A Friend Considers Opening a Laundromat as a Career Change

A friend owns a local business and has been quite successful.  Her work is also physically taxing.  As she grows older she’s pondering a career change.

Last week she needed to launder and dry some quilts.  She takes them to a laundromat where the big side loading washing machines can accommodate the size.  She noted it’s quite pricey to wash and dry her quilts.  Now she’s investigating the costs of operating a laundromat versus profit, physical stress and time involved.

I’ve met a few people who operate laundries and often discovered it’s just one business in a stable of businesses they often own.  A friend from high school was hired as the accountant for a small chain of laundromats.  He was so impressed he ended up buying the chain within a few years.

If you have risk tolerance when it comes to people periodically vandalizing a machine or a pipe breaking, you could probably handle the overall challenge.

My friend decided she would do a search and discovered a laundromat in Hailey pays a manager 63,000 thousand dollars a year.  There aren’t many jobs in some parts of Idaho paying 30 dollars an hour.

Like any business with a steady stream of customers, you do need good people skills.  And a willingness to listen to complaints or to the people who’ve lost their quarters in a machine.  For some people, it may be the last few dollars they’ve set aside for the week and remember.  We’re still enduring shortages of change in some areas of the country.