Current laundromat owners-covid

[James Monroe]

How has covid affected your business?
Should people looking to get into the business worry? If so, what about?
Do you follow state/fed regulations, how so; masks, distancing, cleaning, etc?
Financially?

Just throwing a few of these questions out there to any current owners. If I missed this in the forums, disregard.
Thanks!

[Jason Dodge]

When covid first hit last year we were down maybe 25% for a month. The 3 months to follow were down but not much and now we are back to normal. We strive to keep a clean store anyways so things haven’t really changed. We do have signs asking customers to wear a mask but that is very difficult to enforce.

[James Monroe]

Thanks Jason! Appreciate the info!

[Robert Anderson]

Business was down sharply at first but then came back strong. Folks still have to wash clothes, although this will vary greatly by what market you are in.

We put up CDC signs, removed the kids club table, removed some other seating (but not all), and added to our surface cleaning procedure. Although later they said it mostly spreads through the air (and not much via surfaces).

Most customers wear masks but we don’t enforce it. What if customer is drinking water? What if is asthma sufferer? How do you enforce when you are partially unattended? Hope this doesn’t get us in trouble with the authorities.

Most customers are social distancing and sitting in their cars while clothes wash/dry. I know some mats banned folding of clothes inside the mat, but we chose not go to that draconian measure. We offer a sink with hand soap and paper towels provided. Another advantage we have is we can open our front and back doors which allows a nice sea breeze to flow through the mat and keep the air fresh.

Covid has not caused us to want to exit the laundromat business.

[Author]

Posts