the ones who are customer focused just are thriving.

Jordan Berry [00:27:34]:
I’m just gonna let you preach. Uh, Tristan, he’s my video editor. Tristan, you better just cut that out right there and place, paste it all over the internet because that, I mean, that was masterfully said. And, and I, I’ve never heard it kind of put that way. Uh, the machine versus the customer center. And I think it’s brilliant. And I’ve said this before, but over and over and over on this podcast, the owners who I’ve had on here, who I’ve talked to, and just off the podcast too, who are thriving are customer service, customer focused. It’s undeniable.

Jordan Berry [00:28:07]:
Yes. Go listen, go back and listen to podcast episodes with owners here. It is undeniable that those who are focusing on the customer experience are the ones that are thriving. And that was masterfully said.

Paresh Patel [00:28:18]:
Yeah, well, I think what happened in this industry is that people mistook where the money was coming from. They thought it was coming from the machine. And so it was all focused on, hey, this machine makes this and that machine makes that, and here’s what my collections are. And it wasn’t about the machine. If you went back to first principles and you looked at where is the money actually coming from, it’s coming from the customer. The customer is the one who’s putting it into the machine. And so instead of optimizing the machine, let’s start optimizing for the customer and the machine will thrive in return because it’s kind of the conduit for the customer.

Jordan Berry [00:29:01]:
You’re making Tristan work for it on this one. Tristan, you got to cut that one too. Like, I even wrote, like, I kind of collect quotes in these things because I like getting quotes, man, people mistook where the money was coming from is our industry in a nutshell for, you know, the past 30 years before maybe 3 to 5 years ago.

Paresh Patel [00:29:24]:
Yeah. Well, and it actually lays closely to the other question you kind of were preparing to ask a few minutes ago about cash versus coin.

Jordan Berry [00:29:33]:
Yeah.

Paresh Patel [00:29:34]:
Because that also directly relates— sorry, cash versus digital or coin versus digital is that when we think about the machine, we think about coin. When we think about the customer, we’re not thinking about coin, we’re thinking about how does this customer wanna pay? And it’s not about the quarter, it’s about this customer. And that most of these customers aren’t thinking in quarters either.

Jordan Berry [00:30:00]:
Well, that begs the question then, and I’m curious your opinion on it. I’ll share mine too, but I’m curious your opinion on this. Should laundromat owners still take coins at all? Is a hybrid model the best model?

Paresh Patel [00:30:14]:
Look, our view is every laundromat is in a different demographic. Every laundromat has a different clientele. Each owner can decide based on their customers what works in their location. In the ones that they feel like cash is still required, I think a viable alternative is like a cash kiosk, right? Like, I don’t think anybody is intending to— like, I want to put 40 quarters into this machine to activate it. I don’t think anybody’s sitting there going— like, if you actually tried to put 40 quarters into a big washer, like, that’s time-consuming. I don’t know if anybody actually wants to do that. I think they have to do that because there isn’t an alternative. But I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be cash, but there could be a more efficient way to accept cash.

Jordan Berry [00:31:08]:
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And I’m going to maybe take your customer service argument and merge it with this one and take it a little further in saying that by offering the digital payment system, and for the record, like if I was building a new laundromat out, today, it kind of doesn’t matter what market I’m in. I wouldn’t be building a coin laundromat. Correct. It would be digital payment only with something like a kiosk where I could still take cash, but there’s cash accountability. And the reason for this is, and this is why I’ve engaged on the forums a little bit, some of the laundromat forums and stuff on the coin versus card, but I I’ve kind of stopped doing that because I don’t think it’s an argument anymore. And it’s because I also think that the information that you can get from accepting digital payments and the data that you can get not only is very valuable to us monetarily, but it’s also very valuable in creating a better customer experience as well. And it’s not just the convenience of being able to, you know, tap my phone or tap my card or whatever.

Jordan Berry [00:32:22]:
Um, it’s also in that we get insights into our business and how customers use our business from these digital payment options that we have in our store that you just cannot get by accepting coins. And it’s why I think turns per day has been our primary KPI forever. And I think that needs to change because now we have the ability to have more precise, uh, data about how customers are using our store. And how we can serve them better based on how they’re using it or how they’re not using it as well.

Paresh Patel [00:32:54]:
Yeah, no, absolutely. And when you start looking at data, what you realize is in a lot of ways this industry is like 15, 20 years behind other related industries like retail or online commerce and things of that sort. And when we think about machines, exactly like you said, it’s about turns per day. Okay. It almost all distills down to what is your average price and how many turns do you have? Like, literally, that’s what this business ends up becoming.

Jordan Berry [00:33:24]:
Mm-hmm.

Paresh Patel [00:33:25]:
When you start thinking about consumers, you’re thinking about it differently. You’re thinking about how many customers do I have? What’s my retention? How many new customers am I adding? What is their spend per visit? What is their spend per month? How— what’s their frequency? How often do they come? Like, all of those metrics help improve the business because then you can understand where the problem is. You might have a very busy store, let’s just say, but, you know, you’re losing, you know, 50% of your customers every month. I’m just exaggerating, but like, you’re having to then spend a lot of money on marketing to gain another 50%. Like, every month you’re just trying to gain new customers. Because now you’re losing so many. Like, if you could just retain them, you might be able to save on the marketing expense, right? And things of that sort. So, if you knew where your problem is, you could create better solutions for your business and you could address it.

Paresh Patel [00:34:24]:
But if we’re just focused on turns and average price, you’re kind of like a blindfolded shopkeeper. Like, you don’t even know what’s happening because you’re not even seeing where the money is coming from, which is the consumer.

Jordan Berry [00:34:36]:
Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and that’s huge, right? Like they call that churn, right? Your churn rate. Yes. How many customers you’re losing, right? And I’m curious, not, not from you, but from anybody listening out there, like I would be curious to know the percentage of laundromat owners that know their churn rate. You know what I mean?

Paresh Patel [00:34:54]:
I would say it’s very low.

Jordan Berry [00:34:56]:
It’s very low, right? And, and you, you said exactly what I’ve been saying for a long time is like, we’re 15, 20 years behind the market. I still kind of joke that, you know, a few years ago, the biggest thing in our industry was that our machines got touchscreens on ’em. And I’m like, well, yeah, but that’s been around since what, like 2008 or maybe before that? Like, Yeah. Why are we so excited about touchscreens on our machines when, I mean, right? Like, we’re, we’re lagging in a lot of ways. And I think You know, the part of that lag has been a lack of tools and resources, but that’s been catching up. And I will give us credit for the last 3 to 5 years, like I mentioned, like we’re catching up. We’ve made lots of, made up lots of ground. I would say we’re not there yet, but we’ve made up lots of ground.

Jordan Berry [00:35:49]:
But us understanding our business churn rate, lifetime value of our customers, some of, like, some of these data points that Nearly none of us know, but that would be super valuable on how we run our businesses and how we serve our customers better. Um, which begs the question, I guess, I, I think our industry is just not, it hasn’t attracted that type of person, right? Generally speaking. So I think there’s probably a lot of laundromat owners that are like, yeah, I would love to know the data better and I would love to know what to even do with the data, right? Like, what— I don’t even know what to do with it. Um, so maybe, I don’t know if you have anything to say in terms of like, hey, what’s some good data? I mean, you already mentioned some good stuff to be tracking and like, what do I even do with it if I’m, if I’m a data newbie, which a lot of us are in this industry, what do I even do with this data?

Paresh Patel [00:36:41]:
Yeah. The way I would start by thinking about it is first off, and, uh, and that sounds like maybe I’m oversaying this, but I think it’s probably the most important thing. There’s a mind shift that has to happen. Even when you were talking a minute ago about the screens and stuff, the first thing that came through my mind was, here we go talking about the machines again, right? Like, that’s all about the machine. Yeah. And does a consumer actually care if the machine has a screen or not? I’m not sure. Like, I would say probably not. And the way that might sound like, oh, he’s just saying that because he’s on the tech side, but let me use this.

Paresh Patel [00:37:18]:
When you are in an industry, you are hypersensitive to things like that. And I’ll give you an analogy you can easily understand. Think about the last building you went into. Call it an office building or a hotel or the last building you actually went into. And when you went into that elevator, do you know who the maker of that elevator was? Do you know what kind of technology they use for that elevator? You probably don’t know. You only care that when you push the floor 5, that the elevator came, took you to floor 5, and you got off, right? And the people who are in the elevator industry, they know like, oh, there was a screen on the top of it. We use this kind of software. We use these kind of buttons.

Paresh Patel [00:38:00]:
We have a screen, you know, we have all this stuff. What you care about, how long did you have to wait? And was it fast enough to get you there? And that’s kind of like—

Jordan Berry [00:38:08]:
Could I figure it out easily?

Paresh Patel [00:38:10]:
Yeah, you just care about the experience. You just did it. Did it do what it was supposed to do? Yeah. And so in this case, the customer walks into their laundromat, they’re wanting to wash and dry their clothes. And is that experience quick, frictionless, fast? And is it good? Like, did the clothes actually wash good and did they dry good, right? Like, the rest of it is kind of ancillary in the whole experience. Just think about my example of you going into an elevator. You really don’t care about all the rest of this stuff. Just how long did you have to wait and was the ride good and smooth?

Jordan Berry [00:38:44]:
Yep. Yep. Uh, for the record, if you’re gonna guess, chances are pretty good it was an Otis elevator. Yes. Because they almost all are. So, uh, yeah, no, but I mean, you’re, you’re, you’re totally right. And I, I think it’s like a great example of us kind of, we, like you said, we’re in it and this is the stuff that we geek out over, right? We’re like, oh, this new technology, this new, way of doing things. And, um, and it’s great and, and it can actually, and, and I think maybe to an extent the touchscreens have in, in a lot of laundromats.

Jordan Berry [00:39:17]:
I think a lot of laundromat owners would argue, hey, it’s helped the customer experience be better. That’s great.

Paresh Patel [00:39:21]:
Yes.

Jordan Berry [00:39:22]:
Yes. That’s great. But just like you mentioned, and I, I think it’s like a perfect example of our industry, which is why I think your, your comparison is genius, being machine-focused. And, you know, getting the, like I said, the most exciting thing in our industry in the last like 3 to 5 years or however long it’s been, has been touchscreens on a machine. Right.

Paresh Patel [00:39:45]:
And just to be clear, I’m not against that in any way.

Jordan Berry [00:39:47]:
Totally.

Paresh Patel [00:39:48]:
Like you just said, if it helps the consumer experience, but do it for the right reason.

Jordan Berry [00:39:52]:
That’s right.

Paresh Patel [00:39:53]:
Do it for what is it actually solving for?

Jordan Berry [00:39:55]:
Yeah. And I think you nailed it too, where it’s like a mindset shift, right? What’s the lens that you’re making these decisions based off of? And that’s been the biggest, uh, like aha from talking to all these owners on the podcast is these, these owners that are thriving, they’ve got thriving businesses, they’re profitable, they enjoy their business. The big aha is not they’re using different machines because like frankly, there’s like 3 main machine manufacturers in our industry, right? So it’s not, that’s not the differentiator. Right? It’s the lens that they’re looking through and making their decisions through, right?

Paresh Patel [00:40:30]:
Yes.

Jordan Berry [00:40:30]:
That’s the big differentiator. It’s not, hey, I accidentally guessed the right machine, you know, just ’cause I, I liked ’em the best or whatever. No, it’s like the lens I’m looking through is how do I make sure the customer experience is the best? And that’s throughout your store. So that’s, yes, machine and payment systems. Absolutely. But it might also be seating. It might be flooring type. It might be the height of your folding tables.

Jordan Berry [00:40:57]:
It might be the parking lot experience. It might be how your customer or how your employees greet customers. I mean, there’s gonna be a whole host of things now when you look through that lens where every part of the experience you can analyze and say, hey, how can I improve this? How can I make it better for you? And you can take a look at data to help you make that decision. Yeah. You can experience it yourself. You can talk to your customers, you can talk to other owners, you can listen to the podcast, you can call Paresh. There’s a whole lot of things that you could do, you know, to do that. Um, and, and it’s part of why I love what you’ve been doing over there in terms of, you know, I don’t know if there was like a transition for you.

Jordan Berry [00:41:37]:
I’d actually be curious, is there a transition where you’re like, hey, I’m building a payment system, to, okay, we’re not a payment system business, we’re a business management platform, basically? Was there like a transition there?

Paresh Patel [00:41:50]:
Yeah, I would say our vision was always to build solutions to help our customers, our operators, you know, help grow and manage their business, help drive cost reductions while growing revenue. That was always from the beginning why I even started this company. But we also, started on the payment side. We were solving for the payment solution. And it was really after, you know, kind of like in one sense eating our own dog food in a way that when I was talking about the customers and I started going visiting our customers. So now I’m talking about PayRange’s customers, which are laundromat operators. What do they need? Like instead of me looking from the technology lens, Let me think about what do they need. And that’s when I realized that they need more than payment.

Paresh Patel [00:42:44]:
They’re struggling with bringing all of these different pieces together and having them all talk together from different vendors. And so I would say there was a pivot, you know, a few years back where we realized, you know, they’re having a hard time doing this. We should do this for them. We should help bring all these pieces together. And then we started.

Jordan Berry [00:43:05]:
Yeah. Well, and something that’s interesting to me, and I’d love to hear your take on it too, uh, is, you know, PayRange is not, it’s not just a laundry payment center. I mean, you’ve mentioned that already. It’s in vending, it’s in entertainment, you know, probably some other venues, right? So, but I’m, I’m curious, and you did mention earlier that laundry is kind of your biggest vertical right now. Um, but I’m curious, you know, the Terns, uh, deal, Which, by the way, we’ve had Sukanth on the podcast a few times. Okay, great. So go back and listen to those if you’re interested in hearing more about Sukanth and Terns. And very, very good.

Jordan Berry [00:43:41]:
He drops some knowledge bombs in his episodes too.

Paresh Patel [00:43:45]:
Okay.

Jordan Berry [00:43:45]:
Um, that, but the Terns, was it an acquisition or a merger?

Paresh Patel [00:43:50]:
Yeah, it was acquisition.

Jordan Berry [00:43:51]:
Acquisition. The Terns acquisition, um, is obviously it’s like laundry centered. So I guess I’m curious to hear your thought process on that, where you’re sort of making a move, and if you’ve done anything like that in any of the other industries yet, or if you plan to.

Paresh Patel [00:44:11]:
Yeah, no, we have. So like on the vending side, we had bought Vagabond, which is like what Terns is in terms of like software for the vending industry is Vagabond. And then of course, we bought Kiosoft, which brought all of the hardware together for kiosk and card readers and things of that sort. But I think one way we kind of always try to think again is through the lens of the customer and how they’re trying to use this and what are they trying to accomplish? How can we help them? And that’s really been the driving force, as I just said a few minutes ago. That’s the— we’re not just trying to put pieces together for putting pieces together’s sake. This is really about how do we help our customers?

Jordan Berry [00:44:53]:
Yeah, you’re practicing what you’re preaching.

Paresh Patel [00:44:56]:
Yeah, exactly.

Jordan Berry [00:44:57]:
Yeah, that’s right. Well, I’m, I’m, I think one thing that I love is that our industry has been making strides. We’ve been, we’ve got more savvy operators coming out, owners and operators coming out. We still have a lot of people who are trying to catch up, I’ll say. And there’s, you know, there’s a lot of people out there who would love to add a digital payment. They don’t know if it’s right for them or when to make the move or how to think about, like, do I add it or change from coin to digital payment base or have the hybrid model? How should an owner think about that? Like, if they’re thinking about upgrading to some digital payment system, how do they, how should they be thinking about when the right time is, how to make that move, what to be thinking about in order to decide if they’re going to make that move?

Paresh Patel [00:45:51]:
If an operator, laundromat owner, is not quite sure like what to do about this, if they’re still taking coin and not sure if they need to take digital payments, what I would urge them to do is just a very simple personal experiment, which is if they’ve got teenage kids or if they’ve got grandkids who are 17, 18, 19, 20 years old, Go look what they’re doing. Go see how they pay for things today. Do they have coin in their pocket? Do they have any cash in their pocket? Do they even walk around with any credit cards today? Literally, the Gen Zs, they have their driver’s license attached to the back of their phone and they walk around with their phone and only their phone. No wallet. Nope, purse. And I’m a Gen Xer, so like, that’s hard for me to do. Like, I would never do that. But Gen Z, that’s how they operate.

Paresh Patel [00:46:50]:
So when we talk about cashless today, the reality is if any of you’re thinking about credit cards, you’re probably behind the game because they’re not even walking around with credit cards. Everything is either app-based or Apple Pay, Google Pay. Literally 70% of the payments they’re doing are like that today. And so you don’t have to do a very big experiment. Just talk to your own kids and grandkids and nieces and nephews and see what they’re doing. And you’ll also see, is it just credit cards? No, they’re doing things like Venmo and all of these—

Jordan Berry [00:47:28]:
Zelle.

Paresh Patel [00:47:28]:
Yeah, Zelle and all of these kinds of payments. And so if you’re not into that area yet, You’re missing this consumer base.

Jordan Berry [00:47:38]:
Yeah. I mean, I’ll, I’ll go so far as to say, I’ll take it a step further and say it’s not just the 17, 18, 19-year-olds. It’s the 20-somethings. It’s the 30-somethings. You know, I haven’t quite fully divorced myself from a credit card, but I used to have a fat wallet that had cash in it and credit cards. And people would be like, you sit on that thing? Does that thing hurt your back sitting on it? Right. And now I have One of a little thing that I just slide a couple cards in and my driver’s license.

Paresh Patel [00:48:07]:
Yes.

Jordan Berry [00:48:07]:
That’s it. I don’t carry any cash. I’ve found myself a couple of times in situations where I needed cash. I didn’t have any, or even like when I’m in Hawaii, like I’m in Hawaii right now. Like when I’m in Hawaii, I don’t even have a bank that I can pull my cash out from. I have to go to like an ATM and pay the fee and everything. There’s, I don’t even have a bank to get cash here when I’m in Hawaii. Right.

Jordan Berry [00:48:28]:
So it’s not even just the young people doing that. I’d say it’s a lot of people from a lot of different places.

Paresh Patel [00:48:34]:
Yeah, no, I was just, I was using that as an example, but you’re, but yeah, absolutely. It’s like the 20-year-olds and the 30-year-olds. This is the way of life. This is the way things, and things are moving quickly. I will admit to that. Like if you would’ve asked the same question 5 years ago or 8 years ago, it’d be completely different. And you kind of just put it in perspective, like, Apple Pay only came about in 2015, right? Like, so— Yes. So it’s made a very big difference in just a short amount of time.

Paresh Patel [00:49:08]:
Today on the PayRange platform, even in our mobile app, even in our mobile app, over 60% of our fundings, 60% of our digital fundings are actually wallets, not credit cards. Meaning when they use the mobile app, They’re loading the mobile app with Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, Venmo, Pays, all of the digital forms of payment.

Jordan Berry [00:49:34]:
You say 60%?

Paresh Patel [00:49:34]:
No one’s actually sitting there entering credit cards.

Jordan Berry [00:49:38]:
You say 60%?

Paresh Patel [00:49:39]:
60, 6-0.

Jordan Berry [00:49:41]:
Whoa.

Paresh Patel [00:49:42]:
It’s crazy.

Jordan Berry [00:49:43]:
That’s more than I would’ve expected actually. Yeah.

Paresh Patel [00:49:46]:
Yeah. It’s growing very quickly. So when we talk about digital payments, I think you really need to think about it as a spectrum. It’s not just everything is digital is in the same group even, right? Like, so when we say digital credit card is, I wouldn’t call it in the same group as Apple Pay or app-based payment. It’s a spectrum. And that spectrum is moving very quickly to the right.

Jordan Berry [00:50:10]:
Yeah, yeah, it is. And I would say now more than ever before in our industry, it’s important to, what’s the saying, like, skate to where the puck is going.

Paresh Patel [00:50:21]:
Yes.

Jordan Berry [00:50:22]:
We, you know, if you’re, if you’re waiting for stuff to move, you’re already too late. Like you’re behind the times. And, you know, I used to say, you know, the, the, like early in the podcast, like 6, 7 years ago. Oh no, I said 6, 7. Sorry if you’re in the kid with cars or in the car with kids. You know, I used to say, hey, yesterday’s, you know, or today’s zombie Matt You know, owners are the ones who didn’t reinvest in their businesses, you know, back in the day. And I, I still think that that’s true, but I think right now, like tomorrow’s Zombie Mat owners are the ones that are not skating to the puck. They’re not, uh, they’re not keeping up with the changes in the industry because it, like I said, like 20 years, there was basically no change.

Jordan Berry [00:51:06]:
30 years, there’s basically no changes in our industry. And stuff’s changing fast now, obviously in society as a whole, but also in our industry. Uh, as a whole as well. And if you’re not paying attention to, you know, business basics, customer experience, I’d say even branding, I put that in there. Like, used to be like, you don’t have to brand your laundromat. I think it’s super important you brand your laundromat now, right? Like, this stuff is all changing. And if you’re not skating to where the puck is going, uh, the puck’s gonna go right by you and you’re gonna be tomorrow’s Zombie Mat owner.

Paresh Patel [00:51:38]:
Well, and, and the other, the other thing I would, uh, offer to laundromat owners and operators is that Let’s not forget that you all are actually consumers yourself, just of different businesses, right? Mm-hmm. So now think about retail. Think about what retailers you visit. And are those retailers the ones you visit that have invested in technology, that have invested in the consumer experience, that have invested in better lighting and better product merchandising? Or are you visiting the one that’s like, a 1980s store that hasn’t invested in anything. And you kind of look at, you are yourself a consumer of other businesses and just look at yourself and where do you do business and who do you do business and what are the experiences you get elsewhere? And then to kind of think about like, that’s no difference than your business. You’re effectively a retail business too. And the consumer, this is important. The consumer is the same.

Paresh Patel [00:52:40]:
So when you think about the consumer that comes into a laundromat, this is the same consumer that goes into a retail store or anywhere else. And when you talked a few minutes ago about like how we’re in vending and amusement and things, one of the most important things that we think we bring to the table is that we’re managing an understanding of that consumer across their daily lives. So we see how they wanna interface with a vending machine. We see how they want to interface with an amusement machine. We see how they can interface with a laundry machine. And it’s the same consumer. We’re not talking about different people. We’re talking about the same person and they expect a consistent experience.

Paresh Patel [00:53:25]:
And that’s what we— that’s one of the strengths we bring is we’re like, we bring learnings from other industries to this industry.

Jordan Berry [00:53:32]:
Yeah. Which is, I mean, again, that data, that data point is massive. Um, okay. So another thing that I hear a lot from owners, uh, and this hopefully for you will be a little bit of a softball layup for you, but I think, you know, one of the concerns from somebody who’s contemplating, you know, upgrading their business is costs versus, is it even going to help my business grow? Right. Right. And I think right there, even just the way that I phrased that, I think inadvertently kind of communicates the way people are thinking. I think again, there’s a mindset thing of a cost versus investment sort of mindset going on. But how can you, I mean, can you give any advice to owners to help them think about like, and let’s just acknowledge right now that maybe you’re a little biased because you offer a digital payment, right? But from your perspective, how can you advise owners who are thinking about upgrading to think about the cost of upgrading? Because there is a cost to upgrade versus what they can kind of expect on the back end.

Paresh Patel [00:54:36]:
Yeah, the way I would kind of frame the thinking around this, first of all, when you look at cost, one of the most important things to consider is the total cost, not just what you’re paying upfront, what you’re paying over a period of time, Hardware, monthly transaction fees, other, you know, other, you know, service and repair and all of— what is the total cost going to be? And even for cash and coin, the cost is not free. It might have a lower upfront cost, but really what ends up happening is cash and coin have a big backend cost, right? The cost of processing, cost of vandalism, cost of equipment issues, cost of downtime. So, figure out what the total cost of ownership is for each of the options you’re looking at. That’s the first thing. And then, the next step is, it’s really not even entirely about the cost. It’s what you’re getting in return, right? What is it delivering? What is the ROI? And oftentimes, what I see people do is they compare just on cost. So, let’s say even if you went through this exercise and you said, here’s the total cost of ownership for this, Here’s what the total cost of ownership is for this, and here’s option C, and here’s what the total cost of ownership is for that. But you might end up with a situation where, let’s say there’s 2 options.

Paresh Patel [00:55:57]:
One is, I’ll just make up numbers, $3, and one is $5. And the one that’s $3 returns $5, and the one that’s $5 returns $12. So if you only looked at $3 and $5, you’re going to pick the $3. But if you look at what does it actually return, well, one returns 5 and one returns 12. So now, which one is the better option? It becomes much clearer when you look at what is the return from something. So, too often, we focus too much on the cost without thinking about what am I getting in return? And that cost is one thing. The return itself can be both tangible, meaning like you’re getting a lift in sales or whatever. But sometimes it’s also somewhat intangible, right? Like peace of mind, better uptime or whatever.

Paresh Patel [00:56:47]:
Like just think about—

Jordan Berry [00:56:48]:
Easier management.

Paresh Patel [00:56:49]:
Yeah, exactly. So you gotta kind of think through that and how do you value some of those things?

Jordan Berry [00:56:54]:
Yeah. Well, and I think one of the questions is, it has to do with that, right? Is like, well, how do I know the return? At least, I mean, I think most people when they think of the return, right, they’re thinking about, the cost or the investment of it upfront. So they want to know, okay, well, what’s the monetary— is the monetary return going to be worth it? Right. And I do think I want to, because I think it’s an important point, like I do want to highlight, there are things other than money that a move like going to a digital payment system can offer, like the things that you said, peace of mind, ease of management, the data information about customers, kind of all that stuff. Right. How do I, okay, I’m a newbie owner and I’ve just bought a laundromat. It’s all Coinbase. I’m thinking about putting in a pay range, right? And how do I think about, like, is this, am I going to recoup any of my investment? How do I think about, how do I figure that out? What do I even do?

Paresh Patel [00:57:55]:
Yeah. So the way I would kind of position this also is that When you’re making a decision like this, there is definitely a science part, which is, you know, the math, the ROI calculations and all of that. But let’s not forget that the best business people, the best operators combine the art and the science together. Yeah. The art part is understanding how does this impact my consumer experience? How am I going to impact my retention? How is this going to impact my branding and my, you know, positioning of my laundromat competitively? If it was purely science, literally a computer could make that decision. You put it into an Excel spreadsheet and every operator would make exactly the same decision because it’s just science. But the reason we have more successful operators and some mediocre successful operators and some less successful operators is because they take the same data, the same science, and they apply their broader understanding of the customers and their customers and how it will impact them. So what the short answer to this, Jordan, is not that there is a formula you can plug in.

Paresh Patel [00:59:13]:
You need to do the data, the science, and the ROI calculation, but then you need to take an intuitive sense from your own experience as a consumer, of retail stores? What are you looking for? How do you think that this will better— do you think that having a mobile app is going to help your customers? Do you think that having a wash, dry, fold software tracking system is going to help you? If you think all of these things are going to be improving your consumer experience, then look for the best solution that offers you that. That’s the way I would think about it.

Jordan Berry [00:59:46]:
Yeah, yeah. And I, I, I’m glad you phrased it like that too, because I, it kind of goes back to the lens, right? What’s the lens? Like if you just plop in a digital payment system, but you have a rundown store and, you know, it, the half the machines are down, the lighting’s out, like it’s really not gonna help your business, right? Right. It’s gotta be a piece of the overall puzzle that you’re putting together, right? And, and you kind of mentioned, I think this is way, way underdiscussed in our industry, but Positioning in the market, right? And we’re blessed pretty much in our industry where we really only have to think about a pretty, like a hyper-local competitive landscape that we need to position ourselves in. We’re not positioning ourselves with nationwide competitors, statewide competitors, most of us not even countywide competitors. We’re competing or we’re positioning ourselves with a handful of other Owners max, right? And so being intentional about how we position ourselves in the market will give you a huge competitive advantage, right? And I think the ways you accept payment is a big factor in that, but it’s only one piece of that puzzle. And if you just plug that in by itself, you’re probably going to get marginal help, if any, from that, because it needs to be a part of a whole plan.

Paresh Patel [01:01:15]:
I’m so glad you brought up the positioning point because you’re absolutely right.

Jordan Berry [01:01:21]:
You brought it up. You’re the smart one here. I’m just picking it up.

Paresh Patel [01:01:23]:
No, no, no, you’re absolutely right about that because I think what happened in this industry, and when I say this industry, I’m going to even talk broadly, not even just about laundromats, but unattended retail in general, is that it was positioned in people’s minds as a commoditized industry, okay?

Jordan Berry [01:01:41]:
Yeah.

Paresh Patel [01:01:41]:
So everybody’s offering the same thing. And I came from the vending industry and you could not be offering a more commoditized product. We all sold Coke, Pepsi, Snickers, and Cheetos, okay? So literally we all sold exactly the same thing in these machines. But in my market, I positioned myself, my company, to be the highest service provider in our segment. And by extension, actually the highest priced competitor as well. So my vending company, if somebody was calling back in the day and wanting 50-cent can of soda, that wasn’t gonna be my company.

Jordan Berry [01:02:17]:
Mm-hmm.

Paresh Patel [01:02:18]:
But when I went to go win accounts, I would tell customers that if you want to walk up to a machine and you push the Diet Coke button and it dispenses a Diet Coke and it’s restocked, it’s cold, and it’s always gonna work when you’re there, Then you’ll pick us because we’re gonna be charging you 25 cents more, but we service it twice a week. And my competitor might be 25 cents less, but they come every 2 weeks. So there’s a chance it’s outta stock for 4 or 5 days when you push that Diet Coke. So you pick which one you want. We’re selling the same product. We’re still selling Diet Coke and this. And so in laundry, think about it the same way. How many of your machines are working? How many of them are clean? How is the lighting? What is that experience going back? And it might sound like I’m overstating it, but what is that experience that the customer is doing and experiencing in your store? And then you can charge appropriately for that experience.

Paresh Patel [01:03:15]:
And so, it’s not just about the price, but it’s how do you position it? And so, do you have TVs? Do you have play areas for the kids? And, you know, things of that sort. It creates a better positioned product. And it’s not to say that the only positioning that works is the high-end positioning. A lower-end positioning can work just as well, but it should be clear that’s what you’re going after. If you have a mixed approach where it’s not clear to customers what you’re actually doing, that’s when you run into trouble.

Jordan Berry [01:03:47]:
Yeah, no man’s land. And we’ve been talking mostly about sort of The pay range payment system itself. I think that this gets even more important once we get to the service side of the industry, right? Obviously, I mean, we’re talking about customer experience, customer service. Like, as soon as we take control of the laundry, we do drop-off or we do pickup and delivery. I mean, even, even more so that customer experience and, and they’re paying a premium for that service, right? For you to do it for them. So, so, you know, really, Your positioning and pricing, all of that is, I’d say, even more important than, well, I don’t wanna say more important, but it’s a bigger deal even when we take control of the service, how we position ourselves, I would say.

Paresh Patel [01:04:35]:
No, yeah. And if we go back to what I said at the very beginning of this podcast, which is if you start thinking about in customers, And then when you think about the customer, if they were to do laundry on their own, they’re going to spend $15 a visit, let’s just say. If you do the laundry for them, you might charge them, let’s just say, $30. That same customer has spent $15 with you in this way and $30 with you in this way. So now track how many customers are you converting from this to this. That’s important. Effectively double your revenue from that customer without having to double your customers.

Jordan Berry [01:05:14]:
Yeah. Yeah. Which is massive. And I’ll also just add, this has nothing to do with, well, I mean, I guess it does have something to do with you. I will also add that I’ve talked with a lot of owners that are doing just that, but are not doing it Profitably because they’re not keeping track of their data. They’re basing their price points off of what are the competitors charging, not off of their real costs and a profit margin, right? So I’d say, you know, in addition to that, you also got to pay attention to what you’re— the service you’re offering and make sure that you’re profitable. Because I just want to throw that in there because I talked to so many owners that are making more money, uh, on the top line, but the bottom line is not moving upwards or sometimes even moving downwards because it’s costing more money.

Paresh Patel [01:06:12]:
Well, this is where you need to leverage systems and, and processes. And this is where a system like PayRange, uh, with our mobile plus our turn solution can help because as you get an order, instead of giving your staff Effectively money or some other form of payment to start the washers to do the, the, the, the wash, dry, fold service that you’re doing. If they were to use the actual mobile app, you can tie the tickets together. So now you know how many cycles have been started for each order. And, and that the main one to help you have better accountability, but number 2, help you better understand your costs. Like what is actually happening? Are you charging the right amount? Are you pricing it right? Are you undercharging? Like, if you don’t have that data, it’s hard to know, like you just said, like, are you even going to be able to make money by doing this?

Jordan Berry [01:07:04]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s huge. And I mean, I think that’s why, again, and I think that’s true of the self-serve as well, in terms of, you know, so many of us base our prices off of either we pull them out of thin air or we go see what our competitors are charging and then we just put ourselves in the middle somewhere, right? Whereas kind of thinking about it again, kind of through the customer perspective, but also as like a business owner, right? I think, you know, as few people who know their turn rate, also very few people know how much it costs them to do a pound of laundry in each size of machine, for example, or how much a turn in a washing machine actually costs them when all Costs are included and are charging based on a margin of those costs. I think very few people are doing it that way. And partly because it’s a little bit of work to do. I mean, we have a, we have a calc— not to like plug anything, we got a calculator you can use to determine your self-serve pricing or your wash, dry, fold pricing based off of your cost plus margin. But it’s work to do. But also, I think we just never did that in the past.

Paresh Patel [01:08:17]:
In the past, it’s fascinating that I also find that in this industry, pricing is just so almost pulling it out of thin air willy-nilly versus if you look at other industries like online or retail, there’s a massive amount of science behind how pricing is done. And one of the things that, like you just said, like there’s a lot of lack of understanding around costs, but I’ll even tell you one more basic one that I’ve come across. Like, if I go to an operator and I’ll say, what’s your wash-to-dry spend ratio? And they’re like, what? And like, for every dollar spent in a washer, how much is spent in a dryer? And many of times what operators will tell me, well, it’s about 1 to 1. And I said, like, how do you know that? Well, because we charge $3 for a load of this and it’s basically $3 for a load of dry. And when you actually start looking at the data, what I find is that there’s a wide discrepancy. We have customers that are anywhere from 0.68, meaning for every dollar in wash, it’s 68 cents for a dry, all the way up to the high 90s. Okay. And I’m not going to tell you what the ideal ratio for your business is, but the first step you have to understand is what is it? Where are you? And the reason you have to understand this is is another concept that is often missed in this industry, which is the price elasticity of demand.

Paresh Patel [01:09:43]:
And here’s the thing why this matters is that oftentimes operators think that the elasticity for dryers is actually the opposite of what it actually is. Meaning what they think is, I gotta keep my wash price low because I want to get people to start the cycle. But once they’ve actually started the cycle, they’re gonna dry their clothes. So, I can increase my pricing in dryers more than I can increase my pricing in washers. But our data shows that the negative elasticity is actually higher for dryers. So if you increase your price for a wash, people will still do the wash, but they’re just going to skimp out on the dry. Okay. So they’re now not spending as much on the dry or they start doing top-offs versus full cycles, and that’s actually costing you as well.

Paresh Patel [01:10:33]:
And so just understanding the pricing dynamics is important because small tweaks here we see make a big difference, right? Like, and just, this is not to preach what is the right answer. This is to say having data helps you understand it. So as you make tweaks, you could see the impact of it. That’s all we’re saying is as you experiment, you have the data, you will be able to understand yourself that, hey, when I raise the price 10%, I only saw a 3% increase in revenue. Well, that means that you actually lost cycles, right? Mathematically, the only way you increase price 10% and get only a 3% lift in revenue is you lost cycles. Maybe that’s okay. Maybe that’s not. You need to understand what it is, is the first point.

Jordan Berry [01:11:19]:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s huge. And to your point, I mean, I think I mentioned, you know, wash and fold, pickup and delivery. A lot of people feel like they’re making money, but they’re not. I’d say that’s also true on the dryers. Yes. A lot of people feel like they’re making money on dryers and they don’t.

Jordan Berry [01:11:34]:
And, and free dry, which I’m not a massive fan of, but it catches a lot of heat. But the one thing I’ll say about free dry is at least you know where you stand.

Paresh Patel [01:11:44]:
Yes.

Jordan Berry [01:11:44]:
You know, at least you know where you stand. And I think a lot of owners kind of hypocritically, uh, bash free dry, whereas they They don’t know how profitable their dryer or unprofitable their dryers are. Um, so at least you know where you stand with the free dry.

Paresh Patel [01:11:59]:
Yep, absolutely.

Jordan Berry [01:12:01]:
Um, okay, so listen, this has been like insane amount of value. So I got a couple of last questions for you. First and foremost, so, so I’m gonna ask you just in a second, you know, the next couple years, we talked about how the industry’s changing a lot over the last few years. I think it’s gonna continue to change over the next couple years. So I wanna ask you in a second how people should be thinking about the next couple years with their businesses. But before we jump into that, can you just tell us real quick, if somebody’s interested in PayRange, where should they go? How should they go find more information about PayRange and your payment system, but also your business solution?

Paresh Patel [01:12:40]:
Yeah, so we are of course at payrange.com. So that’s our website. You can come in there, learn a lot about it. We’re in the process of merging our websites, but, you know, we acquired Kiosoft earlier this year or end of last year. So there’s 2 separate websites still, kiosoft.com, and we’ve got the turn solution as well. So we’ve got a full product suite and we’re happy to talk to you about how we can bring this all together to help your business.

Jordan Berry [01:13:13]:
So when they go to PayRange, obviously they can click around there and learn stuff. Is there a way to like book a call with somebody?

Paresh Patel [01:13:20]:
Yeah, absolutely.

Jordan Berry [01:13:21]:
Yeah. Okay, cool. So definitely, definitely do that. And I think, listen, if you’re even just contemplating, or even if you’re not and you’re just kind of curious, I mean, I think it’s worth doing. Because like I said, I’ve stopped having the debate on digital payment versus coin. I don’t think there’s any comparison whatsoever, not just because of Ease of customer experience, but, you know, all the other things that we talked about, uh, business management, easy is easier, data, all that stuff, right? So go, go talk to these guys and see, um, what they have to offer and how it can help your business, because that’s really what it all comes down to is, you know, how—

Paresh Patel [01:13:59]:
Yeah, we’re, we’re just trying to be your technology partner. We’re not here to prescribe how you should set your business up, whether it should be app or kiosk or Washed Rifle. What we want to understand is what your goals are, what your priorities are, how you’re trying to position your business, and then we’ll talk about what products of our product suite that we can offer to you to help you build your business the way you want to build your business.

Jordan Berry [01:14:24]:
Yeah, that’s awesome. Um, okay, so going forward the next couple of years, you know, what, what should we be thinking about as, as laundromat owners? Uh, what should we be paying attention to? How should we be thinking about our businesses? Any changes you see coming up in the industry?

Paresh Patel [01:14:39]:
I would say there’s, there’s obviously a lot going on with the AI space, and most laundromat owners probably don’t know how AI is gonna affect their business. But what I will tell you is data is the new currency, and the better you start collecting data, the sooner you start collecting data, even if you don’t know how you’re gonna use it yet, You will be better off. And so once you put digital payments in there, once you put a mobile app in there, once you start collecting data on transactions and consumer spend and retention and churn, and even if you don’t even know how to calculate any of that or collect any of that, just having a technology partner who’s got your back, who’s putting the data infrastructure in place so you can start collecting the data, in 2 or 3 years you might find that as a useful thing. But what this data becomes is an asset for you. You’re building an asset base. That’s why it’s the new currency. And so what we would just emphasize is don’t just look at cash and coin where it’s mostly without any data. Look at how do you accomplish what you’re trying to do today, but also be able to collect enough data As an asset that helps your business in 2, 3, and 5 years from now.

Jordan Berry [01:16:00]:
Yeah, huge. I mean, right in line with what we’ve been talking about too. And I think that that’s, it’s so, I’ll just tell you just from like the Laundromat Resource side of things, I do a lot of consulting calls and I have like an AI note-taker and all those calls and stuff. I didn’t really do anything other than if I had a repeat meeting, I’d go back and look at our notes and stuff. But now, you know, I didn’t really have anything else to do with those notes. But now I can go back in those calls and I can pull out all kinds of, like, what are the questions that are most asked? What are the frameworks that I’m using in my consulting that I’m doing subconsciously? They’re not, you know, overt frameworks. And how do I form them into, like, there’s a whole lot of things now that I can do because I have that. Those transcripts, even though I didn’t really know what to do with them when I started recording them, right? Same thing with our businesses, our laundromats, right? Is just having the data, even if you don’t know what to do with it yet.

Jordan Berry [01:17:02]:
Number one, I mean, I think you could probably just go to ChatGPT or Claude or GrokBot or whatever your favorite one is, right? And just say, hey, I have a bunch of data from my laundromat. How can I use it to help improve my business? And it’ll have some ideas for you right there. Right. But even if you don’t know what to do with it yet, like you said, you’re going to be grateful you have it down the line for sure.

Paresh Patel [01:17:21]:
Yeah, no, I love your example about the transcripts because that’s exactly case in point here. You may not today in real time know how you’ll use that data, but almost certainly you’ll regret not having it later if you hadn’t started today.

Jordan Berry [01:17:36]:
Yeah, absolutely. Okay. We have talked about a lot of things today. We’ve covered a lot of ground and there’s a ton. I mean, I’ve been taking notes like crazy. I’ve written down Multiple quotes. Data is the new currency. Spot on.

Jordan Berry [01:17:51]:
That’s money. I love that. But if there’s something you really want to drive home today, what’s one? I mean, it’s going to be different from everybody. In every episode, I end it in the outro saying, hey, pick something and put it into action, right? But if you had to pick one thing that you really want to drive home for laundromat owners today, what would that be?

Paresh Patel [01:18:13]:
It probably goes back to what we talked at the kind of the first half of this podcast, which is, Your business isn’t about the machines, it’s about the customers and the customer experience.

Jordan Berry [01:18:22]:
Yeah, yeah. That’s definitely, um, my big takeaway on this one as well. And I have a huge, uh, I mean, I think it’s a big mindset shift for a lot of people in our industry, especially if they’ve been in an industry a long time. But even just the way that you framed it, I mean, that was a, a new and insightful way to frame it even for me. So I appreciate that. And I appreciate you, man. I appreciate you taking the time. Uh, to come on the show.

Jordan Berry [01:18:47]:
I know you got a lot going on. You’re doing a lot of great things for the industry. Um, and so I really appreciate you taking the time and, uh, listen, you’re welcome back here anytime you want to, because we could probably just talk laundromats and, and business all day long if we needed to.

Paresh Patel [01:19:03]:
I’d love to, uh, Jordan. It was great. Uh, it was fun here chatting with you.

Jordan Berry [01:19:07]:
Yeah, likewise. And, uh, uh, we’ll have to do this again. I mean, you’re making moves over there. Says you’re making moves. Let’s, uh, let’s talk about ’em and talk about how its impact in the industry.

Paresh Patel [01:19:17]:
Okay, will do.

Jordan Berry [01:19:18]:
I appreciate it. Hope you love that episode with Paresh. So much good stuff in there. And, uh, listen, as always, you’ve got to pick something, pick one thing, at least put it into action today, no matter where you’re at in your journey, whether you’re looking for your first laundromat, or you’re trying to grow your existing laundromat, or you’re trying to scale your portfolio, it doesn’t matter. Pick something. There’s so much good stuff in there. Shouldn’t be tough to find one thing that you can put into action today, if possible. the very least this week so that next week, in next week’s episode, you can pick something new.

Jordan Berry [01:19:50]:
And let’s start stacking those actions to help you achieve your goals. How about that? All right. That’s it for Jordan, Law of Memory Resource Podcast. Peace.