Quick question: when was the last time you thought about laundromats?
Exactly. Never.
Meanwhile, Americans feed about $7 billion a year into these machines. And the wildest part? Almost nobody big owns this industry. Let me explain.
Friday night at the spin cycle.
Wait — doesn't everyone own a washing machine?
That's what I thought too. Turns out: no.
Roughly a third of Americans rent. And a lot of rental apartments — especially in New York, LA, Chicago — simply don't have a washer hookup. No machine, no choice.
That's why about 60% of laundromat customers are renters. Add students, Airbnb hosts washing 14 sets of sheets, and small restaurants — and you've got an endless line of people who have to show up. Rain or shine. Recession or boom.
Dirty clothes don't care about the economy.
The numbers
Here's what an average laundromat looks like:
💰 $100K–$300K to open
📈 $200K–$500K revenue per year
⏱️ 3–5 years to payback
The machines do the work. You mostly collect quarters and fix the occasional dryer.
The weirdest part: nobody dominates
There are about 30,000 laundromats in the US. Guess how many stores the biggest chain has.
55.
Not 5,500. Fifty-five. No chain in America runs more than ~80 locations. Over 95% of laundromats are owned by independent operators — regular people, often a husband-and-wife team with one or two stores.
There's a Domino's of pizza. A Starbucks of coffee. There is no McDonald's of laundry. The industry is a $7 billion pie cut into 30,000 tiny slices.
Starbucks: 16,000+ stores vs. biggest laundromat chain: 55
Meet the Laundromat Millionaire
Dave Menz spent 17 years climbing telephone poles for a phone company in Cincinnati.
In 2010, he found a run-down laundromat on Craigslist. He bought it for $85,000 — $30,000 of savings plus a small loan. The place was losing money. He cleaned it up, fixed the machines, made it bright and safe.
Today he owns four locations doing about $1.8 million a year in revenue, and his net worth is around $3.4 million. He literally calls himself "The Laundromat Millionaire" and wrote a book about it.
Notice something? There's no laundromat billionaire. And that's kind of the point.
This isn't a get-rich industry. It's a get-wealthy-slowly-while-everyone-ignores-you industry.
The takeaway
The best businesses are often the ones nobody brags about at parties.
Laundromats are boring, fragmented, and essential. No tech disruption coming (clothes will stay dirty). No chain taking over. Just thousands of quiet operators collecting quarters from machines that run while they sleep.
Next time you walk past one, look again. That's not a laundromat. That's somebody's quiet empire.
Next issue: another boring business making someone rich. Got a suggestion? Hit reply.