Laundry business plan: a sample plan for a laundromat or wash-and-fold service

What does a laundry business plan need to show?

A laundry business plan needs to show three things a lender or partner cannot guess: that enough renters live near the site, that the machines you want to buy will turn often enough to pay for themselves, and that you can cover rent, loan payments and utilities through the slow first months. Everything else in the plan supports those three claims.

The SBA describes two formats on its business plan page: a traditional plan, which uses a standard structure, goes into detail in each section and is what lenders and investors commonly request, and a lean startup plan, which summarizes the key points on about one page. For a laundromat, where you are usually borrowing six figures for equipment, write the traditional version. The SBA’s nine common sections are: executive summary, company description, market analysis, organization and management, service or product line, marketing and sales, funding request, financial projections and appendix.

Our cleaning business plan guide covers each of those sections with a worked example for a residential cleaner, and the free business plan template gives you the fill-in structure. This page is about what is different for laundry: the market data, the equipment math and the projection. If you have not yet picked between a laundromat, a wash-and-fold counter and a pickup-and-delivery route, read how to start a laundry business first; it compares the three models.

The sample business used on this page

To keep the numbers concrete, the sections below follow a hypothetical store, Riverside Wash, a 2,400 square foot laundromat with 24 washers and 20 dryer pockets in a renter-heavy neighborhood, adding a wash-and-fold counter in month three. Every figure for Riverside Wash is an example. Swap in your own site, equipment quote and lease.

Sample executive summary for a laundromat business plan

The executive summary is the plan in one page, written last. Here is Riverside Wash’s, as a model you can rewrite with your own facts.

Riverside Wash will be a 2,400 square foot self-service laundromat at a hypothetical address in a neighborhood where most households rent. It will open with 24 front-load washers (18 to 60 lb) and 20 dryer pockets, card and app payment, free Wi-Fi, and a staffed wash-and-fold counter from month three. Hours will be 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week, the range the Laundry Association describes as typical for the industry.

Market. The nearest competing laundromat is a mile away with top-load machines and coin-only payment. Within a one-mile radius there are a hypothetical 4,800 households, 62% renter-occupied, with three apartment complexes of 100 or more units that have shared laundry rooms or none at all.

Owner. The owner has run a residential cleaning company for four years and will manage the store and the wash-and-fold counter, with one part-time attendant from opening and a second from month six.

Funding. The project needs $385,000: $240,000 for equipment, $95,000 for build-out and utilities, and $50,000 for fixtures, working capital and the first four months of losses. The owner is investing $85,000 and requesting a $300,000 loan over 10 years.

Projection. Revenue is projected to reach about $22,500 a month by month 12 as washers climb from 2.0 to 4.2 turns per day and wash-and-fold grows to $4,400 a month. The store breaks even on cash in month five and ends year one with $199,000 in revenue (see the projection section for assumptions).

Market analysis: what the data says about laundromat demand

Laundromat demand comes from renters, and renters are a large and stable group: the Census Bureau’s Housing Vacancies and Homeownership release for the third quarter of 2026 puts the national homeownership rate at 65.5%, so about 34.5% of households rent. The same release reports a rental vacancy rate of 7.6% and a median asking rent of $1,541 for vacant rental units. Your plan should bring those national figures down to the blocks around your site.

The industry in numbers

The Laundry Association’s industry overview is the most useful single page to cite. It says there are about 29,500 coin laundries in the United States generating nearly $5 billion in gross revenue a year, that the industry is made up mostly of individual owner-operators with no significant franchises, and that stores perform exceptionally well in densely populated, mostly renter-occupied areas. It also gives the shape of a typical store: 1,000 to 5,000 square feet, open roughly 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., with no inventory or receivables. Market values run from $50,000 to more than $1 million, and cash flow from $15,000 to $300,000 a year.

What to put in your own market section

1. Households and renters within your trade area. Most laundromat customers walk or drive a short distance. Count households within about a mile (use Census tract data for your area) and the share that rent. The Laundry Association’s own page cites the 2017 Census figure of 34% of 120 million households renting; your neighborhood may be 20% or 70%, and that difference decides the store.
2. In-unit laundry. Note how many nearby apartment buildings have no laundry room or an under-equipped one. Walk the complexes and ask the leasing office.
3. Competitors. List every laundromat within two miles with machine count, payment type, condition, hours and vend prices. An old coin-only store with top-loaders is an opportunity; a renovated card store with attendants is a threat.
4. Vend prices. Record what competitors charge per load by machine size. Your washer income forecast depends on it.
5. Growth signals. New apartment permits, a college or hospital nearby, and bus routes all raise demand.

For Riverside Wash the market section would end with a sentence like: “4,800 households within one mile, 62% renters, one competitor with 18 coin-operated top-loaders, average competitor vend price $3.50 for a 20 lb load.” That is the kind of specific claim a lender can check.

Services and pricing: self-service, wash and fold, pickup and delivery

Price the three services separately in the plan, because they have different economics: self-service income is machines times turns times vend price, wash-and-fold is priced per pound and driven by labor, and delivery adds driving cost on top.

Self-service washer and dryer income

The Laundry Association explains store income in terms of turns per day (TPD): how many times each washer is used in a day. It says stores generally run from three TPD to eight or more, and that the main factors are population density and renter share, washer capacity and count, your vend prices compared with the market, and the competition. It also says dryer income usually runs between 40% and 60% of washer income. Those two facts give you the formula for the projection:

Monthly machine income = washers × turns per day × average vend price × days, plus 40% to 60% of that for dryers.

Riverside Wash assumes 24 washers, an average vend of $4.00 across sizes, and 2.0 turns per day at opening rising to 4.2 by month 12. New stores start below the industry range and climb as the neighborhood learns the store exists.

Wash and fold

Wash and fold is priced per pound with a minimum order. Our laundry business guide walks through the cost build-up for a 20 lb order and arrives at about $3.11 a pound with overhead and profit, using hypothetical numbers. In a laundromat the machine cost is already sunk, so the counter mostly needs to cover attendant hours, detergent and bags. Riverside Wash plans $1.75 a pound with a 15 lb minimum, and forecasts wash-and-fold revenue growing from $800 in month three to $4,400 in month twelve.

Pickup and delivery

Delivery is a route business bolted onto a laundry. Price it as a per-order fee or a higher per-pound rate, and plan set pickup days by neighborhood so one trip serves many bags. The price list maker shows laundry prices next to any cleaning services you also sell, and scheduling software such as Broombook can handle the recurring pickups, reminder texts and card-on-file billing once you have a route worth running.

How much does laundromat equipment cost?

Equipment is the largest line in a laundromat business plan, and the one lenders look at hardest. NerdWallet’s laundromat cost article puts the total to open an average-size store at $200,000 to $500,000, with commercial top-load washers up to about $1,000 each, front-load models typically $700 to $2,000, dryers running several thousand, and a card payment system adding a minimum of about $40,000.

Distributor pages give you financed prices by machine size. Laundrylux, which distributes Electrolux Professional and Wascomat equipment, advertises equipment bundles with monthly financing on its investor page. At the time of reading: four 22 lb Encore soft-mount washers for $167.38 a month, two 45 lb Wascomat solid-mount washers for $376.80 a month, two 60 lb Electrolux Professional soft-mount washers for $781.41 a month, and a set of two 60 lb and two 80 lb washers for $1,823.22 a month, each excluding sales tax, installation and freight. Those are financing payments, not purchase prices, but they show how fast cost rises with capacity: the 60 and 80 lb machines that families love cost several times what a 22 lb washer does.

Riverside Wash startup budget (hypothetical)

The SBA’s startup cost page suggests splitting costs into one-time expenses (equipment, build-out, permits) and monthly expenses, and counting at least a year of the monthly ones. Do that in the appendix with the actual quotes attached.

Three facts that belong next to the equipment table

• Useful life. The Laundry Association lists accepted useful life as 5 to 8 years for top-load washers, 10 to 15 years for front-load washers (18 to 50 lb), and 10 to 15 years for dryers, heating systems and coin changers (CLA). Front-load machines cost more and last longer, which is why most new stores skip top-loaders.
• Utilities. ENERGY STAR says certified commercial clothes washers are on average 9% more efficient and use about 45% less water than standard models (ENERGY STAR). Water, sewer and gas are paid on every turn, so efficiency changes the projection.
• Taxes. IRS Publication 946 says the maximum Section 179 expense deduction for tax years beginning in 2026 is $2,560,000 (IRS), which lets many small laundries deduct machine purchases in the year they are placed in service. Confirm with your accountant; this is not tax advice.

If you are buying an existing store rather than building, the Laundry Association notes that listings are usually offered by business brokers charging an 8% to 10% commission and that stores are valued primarily on net revenue, so ask for tax returns and utility bills, not the seller’s spreadsheet.

A 12-month projection for the sample laundromat (hypothetical numbers)

The projection below is the heart of a laundromat business plan: machine income climbing with turns per day, wash-and-fold added in month three, and fixed costs that do not move. All numbers are hypothetical and rounded; replace each assumption with your own quotes and lease.

Assumptions

• 24 washers, $4.00 average vend, 30 operating days a month; turns per day as shown.
• Dryer income at 50% of washer income, the middle of the 40% to 60% range the Laundry Association cites.
• Wash-and-fold from month three at $1.75 a pound, growing $400 a month; labor for it at 45% of its revenue and supplies at 8%.
• Utilities (water, sewer, gas, electric) at 22% of machine income.
• Fixed costs: rent $4,500, loan payment $3,200 ($300,000 over 10 years at about 5%; at 10% it would be about $3,960, so use your lender’s quote), attendant payroll $3,000, insurance $300, marketing $400, software and card fees $100.
• The owner’s own time is not a cost in this table.

Three things to notice. First, the store loses about $12,000 in the first four months, which is why the funding request includes working capital. Second, the business only reaches the bottom of the Laundry Association’s 3 to 8 turns-per-day range in month five; a plan that assumes 5 turns from opening day will not survive a lender’s questions. Third, year two is where the return appears: at 4.2 turns and a mature wash-and-fold counter the store clears about $4,700 a month before the owner’s pay and taxes, and every extra turn per day across 24 washers is worth roughly $4,300 a month in washer and dryer income combined.

Put a second table in the appendix with a downside case (turns stuck at 3.0, wash-and-fold at half) so the reader sees you have planned for it. The profit calculator is built for service businesses but works for the wash-and-fold and delivery side of the plan.

What changes in a wash and fold business plan?

A wash and fold business plan replaces most of the equipment capital with labor and route planning, so the market section is about busy households and small businesses rather than renters without machines, and the projection is driven by pounds per week and hours per order rather than turns per day.

Three ways to run it, and what each needs in the plan

• From a laundromat agreement. Some stores rent reserved machines or offer wholesale rates to route operators. Your plan needs the written agreement, the hours you can use, and a fallback store.
• From a small leased bay with your own commercial machines. The Laundrylux bundle of four 22 lb washers at $167.38 a month (excluding tax, installation and freight) is the kind of figure that belongs here, plus dryers, a water heater upgrade and venting.
• As an add-on to a cleaning company. You already drive to clients’ homes; laundry rides along. The laundry business guide has a section on this model.

The projection, reshaped

Forecast orders per week, average pounds per order, price per pound and labor hours per order. A hypothetical example: 40 orders a week at 20 lb and $2.00 a pound is $1,600 a week, or about $6,900 a month, against roughly 40 labor hours a week plus driving. Growth comes from recurring customers, so the marketing section should describe how you win weekly pickups (apartment buildings, gyms, salons, Airbnb hosts, busy families) and how you keep them, which usually means set pickup days, reminder texts and a card on file. That is the part software handles: Broombook, for example, schedules recurring visits, sends reminders and bills the card on file, which is the same workflow a recurring cleaning client needs.

Also cover care labeling, sorting and damage policy, since a lost or ruined garment is the main risk in this model; the laundry business guide covers the FTC care label rule and how to write a damage policy.

Funding request, milestones and what lenders check

State the amount, the term, what it buys and how it is repaid from the projection. Riverside Wash asks for $300,000 over 10 years, secured by the equipment and a personal guarantee, with the owner contributing $85,000, and shows the $3,200 monthly payment inside the expense line of the projection.

Where laundromat money usually comes from

• Bank or credit union term loans, often with a government guarantee for a first-time owner; your lender will tell you which programs it uses.
• Distributor financing on the equipment itself. Laundrylux’s investor page, for example, advertises deferred payment and in-house financing on its bundles.
• Seller financing when buying an existing store, often for part of the price.
• Savings and home equity for the owner’s share. Lenders want to see your own money in the deal.

Milestones for the first year

1. Site signed, utility capacity confirmed in writing (water, sewer, gas and electrical service can kill a laundromat site).
2. Equipment ordered; build-out permits issued.
3. Opening week: signs, flyers to every apartment complex within a mile, a free-dry opening offer.
4. Month 3: wash-and-fold counter open, Google Business Profile with photos and 20 reviews.
5. Month 5: cash break-even.
6. Month 6: second part-time attendant; first commercial wash-and-fold account.
7. Month 12: 4 or more turns per day; decide on pickup and delivery for year two.

What lenders check in a laundry business plan

• Renter density and competition, with a map.
• A realistic turns-per-day ramp, not an industry average pasted in from month one.
• Utility costs tied to the actual machines, using the efficiency figures on the ENERGY STAR page or the dealer’s spec sheets.
• Lease length that outlasts the loan, and who pays for the build-out if you leave.
• Insurance: property, general liability and, once you hire, workers’ compensation. Laws vary by state; ask an agent.
• Working capital for the losing months.

Write the executive summary last, after the numbers hold up, and keep the whole plan under 25 pages plus the appendix of quotes. This page is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice.