e41: Increase Laundry Route Profitability Through Route Density

In this final episode of CLA's WDF conference, we discuss the secret to running profitable laundry routes.  It's all about route density.   

Webinar on How to get Started with Laundry Pickup and Delivery: https://youtu.be/DhdI-zRVmz4?t=595

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to State of the Laundry Industry with Laundry matte episode 41, increasing Your Profits through Route Density. And this is the final recap of CRA's Wash Dry Ford Conference. Before we get started, we need to know what route density means because it's one of the keys of profitability. So route density is the number of pickup and deliveries you have per square mile. And this is going to be different whether you're urban, suburban, or rural. But the point is you cannot make money in pick up and delivery if you're just going out and picking up one order at a time. So you could see right here, this is an actual morning route over at at our laundromat, supered. And this took some time to build up, but you could see how close together our pickup and deliveries are. And again, if you're in a rural area, it's gonna be a farther spreader apart, but you could factor that into your pricing as well. Point is, if you want to have a competitive price, you need to have high route density. And if you're just making one trip at a time, going back and forth, imagine this route that you're looking at right now. Imagine if you had to go back and forth every single time you had a pickup. Go back to your laundromat. Well, that actually is the case. If you look at Uber or DoorDash, they aren't picking up 10 orders at a time. They're making one trip at a time. So you could imagine that the price of gas that is just cost prohibitive and you can't just say, whoa, the customer's paying for it, so don't worry about it. No, the customer won't pay for it if the price is prohibitive. So you need, if for long-term success, you need to focus on route density, which Im, which impacts what areas you're serving, how you grow organically. So without further ado, let's hear about one of our speakers from the Walsh STR Fold Conference. Art Yeager. He's the owner of La Butler for you. He's, he's also a former vice president at Capital Records, needless to say, pretty smart guy. And if you ever have an opportunity to hear him speak, you gotta check him out. Um, he gave a masterclass presentation about pick up and delivery. He went over some of the biggest lessons he's learned over time. Uh, he got started, started in pickup and delivery in 2019 and has just hit it outta the ballpark doing just killer business. And it also illustrated to me why it's so important to share information because he was sharing cutting edge information. And then in 2017 I did a webinar and put the show notes in there about how to get started and pick up and delivery. Basically information's perishable, especially cutting edge information over time. People are gonna get it and there's gonna be more and more people who are, who will be able to share that information in the future. You've really got two options. If you're doing it and you have some information that could help other people out, you could do one of two things. You could sit on it and just personally benefit and that's, you know, one option or two, you could share it with others. And guess what? That's gonna help elevate the industry. And also it creates a culture of collaboration where we could all grow together. Cuz it's a big market out there. There's more laundry than any one of us could do. And some of the stuff

Speaker 2: 2:58

Our Yeager talked about is route density. And he said, that's the secret to success. That is what you need to do to make it profitable. And he's kind of talking bad about Uber and DoorDash saying that doesn't make money because the route density would be one. And it doesn't make money to just pick up one order and bring it back, pick up another order, bring it back, what makes pick up and delivery a thing. What makes it profit, profitable and affordable to the consumer is picking up as many orders as you can in the short period of time. And you do that be by picking up more than one order when you leave the store. I mean, could you imagine driving out to one location, driving back, back and forth? No, that, that doesn't make any sense in my opinion. People will tell you that makes perfect sense because they want to sell you software. But the most important thing is talk to people, experts who are actually doing it and seeing if they're successful people using Uber or DoorDash and making sure they're not getting paid by Uber or DoorDash. Something Art Yeager said, because I said, you know, you did such a great job and everything was on point. And he goes, whoa, my secret is I'm a truth teller. I tell the truth. People know when you're telling the truth because over time people are gonna figure out what works and doesn't work. And if people are promoting something that doesn't work over time and time passes, you're gonna realize, oh, a lot of people got led the wrong way. I tried Uber or DoorDash, it wasn't successful. We had a company meeting and somebody said, Hey, you know, if we offer DoorDash or Uber, then we're gonna be able to make more sales. And our response was, but it does, it doesn't matter. I mean, going back to the hero's journey, if we were to offer that and then we know that in our opinion that's not gonna be successful because the route density would be one, and yet it's just not profitable at that rate. And then three months, six months later, they're not hitting the numbers they want to hit, nobody's placing orders because it's cost prohibitive. Then our cu our customers would be calling us and saying, Hey, why is it not working? And it's like, oh, we just included that feature to sell more software. No way. So we are living true to taking care of our customers and our customers customers fol, making sure that the hero is set up for success. So it'd be really easy just to add a new feature. The APIs are, I get calls every week, emails every week, please integrate with us. But we're committed to our client success and we can't in a good conscious sell something that we feel very strongly is not gonna work. Another thing Art Yeager talked about is if you're subcontracting wash fold for another company, it's not your business. You're basically getting paid like a job. That company could take it or leave it. And he said, don't fool yourself. So I do think it's really important if you do wash and fold, you do pick up and delivery. It's important. You do it under your brand, your company, and then you own the customer. I was reading on Facebook, somebody was subcontracting the laundry service or they were doing it for another company

Speaker 3: 5:56

And they just weren't getting enough washing fold and they wanted to do more marketing, but they felt it was the other co other company's job. So here he wanted to do more business and he had his hands tied and he also didn't wanna do the marketing himself because he's like, that's what I'm paying that company for. So once again, I feel you're much better off when you're in full control of your company and you could do what you want and you could help yourself. And that's one thing at Curbside Laundry is, is we, we provide the tools to help you and there's all these stuff you could do to help grow your business. The launch drive fold workshop I felt was a huge success and is great seeing everybody in person. If there's an event nearby you, I'd make a, a special effort to go, whether it's just a local event or if he have to travel because there's no replacement. Like when you dedicate the time and you take away and you learn these different things and it just becomes a part of you, becomes a part of your business. I used to go to the department owners association meetings and Dan Fuller, the, the president would say, if you learned one thing, it was worth it. I'm very confident, like every single speaker, we learned a whole bunch of one things. You put it all together and it was just a great place to be at. And it's neat to see the focus on was fold because for a lot of us was fold is the biggest revenue generator at our laundromat. Thanks again for tuning in to the state of the laundry industry. I hope to see out the next get together. To learn more about the curbside laundries point of cell and pickup and delivery solution, go to curbside laundries.com.