Laundry Pickup and Delivery with Cents

Has your laundry business hit a plateau in revenue growth? Or are your margins improving, but there are inevitable opportunities for service enhancements? Incorporating new services into your laundromat business can be a simple yet effective way to reach new customers and grow your business.

One of the most beneficial services to integrate into your business is laundry pickup and delivery. Other industries have augmented “pickup and delivery” with the boom of the gig economy, but the laundry industry has been slow to make this shift. Cents’ highly effective pickup and delivery model partners with gig resources, allowing you to offer a premium service, attract new customers, and increase your bottom line.

This partnership also is designed to support traditional pickup and delivery models, even in cases where laundromat owners have purchased or leased vehicles and hired drivers, giving laundromat owners the flexibility to decide which service model best serves their market. Let’s explore how the Cents model optimizes laundry pickup and delivery to benefit both the laundromat and the customer.

How Does Pickup & Delivery Grow Your Laundry Business?

Expand Your Total Addressable Market (TAM)

Before launching any new service offering, it is essential to understand your total addressable market (TAM). Understanding who your customers are and their laundry needs can inform your new pickup and delivery service at your laundromat. Ask yourself:

• How big is the population of your area?

• What are the demographics of the population in your area?

• What size are the families of your customers?

• Do your customers attend school?

• Do your customers commute a distance to work?

• What style of home do they live in — houses, apartments, condos, etc.?

Answering these questions will help inform your TAM insights which, when applied directly to your new pickup and delivery service, can extend that market beyond its current reaches.

Laundromats are often hindered by a small geographical radius because not only do customers need to live or work close enough to travel to them, but they also are bringing with them heavy laundry bags that can only be transported so far. By offering laundry pickup and delivery services, you are able to extend the geographical limits of your laundromat business to reach customers located further away from your physical location. 

Pickup and delivery is the fastest growing trend in the industry, with many people willing to pay extra for the premium service. The increase in double-income families, the digital, millennial culture shift, and the boom of the gig economy have all expedited the need for on-demand delivery. Even people with in-unit laundry machines want to take advantage of laundry delivery services for convenience.

Many customers may prefer to avoid visiting traditional brick and mortar laundromats and, as a result, exclusively patronize laundromats that offer pickup and delivery options. The aforementioned extended geographical radius gives customers the opportunity to skip over the laundromats that don’t offer pickup and delivery and use one that does, even though it might be further away. By providing this premium service, you are accessing a whole new bracket of new customers in your current location, along with extending the size of the geographical market you can cater to.

Increase Revenue

As a premium service, laundry pickup and delivery can come at a higher price to your customers who choose to utilize it. The Cents model makes it easy and cost-effective for laundromats to expand their service offerings into pickup and delivery with minimal costs to laundromat owners, allowing them to maximize their revenue.

Premium Service

What are the benefits of offering a premium service?

By providing different services, laundromats have the opportunity to attract new customers and increase revenue. Adding laundry pickup and delivery allows laundromat owners to tap into a whole new market of customers further outside your geographical area who are willing to pay for offerings outside standard laundry services. Customers who are interested in a premium service also tend to be loyal to that service. According to our data, customers who utilize a premium service on two separate occasions are more likely to continue using that service in perpetuity. 

A common misconception is that, in order to offer a high-quality service like laundry pickup and delivery, laundromat owners need to shell out lots of cash to get it going. Adding pickup and delivery to your laundromat services, however, does not have to be expensive to the owner if done the right way. By tapping into the gig economy through Cents, laundromat owners are given access to delivery necessities that would normally require upfront capital, creating a lower barrier to entry and potentially a higher return on investment.

No-Cost Delivery

Laundry pickup and delivery services have evolved very little since their inception. Commonly, laundromats will outsource delivery and marketing, consuming up to 30% of the revenue they might make from offering the services. Other laundromats might do things the old-fashioned way by taking phone calls through which customers place orders for Pickup and Delivery, but this process eats up the precious time and resources of the staff.

With Cents, laundromats are able to offer on-demand delivery services, modernizing the way laundromat owners can expand their markets. The Cents on-demand pickup and delivery format allows laundromats to offer this premium service without any capital expenditure. How does this drive revenue? Laundromat owners can offer no-cost pickup and delivery, but charge a premium for a top-tier service, significantly boosting margins.

Laundry Pickup and Delivery Powered by the Gig Economy

The costs of the most typical pickup and delivery service models can destroy your margins — they may boost your volume, but the significant costs lower your return on investment. There are many “hidden” expenses that can come along with offering laundry pickup and delivery, including van and car expenses, insurance costs, paying for drivers, and gas prices, as well as methods to manage accidents and other emergencies or liabilities.

Cents gives laundromat owners the opportunity to utilize a premadepickup and delivery model powered by the gig economy. Cents partners directly with gig economy providers to offer laundromat owners and customers access to a number of important benefits.

• No capital expenditure: By tapping into the gig economy, laundromat owners can offer laundry Pickup and Delivery that requires zero CapEx.

• Vehicles, drivers, and other delivery-related resources: Cents’ partnership with gig economy providers offers laundromats direct access to pickup and delivery vehicles, drivers, gas, and other delivery services that would otherwise eat up large portions of your ROI.

• Modern delivery format: As gig pickup and delivery services become more and more prevalent, laundromats can provide a delivery format that is already familiar to the customer.

Flexible Delivery Options

Unlike the restaurant industry, where food often needs to be delivered immediately after it is prepared to remain hot, laundromats have a lot more flexibility in terms of scheduling and delivery times. Offering flexible delivery options is beneficial to both the customer and the laundromat owner. Flexible delivery options allow the laundromat to stay on top of scheduled deliveries and to organize orders at times that are conducive to staff scheduling. Flex options also mean flex pricing; laundromats that provide a variety of delivery options have the opportunity to offer varied pricing. The quicker the turnaround time, the higher the cost to the customer. 

Customers benefit from flexible delivery options because they have the freedom to choose how and when they get their laundry done from the convenience of their home. A customer could have the option to schedule laundry pickup and delivery with a two-day, one-day, or even same-day turnaround, willing to pay a higher cost for a faster turnaround time. Laundromats can also offer both one- or two-way delivery. Customers would have the option to have their laundry picked up and delivered back to them, only picked up, or only delivered, providing them with end-to-end laundry delivery flexibility. 

Depending on the laundromat’s location in a community, many laundromats also partner with local organizations or universities. Partnerships like these can have layers of benefits:

• Provide specialty pricing to deliver laundry directly to work or school for local teams, students, or employees

• Initiate loyalty to your laundromat within the partnerships

• Showcase your laundromat’s presence within the community and keep your business top of mind

Get Started with Cents

When done wrong, laundromat pickup and delivery can be a significant effort whose costs increase your volume but lower your return. When done the Cents way, laundromats can boost their margins and revenue by offering no-cost, easy-to-use laundry pickup and delivery services. Cents makes it easy to get started with pickup and delivery. If you’re ready to take your laundromat to the next level, try Cents today.