Crowdfunded Laundromats & $50K Grants? It’s Happening | Laundromat News Today May 02, 2025

Jordan Berry [00:00:01]:
Welcome to Laundromat News Today. I’m your anchor, Jordan Barry, bringing you all the news from around the world and all things Laundromat related. So let’s kick it off today in Fort Worth, Texas, where Kelly Graham started a nonprofit called Laundry Love. And the mission of Laundry Love is to give out, free laundry for people who, who need laundry. So I love these stories. A lot of people doing really cool stuff in the laundry business. Laundry Love and Kelly partnered with some laundromats and also, some churches and, and a bunch of volunteers to, go out and help provide clean clothes for people who need them. And it came out of pretty cool story where she was a middle school teacher and there was a student in her class that she just noticed that people didn’t want to sit by and things like that because they couldn’t afford to do laundry.

Jordan Berry [00:01:02]:
So the smell was not good. And so she wanted to do something to help. So that’s where laundry love was born out of. And again, I just love the ability that we have in this business to, to do good things for people. I don’t know if you can hear that right now, but there’s a like a hurricane warning going off here, but I’m going to push on because it’s blue skies. So breaking news, maybe a hurricane or tsunami here in Hawaii, but probably not. Alright. So let’s push on to Charlotte, North Carolina, where, oh, Camila Franco and her parents own a laundromat slash bakery and cafe.

Jordan Berry [00:01:43]:
Just wanted to highlight that again. Pretty cool, unique business model they got in North Carolina, where you can go do your laundry, sip on some coffee, and grab a sweet treat. And again, one of the things I like about this is people are looking for ways to maximize their revenue. Right? The the main ways that you can improve your business, increase the revenue to your business are add more customers, number one. Number two, you can increase your prices. Or number three, you can get your existing customers to spend more money with you. And adding things like cafes or bakeries just increase that total average spend as, as customers are hanging around with, with nothing to do, waiting for their laundry to get done. So congrats to you guys on having a cool, cool business.

Jordan Berry [00:02:35]:
Alright. Wanted to highlight another story, which I don’t highlight a ton of the crime stories, and there’s quite a few crime stories that come out every week, at and around laundromats. However, this, crime story is a little different. It’s in San it comes out of San Angelo, Texas, where $1,100 in work uniforms were taken from a laundromat. Somebody was doing work uniforms for their business, left them in the dryer, a tail as old as time, and, and went off to go run another errand. Somebody came through and took those uniforms out of the dryer before the owner of those uniforms came back for him. However, the reason I wanted to highlight it is something that doesn’t happen every day is, it was a a wife and son that took or a mother and son that took the uniforms, and the husband actually found out about it and, brought the uniforms back. So congrats on, having a lot of character.

Jordan Berry [00:03:40]:
I know that we see a lot of stuff like this kinda happen, and I think that somebody bringing something back is pretty rare. So I wanted to highlight that, pretty cool. It doesn’t say who they were, but congrats to you, sir, for, having some accountability with your family and, in trying to do the right thing. Okay. I wanted to bring this one up. One of the questions I get asked all the time or one of the obstacles I think that people feel like are the biggest obstacles, to starting a laundromat is the money side, right? And I have a video on YouTube that you might want to check out on nine ways to finance your laundromat deal. But listen, there’s more than nine ways, and this one didn’t even actually make it onto that video. But this laundromat that comes out of Detroit actually was able to be opened, thanks in part to a crowd funding initiative, that the, state actually sponsored.

Jordan Berry [00:04:41]:
So state funded or state sponsored crowdfunding program that brought in this laundromat here in Detroit. So, listen, I’ll say it one more time. I’ll probably say it more than one more time over, you know, going forward. But I’m gonna say it again right here is that don’t let a lack of money stop you from achieving your goals for creating the business that you feel like you need to achieve. Yes. It is an obstacle for a lot of people. However, obstacles are made to be overcome, and there’s a lot of different ways you can overcome them, including crowdfunding your next business venture. Awesome.

Jordan Berry [00:05:21]:
One more cool thing that I think people are doing in their laundromat business I wanted to highlight in Rockford, Illinois, 5 Alarm Coin Laundry. Also utilizing a grant, a $50,000 grant to help give free laundry services to seniors and students. So not only are there creative ways to buy or build your laundromat, there’s also a lot of creative ways to grow your business and and to fund your business. So $50,000 grant to help this laundromat provide free laundry for seniors and students. Listen, this is like a win, win, win all the way around. There’s a lot of money, a lot of resources out there. So whether you are looking to get your first laundromat or you own laundromats and you want to grow them, be looking for creative solutions on how to do all of those things. And let’s wrap it up with, the most amazing story of the day where, Ross Dodds, multi store owner out of L.

Jordan Berry [00:06:27]:
A, goes on record saying that buying a laundromat really is easy, and all you really have to do is collect quarters. So awesome news. No. I’m just kidding. That’s today’s joke. Listen, if you own a laundromat, you know, that is, kind of an ongoing joke that all you gotta do is collect quarters. But, listen, if you don’t know that or you don’t own a laundromat yet, that probably wasn’t funny. And, actually, it probably wasn’t funny even if you own a laundromat.

Jordan Berry [00:06:59]:
And Ross did not say that, nor would he ever, actually. But, shout out to Ross who runs the Laundromat Owners Facebook group. Go join that if you’re not part of it, and is a multi store owner and does crush it in this business. But owning laundromats is not always easy and not always, no work. So beware. All right. That’s it for Laundromat News today. I’m just gonna apologize for a terrible attempt at a joke.

Jordan Berry [00:07:26]:
Again, as usual, we’ll see you next week with all the news coming from around the globe in the laundromat industry.