By Timothy Oommen, Owner — Laundini Laundromat | laundinilaundromat.com
B2B sales is humbling. Anyone who tells you otherwise hasn’t done enough of it.
You call. You email. You show up. You get told no, or not yet, or we already have someone. You come back anyway. You make your case again. You wait. And then sometimes — if you’ve been persistent without being annoying, if your timing is right, if you’ve done enough homework to actually understand their problem — someone says yes.
This is the story of one of those yeses. And what happened after it.
The Research Trip
I was 27 years old, sitting at a bar in Evanston on a Tuesday evening.
I want to be clear: I was there for research purposes.
The bar is owned by a man I’ll call Antonis — Tony to everyone who knows him, which at this point includes most of the North Side of Chicago. I’d been trying to get a meeting with him for weeks. Not because I wanted to sell him anything immediately, but because I wanted to understand his operation before I walked in with a pitch. I believe in knowing what someone actually needs before you tell them you can provide it.
What I saw that Tuesday told me a lot. A busy bar generates an enormous amount of laundry — bar towels, rags, floor rugs, the kind of volume that piles up fast and needs to turn around quickly. A bartender who runs out of clean towels mid-shift is a bartender who can’t do their job properly. And a bartender who can’t do their job properly means customers who notice, whether they can articulate why or not.
I also noticed the laundry situation wasn’t running smoothly. I won’t get into specifics out of respect for the previous service. But I paid attention.
The Conversation
Eventually Tony sat down. We talked. Not about laundry at first — about the bar, about Evanston, about what it takes to run a good establishment and keep people coming back. He’s been in this business long enough to have opinions and I was there to listen to them.
I talked about Laundini. About what we do, how we do it, why we’re different from the service he was already using. He was polite but not immediately convinced. He had a service. It was working well enough. Change creates friction and friction is the last thing a busy bar owner wants.
I kept talking. I told him what I could do that his current service wasn’t doing. Delivery to all his locations — not just one central drop-off point that his staff then had to redistribute. Consistent turnaround so his bartenders were never scrambling for clean towels mid-shift. Bleach where it was needed, proper treatment, professional results.
He said he’d think about it.
I came back.
Eventually — and I genuinely could not tell you exactly which conversation tipped it — he said yes.
What I Didn’t Know Until After
Tony doesn’t own one bar. He owns five. Between Evanston and Rogers Park, five establishments, all generating laundry, all needing clean towels and rags and floor rugs on a schedule that doesn’t pause because the service had a bad week.
His previous service had been delivering to one location. Just one. His staff was handling the redistribution to the other four. That’s time, logistics, and labor that a bar owner should not be spending on laundry management. It’s the kind of operational friction that’s invisible until someone removes it — and then suddenly the staff has time back and the owner has one less thing on an already full plate.
I had no idea the opportunity was that significant when I first walked in. I had done my research on one location. There were five.
What We Do for Tony Now
Every location gets serviced. Pickup and delivery to all five, on schedule, without Tony or his staff having to coordinate redistribution.
The laundry itself is bar laundry — which means it needs real treatment, not a gentle residential cycle. Bar towels and rags are greasy, heavily used, and need degreaser pre-treatment before they go anywhere near a machine. Then bleach. Then hot water as the catalyst that activates everything and delivers genuine disinfection. The kind of clean that a bar kitchen actually needs.
We fold and deliver to each location. Clean towels, clean rags, clean floor rugs — ready for the next shift without anyone having to think about it.
Why This Matters to Tony
Tony is a businessman running five locations simultaneously. Every hour he or his staff spend thinking about laundry logistics is an hour not spent on the things that actually move his business forward — the product, the experience, the customers.
He told me once that his bartenders are happy now. That might sound like a small thing. It isn’t. A bartender who has what they need to do their job well is a bartender who shows up to work in a good mood. A bartender in a good mood creates a different experience for every customer they serve that night. The cleanliness and readiness of the bar operation flows directly into the customer experience in ways that are hard to trace but completely real.
One less problem for a business owner running five locations. That’s what Laundini is for Tony.
What Tony’s Account Means to Me
I see Tony regularly now at his locations. It never gets old.
Not because of the contract — though the contract matters, the business needs it, the liabilities don’t pay themselves. But because walking into a place where someone trusted you with a real operational problem and watching it run better because of your work is one of the best feelings this business produces.
B2B sales is hard. You build nothing for a long time. You make calls that don’t get returned. You visit establishments not entirely sure whether you’re a customer or a vendor. You talk to people who aren’t ready to change, and you come back when they might be.
And then sometimes someone says yes. And then it turns out to be five locations. And then his bartenders are happy and his customers are happy and you’re sitting there thinking — this is why I built this.
The Honest Version of What Building a Business Feels Like
I’m 27 years old. I own four laundromats across Cook County, a delivery truck, and a team of people I’m genuinely proud of. I also have liabilities that don’t sleep, contractors who have tested my faith in humanity, machines that break on the busiest days, and problems that arrive before I’ve finished the coffee I was counting on.
Some days it feels like building a ship while sailing it through open ocean. There is no dry dock. There is no pause button. You build and you sail simultaneously and you make it work because the alternative is not an option you’re willing to consider.
But then you walk into Tony’s bar on a Tuesday night and his bartenders are working clean and his operation is running and he nods at you from across the room — and you remember why you chose this life.
The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is real. You just have to keep sailing.
If You Run a Bar, Restaurant, Hotel, or Gym in Cook County
Your laundry situation is either handled or it isn’t. If it isn’t — or if it’s handled but not the way it should be, not to all your locations, not on the schedule your operation needs — reach out.
We do commercial laundry properly. Degreaser, bleach, hot water, folded, delivered to every location on your schedule. Recurring pickups so it never falls off the radar.
Email info@laundinilaundromat.com. Tell me about your operation. I’ll come see it — for research purposes, of course.
Residential pickup and delivery at laundinilaundromat.com. Commercial inquiries: info@laundinilaundromat.com. All of Cook County. We show up, we do the work, we deliver to every location.
Timothy Oommen is the founder and owner of Laundini Laundromat, with locations in Evanston, Bucktown, Skokie, and Wheeling, IL.