By Timothy Oommen, Owner — Laundini Laundromat | laundinilaundromat.com
Everyone has an opinion about laundromats. Most of them have never owned one.
Here is what I know from actually doing it — building one from a bare unit, running four of them across Cook County, and surviving the process physically, financially, and mentally.
The Building Will Fight You
I expected to find a space, put machines in it, and open. The reality: every building has its own utility infrastructure that determines what you can and cannot do inside it. The existing electrical tells you what machines you can run. The sewer line routing tells you where they can go. The gas lines determine your dryer options. The walls contain surprises — some of them expensive.
I ran utility lines through a building for over a year before Laundini on Emerson Street was operational. I managed contractors who overpromised, underdelivered, and sometimes did work that had to be redone entirely. I paid for things twice that should have been done right once. I learned to verify everything before paying for anything.
Nobody tells you that the building itself is a negotiation that never fully ends.
Contractors Are a Specific Kind of Challenge
I have been diplomatic about this elsewhere. I’ll be less diplomatic here.
The laundromat industry is full of contractors who know that business owners are under time pressure and capital constraints, and who price and behave accordingly. Deadlines get missed. Scopes expand after the contract is signed. Work gets done to a standard just sufficient to pass inspection and not a bit higher.
The solution I’ve found: put everything in writing, test the work before paying for it, and never assume that a handshake or a phone call carries the same weight as a signed document. This is obvious advice that becomes obvious too late for most people.
The Machines Are Only the Beginning
Buying the machines is the part people think about. Running them, maintaining them, managing the repair cycle when they go down — that’s the actual job.
Older machines are cheaper to acquire and more expensive to maintain. Newer machines cost more upfront and run more reliably. The calculation depends on your capital position, your utility infrastructure, and your tolerance for downtime when something breaks on a busy Saturday.
Every machine that goes down is lost revenue plus repair cost plus customer frustration. Having a relationship with a reliable technician before you need one — not after a machine dies mid-cycle — is one of the most valuable things you can build in this business.
Walk-In Revenue Is Harder Than It Looks
Walk-in laundromat pricing is low. It has to be to compete. At $2 per wash and $0.25 per eight minutes of drying, the margin on each customer is thin and the volume required to make it work is significant.
The walk-in customer is also the most transactional relationship in any service business. They come when it’s convenient, leave when the cycle is done, and have no particular loyalty to your laundromat over the one two blocks away. Building a walk-in customer base takes time, consistency, and a facility that’s consistently better than the alternatives.
This is why I pivoted to pickup and delivery — not because walk-in is wrong but because the margin structure of delivery, combined with the recurring customer relationships it builds, fits the business I wanted to build better than walk-in alone.
The Financial Reality Is Closer Than You Expect
I’ve written about the hard financial periods elsewhere on this blog. What I want to add here is specific: the gap between when you spend money building a laundromat and when that laundromat generates enough revenue to cover its costs is longer than most projections suggest.
Equipment, utilities, lease, insurance, maintenance, staffing — these costs are real from day one. Revenue takes time to build. The period in between is where most laundromats get into trouble and where I came closest to the edge myself.
Know your numbers before you sign anything. Model the worst case. Have a plan for the months before the business finds its footing.
What Makes It Worth It
Despite everything above: I would do it again.
Not because it was easy. Because building something real — something physical, something that serves people’s actual daily lives, something in a community you’re part of — is worth the cost of building it.
The laundromat on Emerson Street exists because I spent a year making it exist. The pickup and delivery service runs because I built it from what I know. The team that runs it with me is genuinely good at what they do.
That’s what nobody tells you about opening a laundromat. Not because it’s a secret — because it can only be understood from the inside.
Book your pickup at laundinilaundromat.com. All of Cook County, $1.50/lb, free delivery, 24-hour turnaround.
Timothy Oommen is the founder and owner of Laundini Laundromat, with locations in Evanston, Bucktown, Skokie, Wheeling, and South Shore, Chicago.