Speed Queen Commercial | Latest News

The True Cost of Laundromats

Written by Speed Queen Team | Jul 27, 2021 5:23:29 AM

As many of you have probably noticed, we recently revealed a real-life P&L of a laundromat right here in Australia. 

The P&L has heaps of useful information about costs (which we highly recommend you check out!), but we thought you might want to see a more detailed breakdown, specifically the cost per cycle of running a commercial laundry machine.   

Some Caveats:

This list considers only the per-cycle costs. There are other costs such as rent and any capital repayments that should also be considered (which you can check out in the real-life P&L). 

Both the utility prices and vended prices are based on Sydney at the time of publishing this article. This means there are likely to be differences depending on your region.  The Midland Laundromat P&L you can download from our website is located in Perth, which has different water and electricity costs from Sydney.

All of these calculations use information that can be found in each product brochure (downloaded via the product specifications button), and assume an average cycle time of 23 minutes.

Finally, Advam was used for the cashless card reader, which includes a 1.5% merchant fee along with a $0.17 transaction fee. Different merchants are likely to have different fees. 

 

Dryers:

Three gas dryers were selected, which typically charge the following per cycle:

Now lets look at costs.   In addition to the merchant and transaction fee, the dryers have electricity and gas to consider. These vary from machine to machine, however, the SAT30N has the lowest total running cost of the three at $1.11 per cycle. The SAT45N comes in second with similar electricity costs to the others, but significantly lower gas consumption, at a total cost of $1.55. Finally, the SA075N has a total per cycle cost of $2.45. The resulting gross profit per cycle for each dryer is as below.

Gross Profit per dryer cycle:

  • SA075N = $5.55
  • SAT30N = $2.89
  • SAT45N = $4.45

 

Washers:

We have selected five different washers, which each charge the following per cycle:

Unlike the dryers, each washer uses water (which costs!) which must also be factored into the costs. Both incoming clean water, and outgoing dirty water must be considered in the per-cycle cost. Unsurprisingly, as the washer load increases, so does the cost per cycle. It costs a mere $0.47 per cycle to run the SFNNXA, making the smallest the cheapest of the five washers. The SCN020 is close behind at $0.56. The SCN030 will cost $0.66 per cycle. The SCN040 jumps up to $0.82. Finally, the SCN060 is the most expensive, at $1.21 per cycle, being around a similar price to an equal-sized dryer. This means that the profit for each washeris as follows:

Gross Profit per washer cycle:

  • SFNNXA = $5.53 
  • SCN020 = $5.44
  • SCN030 = $7.39
  • SCN040 =  $9.18
  • SCN060 = $12.79

 

The conclusion.

If you get your fixed costs right, laundromats can be very profitable.  The advantage of cashless payment is that you can remotely operate self-serve laundromats without the hassles of a coin laundry.  

Our local distributors are experts in laundromats.  They give honest frank advice on what will and wont work.  If your proposed site won't work, they will tell you.  Get in touch to find out more about how you could own a passive income laundromat!

 

 

Want to find out how our commercial machines can help you?