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Sun Beach Laundry sits a block off the water on South Ocean Boulevard in Pompano Beach, Florida. Two years after owner Sergey Nikiforov bought the business, he's become a go-to example in the Cents community for how to do local laundromat marketing right, enough so that he joined Cents Customer Success Manager Bryan Hartsock at the Clean Show last year to discuss what's working. Sergey has built a wash and fold operation so metrics-driven that he now manages much of it through an AI dashboard he built himself on top of his Cents data. The results speak for themselves: "This year we increased revenue by 70%, and that's our slow season."
From a Childhood Memory to a Laundromat in Pompano Beach
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Sergey didn't set out to buy a laundromat. He was actually browsing storage unit businesses online when a laundromat listing caught his eye instead, and something about it clicked. Growing up without a washing machine or dryer at home, he'd go to the laundromat with his dad on weekends. "It's actually some of my favorite memories of him."
That memory pulled him back in. He estimates he looked at more than 50 laundromats over time, touring around 20 seriously, before he found the one that would become Sun Beach Laundry. "As soon as I stepped in, I knew I had to get it," he said. "It was the cleanest laundromat I had ever seen." It also had brand-new machines, a strong existing reputation, and, oddly for a laundromat, a location a short walk from the beach. The previous owner, he learned, was ready to move on to something else. Rather than bringing in an entirely new team, Sergey kept the existing staff on, and they still work there today. "We're a family now," he said.
A Wash-and-Fold Business From Day One
Most laundromats Sergey toured while shopping around were primarily self-service. Sun Beach was the opposite: close to 95% of its revenue came from wash and fold. As an accountant by day, that ratio, and the margins behind it, immediately stood out to him.
But running a wash-and-fold-first laundromat well requires more visibility into the business than a coin-drop model does, and Sergey quickly hit a wall with his original setup. "I couldn't get the data I wanted to see how we were doing, how we were growing," he said. "I was basically just going off whatever showed up in my bank account." He evaluated a couple of point-of-sale options before landing on Cents, launching pickup and delivery shortly after.
Turning Cents Data Into His Own AI Dashboard
The real inflection point wasn't just switching systems, it was what Sergey started doing with the data once he had it. "I used to drop Cents reports into AI and get a snapshot," he said. "Now I've had AI build a whole dashboard for me that pulls from several sources: my self-serve data and my Cents data together." That dashboard now tracks every KPI he cares about, including employee hours, pounds processed per shift, and historical trends, all in one place, all pulled from Cents Business Manager reporting.
"He's extended the same approach outward. Every day, AI compiles automated research on the competitors he tracks, flagging new Google reviews and surfacing trends like a competitor suddenly gaining or losing reputation. When a customer leaves a Yelp request, AI drafts a tailored response using their specific details and location, and Sergey credits that shift with a meaningfully higher close rate. He layers AI on top of his review process. "I'm saving a lot of time, and speed really matters here. People choose whoever responds first with something relevant."
It's also paid off in an unexpected way: Yelp tracks response times, and Sun Beach now ranks among the fastest responders in its market, which keeps new leads coming in on its own.
Scaling Past the Snowbird Season With Cents and AI Together
When Sergey bought the business, revenue leaned heavily on seasonal snowbirds, with big winter months followed by steep spring drop-offs. That pattern has started to break. Running pickup and delivery through Cents gave him a steady base of recurring customers and new commercial accounts, including in the area's dense Airbnb market, that he could count on year-round. Pickup and delivery has grown from roughly 15% to 19% of wash-and-fold revenue in just the past few months, and Sergey says he hasn't had to put additional money into the business in about a year, even through what's traditionally his slowest season.
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Cents gave him the underlying system: pickup and delivery orders, wash-and-fold production tracking, and a single source of data he didn't have before. AI became the layer that turned that data into decisions he could make quickly, letting a lean team punch well above its weight. (Like most growing wash-and-fold operations, staffing has had its share of turnover along the way, but the combination of Cents and AI has made it easier for a small core team to keep up.)
"It really is because of Cents," Sergey said. "If I didn't have Cents, I would be nowhere near this." He's noticed the effect ripple out locally too: several competitors in his market have switched to Cents since he did. "Every time I see a new owner take over a store nearby, I wonder what system they're going to use, and then it's Cents," he said. "I'm like, of course it is."
What sets Sun Beach apart isn't just having Cents, it's what Sergey built around it. His AI dashboard pulls Cents data and self-serve data into one view with the KPIs he actually needs: employee hours, pounds processed, historical trends, all in one place instead of scattered across reports. He's automated the layers around the core business too, competitor tracking, review responses, Yelp lead replies, so the time he saves on busywork goes straight back into growing the parts of the business that matter most. He also incentivizes his core staff directly, tying a share of revenue to the reviews they help bring in, since he's rarely on-site outside of weekends.
Rebuilding the Website, and Showing Up in AI Search
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On the advice of Cents' Bryan Hartsock, Sergey shifted focus toward reviews and SEO, then rebuilt the Sun Beach Laundry website and Google Business Profile almost entirely with AI assistance, layering in Cents' marketing tools to keep review requests and customer outreach running automatically. "Without AI, I don't think I would have grown this much," he said. "I use it for everything." The rebuilt site went further than a typical laundromat page, packing in enough detail on services and service areas that Sun Beach began appearing in AI search overviews, not just traditional Google results. "We're the ones with the most information for almost any question you could ask," he said. "That was the whole goal of it."
Advice for Other Operators
Sergey's advice to owners who are hesitant to change systems, adopt AI, or move past pen and paper is straightforward: make the leap before you have to.
"If you're a business owner, you've already taken risks," he said. "I think you've got to keep taking them. We were plateauing, we weren't growing, and as soon as you feel that, you have to make a change somewhere. There are a lot of tools out there to help you figure out what that change should be, and which part of the business is actually holding you back. It just felt right, so I made the leap."
Looking Forward
Sergey is still chasing the kind of commercial account that could meaningfully change the business's trajectory, and he's candid that sales isn't his natural strength. "I'm more of a numbers person behind a desk than a salesman," he said, "but I'm getting reps in." In the meantime, he's continuing to build out his AI-driven outreach and reporting, running an increasingly automated operation on top of Cents.
Interested in what an AI-powered, data-driven laundromat could look like for your business? Schedule a demo with Cents to see how Business Manager, Pickup & Delivery, and Websites work together to support the kind of growth Sun Beach Laundry has seen. You can also explore more operator stories and resources from laundromat owners building their businesses with Cents.
