24-Hour Laundry Drop-Off Lockers for Laundromats

A laundromat offers 24-hour laundry drop-off by giving customers somewhere secure to leave wash and fold when nobody is behind the counter, and somewhere secure to collect it again. You can do that with a slot in the door, longer staffed hours, an unattended store, or a bank of smart lockers. Only the lockers link each bag to a customer and a saved card, and keep the clean order locked until it has been paid for. This guide compares the options, then covers placement, payment, liability, plant flow and the apartment-building pitch.

Quick answer

• The options: a drop slot or chute, staffed late hours, an unattended store with cameras, smart lockers in or through the wall of your store, or remote locker banks in apartments, gyms and offices served by a driver.
• What lockers add: every drop-off carries a phone number and a saved card. Pickup is by text code and works only once payment has cleared, and every door opening is logged.
• Where they go: in the store, in a vestibule, through the wall or outdoors. Each site needs mains power, a mobile or Wi-Fi signal and room for the doors to open.
• How the work flows: bags dropped overnight are collected at opening or on the night run. They are washed, weighed and charged the same day and back in a locker for pickup the next day.
• For property managers: residents get wash and fold at the building, and the property pays nothing for the lockers. In the US, about half of homes in buildings with five or more units have no clothes washer.
• Price: indicative KioskForce bands from about US$500–600 per door. Software is US$99 per location per month. Get an instant estimate.

Why extend wash and fold beyond opening hours?

Your wash and fold service only reaches people who can get to the counter while it is staffed. The customers you miss work through your opening hours and would pay per pound to skip the laundry, at 6 a.m. or 10 p.m.

You can wash orders whenever it suits the plant. What you cannot do without help is take in a bag, identify its owner and secure a payment while the store is shut. Each option below handles those three jobs differently.

24-hour laundry drop-off options compared

Option	Who is the bag linked to?	Payment secured at drop-off?	Pickup out of hours?	Ongoing cost	Main risk
Drop box, slot or chute	Whatever the customer writes on a tag	No	No, they come back during opening hours	Very low	Unlabelled bags, disputes over what was dropped off, no recourse on unpaid orders
Staffed late hours	The attendant writes a ticket	Yes, at the counter	Yes, while staffed	Wages for every extra hour, whether busy or not	Labour cost on quiet nights. Still not 24 hours
Unattended store with cameras	Nobody, unless you add a system	No	Only if clean orders are left out	Low, plus cameras	Orders left on open shelves. Footage tells you what went wrong but cannot stop it
Smart lockers in or through the wall of your store	The phone number and saved card entered at the door	Yes, card saved and charged after weighing	Yes, 24/7 by text code	Hardware, plus US$99 per location per month for KioskForce software	Needs power, signal and floor or wall space
Remote locker banks (apartments, gyms, offices)	As above	Yes	Yes, 24/7	As above, plus a driver run at least daily	Without a reliable driver loop, orders sit in the locker

Staying open four more hours a night adds 28 staffed hours a week, paid whether three customers come in or thirty. A locker costs the same on a quiet night as on a busy one, and the KioskForce software fee is flat. A drop slot works while only account regulars use it; once strangers drop off, you get bags with no name and no card to charge.

Where to place drop-off lockers

The best location is the one your customers pass and your staff can reach easily. The site needs are simple, but they are not optional.

Placement	Best for	Power and signal	Door clearance and access	Watch out for
Inside the store	Stores that stay open 24 hours, or a first trial tower	Mains outlet near the wall. Wi-Fi or mobile signal at the cabinet	Clear floor in front for the doors to open fully, with room for a customer and a bag	Only works out of hours if the store does
Vestibule or lobby	Stores that lock the main floor at night but keep an entry area open	Outlet in the vestibule. Check signal, because vestibules can be dead spots	Doors must not block the entry path when open	Agree access hours with the landlord if the lobby is shared
Through-wall	Stores that close fully at night	Power and controller on the inside	Customers use the street side; staff unload from the inside	Wall opening and weatherproofing are building works. Check landlord consent and local building rules
Outdoor	Sites with no sheltered space, such as a car park or forecourt	A weatherproof power feed to the cabinet. Signal at the cabinet	Level, hard ground and space in front of the doors	Outdoor-rated cabinet adds about 20% to the price. Plan lighting for night use
Remote: apartments, gyms, offices	Reaching customers who never visit your store	Ask the property for an outlet and test the signal before you sign	Usually a mail room, lobby or corridor wall	You need permission from the property and a driver loop

KioskForce lockers need mains power and a mobile or Wi-Fi signal. Battery-only keypad lockers exist, but they cannot take card payments at the door, weigh bags or report events in real time. Test the signal where the cabinet will actually stand.

For clearance, plan around the open door, not the cabinet. The wash-dry-fold door has roughly 600 mm (24 in) of clear height for a full bag, and the customer needs to stand in front of it with a heavy bag without stepping into a walkway. Through-wall and outdoor builds are specified at order, so settle placement before the drawing is final.

How customers order and pay

The order flow is the same at every site:

1. Drop-off. The customer taps Drop off on the locker screen or scans the QR code with their phone. They enter a phone number or email and save a card. A door of the right size opens and the bag goes in.
2. Collection. Your driver or opening staff see which doors hold orders and open them with a driver code.
3. Weigh, then charge. You weigh the order on your scale and enter the weight. The saved card is charged for the weight times your rate, plus extras, with your minimum order applied. The customer gets a text with the final weight and price.
4. Return. The clean order goes back into a reserved door.
5. Pickup. The customer gets a pickup code by text and collects whenever they like.

Card on file is what makes after-hours drop-off workable. The money settles into your own payment account. KioskForce never holds the customer’s money and takes no share of it. If the card is declined at step 3, the customer is texted a payment link and the pickup code stays locked until they pay.

Walk-up customers who would rather not use a phone can pay at an optional touchscreen payment kiosk on the bank. Setting prices for locker orders, including minimums and extras, is covered in how to price wash and fold.

What about weighing at the locker?

Doors can optionally be fitted with weight sensors. A sensed door records the bag’s estimated weight when it closes, so the customer sees a price range before leaving and you see tonight’s load before the driver goes out. The sensors are chosen per door at order and fitted at the factory, and cannot be added later.

The locker reading is an estimate. In the US, scales used to charge by weight are regulated by state and local weights and measures authorities, many of which adopt NIST Handbook 44. Devices are type-evaluated under the National Type Evaluation Program (NTEP), run by the National Conference on Weights and Measures. Bill from your certified counter scale. The weigh-at-drop-off guide explains how the two readings work together.

Security and liability

An unattended drop-off raises four questions. Here is how a locker answers each.

Mix-ups. Each order is tied to one door and one customer record from the moment the door closes, so the bag’s owner is known before anyone touches it. Inside your plant, the old rules still apply. Tag every bag at intake with the order number and keep it with the order through washing, drying and folding. The locker cannot stop two orders being mixed up on the folding table.

Damage claims. Damage claims are settled the same way they are at the counter: under your terms of service and the garment’s care label. The US Care Labeling Rule (16 CFR Part 423) requires manufacturers to label garments with regular care instructions. The FTC’s guidance says cleaners are not legally obliged to follow the label, but that using another method “may be risky”, and that once they accept garments they must clean them “professionally, to the best of their ability”. Publish your claim limits, the items you refuse and your claim window where locker customers will see them, in the app or on the locker. Agreeing to those terms can be part of saving a card.

Payment-gated pickup. The pickup code is released only after payment clears. That one rule stops the most common unattended-store loss: a clean order collected and never paid for.

Audit trail. Every door opening is logged against the code that opened it, whether a customer pickup code or a named driver code. When a customer says the bag was never collected, or the order was never returned, the log shows which door was opened, when and by whom. Losses at remote sites are a matter for your own terms and your insurance, so check that your policy covers goods in your care away from your premises.

This is a summary for planning, not legal advice. Consumer and weights and measures rules vary by state; confirm with your local authority.

Staffing and plant flow: overnight collection, next-day return

Lockers shift drop-off out of opening hours. They do not change how a wash and fold plant works. A typical rhythm for a laundromat with lockers in-store and at a couple of remote sites looks like this:

• Overnight and early morning: bags arrive in the lockers while the store is shut. On sensed doors, the estimated load is already showing in the portal.
• Opening, or the first driver run: staff empty the in-store bank and the driver collects from the remote banks. The run is planned from the portal, which shows which doors hold orders.
• Daytime: orders are washed, dried, folded, weighed and charged in the same queue as counter orders. Cards are charged as weights are entered.
• Evening driver run: clean orders go back into reserved doors and customers are texted pickup codes. Most customers collect on the way home or the next morning.

That gives next-day turnaround with nobody on site overnight. In larger banks, assign doors as clean-only or dirty-only in the software. And do not promise a turnaround your driver loop cannot keep: a bank emptied once a day gives next-day service at best. For the business model behind a driver loop, see how to start a laundry business with lockers.

The multifamily pitch to property managers

Remote banks in apartment buildings reach customers who will never walk into your store, and the pitch has a well-known model.

Tide Cleaners, the laundry and dry-cleaning service, places lockers in residential buildings. It tells property managers its service runs “with no cost to the property” and “doesn’t use any utilities on the property”, and it allows “about 45 inches of wall space per 100 units”. As a laundromat, you can make the same core offer: you buy and run the lockers, the residents pay you for wash and fold, and the property pays nothing.

Be honest about one difference. KioskForce lockers need a mains outlet and a signal, so ask for “a wall and an outlet”, not “no utilities”. The space guide is Tide’s, not ours; size your bank from expected orders per day.

The demand is real. In the US Energy Information Administration’s 2020 Residential Energy Consumption Survey, 11.66 million of the 22.84 million occupied homes in buildings with five or more units had no clothes washer at home, about half. Start with buildings without in-unit laundry.

The property manager will ask who residents call (you, with your name on the locker), what it costs the property (nothing but a wall, an outlet and a signal), how often it is serviced (at least daily) and what happens if something goes missing (your terms, your insurance and the audit trail).

KioskForce sells the lockers and software to the laundry business. We do not run routes or wash laundry, so the operator owns the relationship with the property.

What to specify if you are buying 24-hour drop-off lockers

1. Placement: in-store, vestibule, through-wall, outdoor or remote. This decides the cabinet rating and the install type.
2. Door mix: wash-dry-fold doors for bags, hanging doors if you also do dry cleaning (see dry cleaning lockers), express doors for small orders.
3. Weight sensing: which doors, if any. It is factory-fitted only.
4. Payment: phone-only, or with a touchscreen kiosk on the bank for walk-up customers.
5. Volume: the after-hours orders you expect per day. This sets how many doors you need and how often each bank must be emptied.

Indicative KioskForce bands, before freight, duties and taxes: wash-dry-fold door US$500–600, hanging door US$550–650, express door US$350–450, weight sensing +US$90–150 per sensed door, touchscreen kiosk US$1,800–2,400 per bank, outdoor cabinet about +20%, volume breaks from 25 doors. Software is US$99 per location per month, with no revenue share and no per-order fee. Custom builds take about 8–12 weeks plus shipping, and first-run slots can be reserved now. See how much laundry lockers cost and the ROI calculator.

Where this is the wrong answer

• Your store is already open 24 hours with an attendant. An attended counter already handles drop-off. A locker only helps if you want to cut overnight staffing.
• You take a few after-hours drop-offs a week. A slot for your account regulars costs less than the hardware and the monthly fee.
• You cannot run a driver loop. Remote banks without daily collection become storage. Start with one tower in your own store.
• There is no power or signal at the site. KioskForce lockers need both.
• You want someone else to run the service. We supply lockers and software to the business that does the cleaning; we do not operate the service.

Frequently asked questions

How does 24-hour laundry drop-off work at a laundromat?

The customer arrives at any hour, picks drop-off on the locker screen or scans a QR code with their phone, enters a phone number or email and saves a card. A door opens, the bag goes in, and the order appears in the operator portal. Staff or a driver empty the lockers when the shop opens or on the overnight run. The order is washed, weighed and charged to the saved card, then returned to a locker, and the customer receives a pickup code by text.

Is a laundry drop box or drop slot good enough for after-hours drop-off?

For a handful of regulars who already have an account with you, it can be. A slot or chute costs little, but every bag arrives anonymous unless the customer fills in a tag, there is no card on file, nothing stops a bag going missing between the slot and the counter, and the customer still has to come back during opening hours to collect. Once after-hours orders are more than occasional, those gaps start costing more than a locker would.

Where should a laundromat put drop-off lockers?

Inside the store is the cheapest start if the doors can stay open around the clock. If the store locks at night, a vestibule or a through-wall install lets customers reach the lockers from outside while staff unload from inside. Outdoor cabinets suit sites with no sheltered space. Every location needs a mains power outlet, a mobile or Wi-Fi signal the controller can hold, and enough clear floor space for the doors to open fully with a customer standing in front.

How do customers pay for locker laundry orders?

They save a card when they drop off, and the card is charged after you weigh the order on your scale, at your rate per pound plus any extras, with your minimum order applied. The payment settles into your own payment account. If the card is declined, the customer is texted a payment link and the pickup code stays locked until they pay, so an unpaid order cannot be collected.

Who is liable if laundry left in a locker is lost or damaged?

The laundry business that accepts the order, under its own terms of service and local consumer law, just as at the counter. A locker helps by recording which door was opened, by which code, and when, for both the customer and the driver. Publish clear terms covering claim limits, items you will not accept and how quickly claims must be made, and check your insurance covers goods in your care at remote sites. This is general information, not legal advice.

Can I put laundry lockers in apartment buildings?

Yes. A remote locker bank in an apartment mail room, a gym or an office works the same way as one in your store, except that a driver has to empty and refill it, usually at least once a day. The usual offer to the property manager is that residents get a laundry service and the property pays nothing for the hardware. Our lockers need a mains outlet and a signal, so ask the property for both before you commit.

Do 24-hour laundry lockers work for dry cleaners?

Yes. Dry cleaners use the same drop-off and pickup flow, with full-height hanging doors fitted with a rail so cleaned garments come back on hangers. A mixed bank can combine hanging doors for dry cleaning with bag-sized doors for wash and fold. The door mix is set when the locker is ordered.

How much does a 24-hour laundry locker cost?

Indicative KioskForce bands are about US$500 to 600 per wash-dry-fold door, US$550 to 650 per hanging door and US$350 to 450 per express door, before freight, duties and taxes. Optional weight sensing adds US$90 to 150 per sensed door and an outdoor-rated cabinet adds about 20 percent. Software is US$99 per location per month with no revenue share and no per-order fee. The instant estimate prices your own door mix without asking for an email.

References

• U.S. Energy Information Administration — “Table HC3.1 Appliances in U.S. homes, by housing unit type, 2020” (Residential Energy Consumption Survey 2020, final release March 2023). https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/data/2020/hc/pdf/HC%203.1.pdf
• Federal Trade Commission — “Clothes Captioning: Complying with the Care Labeling Rule” (accessed 3 October 2026). https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/clothes-captioning-complying-care-labeling-rule
• National Institute of Standards and Technology — “NIST Handbook 44: Specifications, Tolerances and Other Technical Requirements for Weighing and Measuring Devices (2026 Ed.)” (5 January 2026). https://www.nist.gov/publications/nist-handbook-44-specifications-tolerances-and-other-technical-requirements-weighing-18
• National Conference on Weights and Measures — “About NTEP” (accessed 3 October 2026). https://www.ncwm.com/ntep-about
• Tide Cleaners — “Is Tide Cleaners Really a ‘Turnkey’ Service for Property Managers?” (accessed 3 October 2026). https://tidecleaners.com/en-us/blog/Is-Tide-Cleaners-Really-a-Turnkey-Service-for-Property-Managers
• Tide Cleaners — “Do Your Residents Want Smart Lockers?” (accessed 3 October 2026). https://tidecleaners.com/en-us/blog/Do-Your-Residents-Want-Smart-Lockers

KioskForce is not affiliated with Tide Cleaners.

Related

• Laundry lockers for laundromats, wash & fold and dry cleaners: the hub, covering how the lockers work, door types and price bands
• Weigh-at-drop-off laundry lockers: estimated weight at the door and the legal-for-trade rule
• How to price wash and fold: per-pound rates, minimums and locker orders
• Dry cleaning lockers: hanging doors and 24/7 pickup for dry cleaners
• How much do laundry lockers cost?: hardware, software, freight and what other vendors publish

Talk to us about 24-hour laundry drop-off

Tell us where the lockers would go (in-store, through the wall or at an apartment building), roughly how many after-hours orders you expect, and whether you need hanging doors or weight sensing. The instant estimate prices your door mix without asking for an email, or use the form below.