1. Quality sheets and towels are worth the initial investment.
Ok – so you’re not a hotel – even though it may feel like it when you see your laundry piles growing on a daily basis. Hotel-style doesn’t necessarily mean hotel-price or hotel-quantity. After all, you likely aren’t working with the volume purchasing power or budget of a hotel.
Hotel-style means two things:
- Pure white in color – This makes stains easier to treat and remove than colored options that can’t be bleached. It will keep your laundry in circulation longer AND keep the cost of stain treatment down. For a business laundry service, stains on white sheets and towels are easier to remove than stains on colored sheets and towels.
- Standardized in size – Keeping your inventory standardized will prevent you from purchasing replacements more frequently. If you have large towels for one part of your business and smaller towels for others, when one is permanently damaged or lost by a guest, replacing it can be a headache. You’ll likely need to buy more than one – even if you only need one. Instead, consider standardizing your inventory to 2-3 items and stocking extra of these 2-3 linens.
- Know your towel and linen quality – We have found that brushed microfiber bedding is a perfect bedding solution for hotel-style business use. The quick-drying, easily stain treated sheets are the perfect balance between cost-efficiency, cleaning-efficiency, and guest comfort. Just like the sheets, there are many options for towels. Your clients want to get dry but don’t necessarily want the thickest towel on the market. Remember – hotel-style? We recommend medium thickness towels in either cotton or microfiber. The thinner the towel, the cheaper it is to replace and the easier it is to both treat for stain and dry properly.
2. Have enough inventory to only send laundry to be cleaned on a predictable, recurring schedule.
Miscommunication happens when things get complicated. If you’re operating your business with just enough linens to scrape by, you’re complicating the cleaning process by putting a strict timeline on yourself and your business laundry service.
Having a small number of sets of laundry and linens will mean you are constantly sending your linens for cleaning. And, with most business laundry services, your cleaning costs will be more expensive at lower volumes. Buying enough towels & linens to keep your business stocked with clean inventory for a couple of turns (usually at least a week or two) with the assumption that you will have high use, will help you save money with your cleaning service and make sure your clients never show up to a without proper inventory.
Trying to stay ahead of clients with a limited inventory can be incredibly stressful. And, having extra (standardized) inventory on hand is an easy solution.
4. Request bleach and stain treatment with every cleaning for preventative maintenance.
If indeed your laundry is white – as this is what we recommend, keep it white by making sure your business laundry service knows to add bleach, whitening agents, or Vanish in every wash. Most business laundry services give you the option to add treatment preferences to your account. And, if they don’t, be sure to contact them before ordering to make sure you can get whitening agents added to keep your whites white!
With this, set your laundry service preferences with some consideration for allergies. We always recommend business laundry accounts use free & clear detergent (detergent without perfumes or dyes) to help protect your clients from having a reaction to your sheets & towels.
5. Know the difference between a business laundry service, a third-party provider, and a local dry cleaner.
Whatever you need – there’s an app for that. But, is that always a good thing?
While you might not care who is delivering your pizza, you should care who is doing your laundry. With the rise of middle-man apps that pair you with the closest, cheapest, (insert any other superlative here) service provider, you have no idea who is picking up, cleaning, and delivering your clothes. And, this likely changes order-to-order based on however the middle man app chooses to schedules your service.
These providers even opt to send orders to individuals to wash at their home instead of a professional company operating in a professional laundry facility.
Here is the rundown:
- You’ll want to find a business laundry service that ACTUALLY does your laundry: It takes a simple Google search. You’ll find a couple of options of app-based middle man companies that shop your laundry out to the nearest provider. These almost always cost you twice as much as going directly to the source. When deciding on a business laundry service, be sure to research or ask who is actually doing your laundry.
- Dry Cleaners vs. Laundry Services: There is a difference. If you though the third-party middle man apps were expensive, dry cleaners typically cost 3-4x the price of a true laundry service. Dry cleaners specialize in high volumes of small garments. While your business laundry service focuses on small volumes of bigger garments – sheets, towels, comforters, etc. And, for the most part, dry cleaning your linens is a good way to expedite the wear and tear on them. Check both the linen care tags and your dry cleaning receipts before using a dry cleaner.
