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Laundry Operations

What Your Laundromat Machines Are Telling You (And How to Listen)

July 16, 2026

The laundromat industry is evolving fast. Wash and fold, pickup and delivery, and multi-location operations are all growing. But the core of the self-service model has always been the same: the machine. It makes the laundry go 'round.

What has changed is what your machines can tell you.

Today's laundromat payment technology means that every wash cycle, every dryer run, every card tap is a data point. And when that data is connected to the rest of your business, it stops being noise and starts being signal. You can see what your customers prefer, which machines are working hardest, and where your revenue is actually coming from. All from your phone, without stepping foot in the store.

That is the shift Laundroworks and the Penny, both powered by Cents, are designed to make possible.

What Your Machines Can Tell You

Most operators think of machine data as a coin count or a turn total. But modern payment systems surface much more than that.

Customer behavior

  • Which payment methods do your customers prefer: card, mobile, or stored value?

  • How often does a specific customer visit? What settings do they typically choose?

  • Which machines get the most volume, and which sit underutilized?

This is the kind of intelligence that used to require a consultant. Now it lives in your dashboard.

Understanding how customers interact with your machines helps you make better decisions about where to place machines, how to price, what promos to run, and which equipment to prioritize for maintenance.

Operational efficiency

  • Which machines are averaging the most turns per day? Those may need servicing sooner.

  • Are certain machines running hot or cold in ways that affect your utility costs?

  • Do you want to allocate specific machines for employees processing wash and fold orders?

When you can see mileage on your machines and not just revenue, you can get ahead of breakdowns instead of reacting to them. A machine averaging 150+ turns a month tells a different maintenance story than one averaging 60.

The Customer Experience Side

Machine data matters to your customers too, even if they never see a dashboard.

  • Convenience is the baseline expectation now. Coin-only machines are increasingly a friction point in a world where people pay for coffee with their watch. Card readers, stored-value cards, and mobile tap-to-pay are table stakes for a modern laundromat.

  • Control matters too. Customers want to pay how they prefer, whether that is a reloadable loyalty card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or cash. The Laundroworks VAC kiosk accepts all of it, cash included. What goes away is coins. Not cash.

  • Loyalty is where the real opportunity lives. When customers load value onto a card or register through the app, they have a reason to come back to your store specifically. Their balance is there. Their preferences are saved. That is a relationship coins could never build. Pair that with Cents marketing tools and you have a way to reach those customers between visits too.

The Payment Systems: Laundroworks and the Penny

Cents offers two purpose-built payment systems for laundromats. Both connect your machines to the rest of your business. The right fit depends on how your store operates.

Laundroworks

LW-OperatorSpotlight_Landscape-1

Laundroworks is the #1 self-serve payment platform built specifically for laundromats. Not a general payment processor adapted for laundry. Built for it.

The system consists of three connected pieces:

Value Add Center (VAC) Kiosk: The central hub of the store. Accepts cash, chip/debit cards, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. Issues reloadable stored-value cards. Features a 15" bilingual touchscreen with offline capability, so if the internet goes down, the store keeps running.

NFC Card Readers (On-Machine): Plug-and-play installation, no drilling required. Every reader reports machine status, turn data, and transaction history in real time back to the LaundroPortal dashboard.

LaundryCat Mobile App: A branded customer-facing app with tap-to-pay in under one second, balance checking, and real-time notifications. Customers on the app engage more and return more consistently than card-only customers.

Together, these components turn your machines into a connected data layer for your business. Not just a way to take payments, but a way to understand and grow your operation.

Key capabilities operators use most:

  • Price adjustments down to the penny

  • Time-of-day and day-of-week pricing to run a happy hour during slow periods

  • Reload bonuses so a customer who adds $20 gets $22 in credit

  • Promo codes and win-back campaigns for lapsed customers

  • Remote refunds in two clicks with no store visit and no cash out of the register

  • Machine breakdown reports by size and turn volume

  • Manager cards so staff can handle on-site issues independently

Cents Connect Penny

Penny Device WebImageThe Penny is an on-machine card reader that accepts debit, credit, mobile payments via QR code, and loyalty cards, while still counting coins on the machine for operators who want a hybrid setup. It mounts directly on the front of the machine with a customer-facing LCD touchscreen for selecting cycles and adjusting dry times.

The Penny integrates directly with Cents Business Manager, so your self-serve machine revenue flows into the same dashboard as your POS orders, pickup and delivery, and employee management. One platform, one view.

"With this data, you're going to be able to unlock access to loyalty programs and marketing information that's going to help you connect to the customers, retain them better, and ultimately increase revenue." -- Max Bushmelov, Head of Hardware at Cents

What This Looks Like in Practice

Before switching, running a coin store means being there. Collecting coins. Not knowing what is happening when you are not watching. Having no way to reach the customers who just walked out the door.

After switching to Laundroworks or the Penny, the store runs. You watch it. You have visibility, data, and tools.

One operator described it as going from 80 hours a week to 20. Another said the system just fits his lifestyle. He can travel with his family and still see his store and his attendants remotely.

The data does not just change how you operate day to day. It changes what you can prove about your business when it comes time to refinance, expand, or eventually sell. Transaction history, machine utilization, revenue trends. These are the numbers that establish real valuation. For more on how operators are using data to grow, check out the Cents operator stories.

The Reporting That Changes How You Run Your Store

Most operators check revenue and move on. The operators who get the most out of Laundroworks and the Penny go deeper, and what they find usually surprises them.

  • Daily and weekly revenue summaries: The LaundroPortal dashboard and Cents Business Manager both surface revenue at a glance, broken down by day, week, and month. You can see exactly how much each machine brought in, which time slots are driving the most volume, and where there are gaps in the day worth addressing with happy hour pricing.

  • Machine turn reports: This is one of the most underused data points in the building. Turn reports show you how many cycles each individual machine ran, broken down by size and time period. A machine averaging 150+ turns a month is working hard and may need servicing before one averaging 60. This data is also useful when deciding whether to add capacity, retire older equipment, or negotiate your next equipment purchase with actual utilization numbers in hand rather than gut feel.

  • Payment method breakdowns: Knowing how your customers pay is not just operational data, it is a marketing signal. If 80% of your volume is coming through the mobile app, you have an audience you can reach with push notifications and promo codes. If stored-value cards are dominant, your reload bonus strategy is working and worth leaning into further. The dashboard breaks this down so you can see the shift over time as customers move away from coins and onto digital payment methods.

  • Customer card activity and lookup: Every card tied to your system is a customer record. You can look up any card, see every transaction that customer has ever made at your store, check their balance, and issue a refund or add credit directly from the portal. This is also how win-back campaigns work in practice: pull a report of cards with no activity in the last 30 days, load a small promo credit, and watch how many of those customers walk back in within the week.

  • Transaction history for every machine: Every cycle on every machine is logged with a timestamp, payment type, and amount. If a customer says a machine took their money and did not start, you can look it up in seconds. No more "he said, she said" at the front counter. The record is there.

  • Reporting that holds up at the bank: When operators go to refinance or bring in a business partner, the question is always the same: what does this store actually do? Coin stores cannot answer that with precision. Operators on Laundroworks or the Penny can pull clean transaction history, revenue trends by month, and machine utilization data that gives any lender or buyer a complete picture of the business. That data has real value beyond the day-to-day.

Ready to See It?

The best way to understand what machine-connected data does for a laundromat is to see it running.

 

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