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Originally posted – Feb 25, 2014
As the president of Alabama-based Joy Enterprises, Mark Joy is clearly one of the leaders within the franchised fast-food business in his state. With nearly 20 Subway restaurants, a half dozen Long John Silver’s locations and a couple of TCBY frozen yogurt shops, Joy is perhaps the quintessential franchisee.
However, last November, he decided to get involved in a brand new industry, one that – for a number of reasons – has been somewhat resistant to the franchising model. Joy became the owner of a self-service laundry – the anti-cookie-cutter business.
“I managed a Goodyear tire facility for 13 years,” he explained. “Then, I started out with Subway as a franchisee, and I’ve been one for 21 years. During the course of time, I’ve also owned other brands.”
So, why a coin laundry?
“I own the real estate for probably half of my Subway locations,” Joy said. “And this particular site in Unions Springs, where we built the laundromat, had been a Hardee’s restaurant. It’s 4,000 square feet, and after we put in the Subway, we still had about 1,100 square feet of rental space left over.”
However, rather than rent it out, Joy decided to develop it and turn it into a Maytag Equipped Laundry.
“The laundry gives me the ability to be the landlord and the tenant,” he noted. “Also, it gives me the opportunity to make more money than I would if I simply were renting out that space.
“I thought about a lot of other businesses I could put in there, but I decided on a laundromat because it enables us to use the synergy of employees at the Subway location to help manage the laundry business. It has made the labor equation much simpler.”
Acting as the renovation project’s general contractor, Joy oversaw the retrofit of his new laundry.
“There were no real surprises,” he reported. “Probably the biggest challenge was making sure we had a large enough water line to supply the additional water needed for all of the washers. Other than that, it was pretty straight-forward.”
To accommodate the laundry’s water needs, Joy ended up doubling the size of the water line feeding his store.
All in all, the project took about 50 days to complete and cost approximately $200,000, including the laundry equipment.
Union Springs is a small, blue-collar town of about 4,000 people, which serves as the economic hub for the surrounding agricultural counties. The store’s clientele is a mix of renters and homeowners, according to Joy.
“There is a chicken processing plant within that marketplace, and we get a lot of business from those workers,” he said.
The laundry, which shares the free-standing building with one of Joy’s Subway restaurants, is located in the heart of town. Other nearby businesses include a McDonald’s, a Family Dollar, a Dollar General and a supermarket.
To get the word out about his new coin laundry business, Joy has promoted the store’s opening prominently on the reader boards under his Subway sign. What’s more, the exterior of the facility features lighted signage with channel letters that it highly visible from the street.
“We’re in a smaller, rural town, not a metropolitan city,” Joy said. “At this point, we’ve mainly focused on learning the operations of store, so we haven’t done much in the way of outside marketing as of yet.”
Joy also has focused on setting his business apart from other laundromat competitors in the marketplace through overall cleanliness, high-end ceramic tile flooring, a flat-screen television for customers and more.
“It’s just more of an upscale look and experience for our customers,” he explained.
Although attached to the Subway, the laundry is, for the most, unattended and strictly self-service – with no current wash-dry-fold or commercial accounts. The store is open from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday; and 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Monday through Thursday.
“We have one person who serves as an attendant and makes sure all of the issues inside of the laundry are taken care of,” Joy said. “That employee makes sure the store is open on time, cleaned in the morning and cleaned in the evening – including the parking lot; the whole nine yards. As for the customers, it’s very much a self-serve deal.”
In addition, even the typical ancillary profit centers – such as vending machines – that you see in the majority of coin laundries are at a bare minimum here. The reason is partly due to a lack of space within the 1,100-square-foot laundromat. However, it’s also because of the owner’s Subway restaurant next door.
“We want all of the snacking, eating and drinking business to go to our Subway restaurant,” Joy said. “In fact, based on that, our Subway business has probably improved by 10 percent since the laundromat has been open – that’s the hidden benefit of this new business.”
Joy credits his years of business experience, especially with running multiple franchises, for helping him tackle his new self-service laundry venture so smoothly.
“I was surprised at the simplicity of getting started,” he said. “We hired contractors to do the work, and our regional distributor was fantastic, as far as helping us through the process. I would suggest that all laundry owners work closely with their distributors. In fact, the distributor probably made all the difference for us.”
Will there be other laundries in Mark Joy’s future? Possibly.
“I own other buildings in similar situations,” he explained. “If the demographics work out in the future, I very well may consider other coin laundries for those buildings.”
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