How Much Do Laundromats Make? Revenue, Profit Margins and What Wash & Fold Adds

A US laundromat typically takes in a few hundred thousand dollars a year and keeps about a quarter of it as operating profit before loan repayments, tax and the owner’s pay. The best public evidence comes from two places: the CLA (formerly the Coin Laundry Association) annual owner survey, and US Census Bureau data for NAICS 812310, coin-operated laundries and drycleaners. This page uses both, separates self-service from wash & fold and pickup and delivery, and shows the arithmetic so you can swap in your own figures.

Quick answer

• Revenue: median $335,000 a year (2023), about $28,000 a month, in the 2024 CLA Laundry Industry Survey. Eighteen percent of stores reported $600,000 or more.
• Profit margin: median operating net profit 27% of revenue, before taxes, debt service and owner pay.
• Biggest costs: utilities (median 20% of revenue), rent (median 18% for stores that lease) and payroll (median 20% for stores with staff).
• Owner income: at those medians, about $90,000 a year before loan repayments and tax. CLA puts per-store cash flow anywhere from $15,000 to $300,000.
• Sale value: CLA puts it at 3–5 times net cash flow.
• Wash & fold: offered by 65% of surveyed stores at a median $1.50/lb. It adds revenue per square foot, but labour makes it thinner per dollar than self-service.

How much does a laundromat make a year?

The 2024 CLA survey asked owners for their store’s total 2023 gross revenue, including drycleaning and other services. The answers were spread widely:

2023 gross revenue	Share of stores
Under $100,000	19%
$100,000–$299,999	20%
$300,000–$499,999	20%
$500,000–$599,999	8%
$600,000 or more	18%
No answer	15%

Source: CLA 2024 Laundry Industry Survey, question 16. The median was $335,000 and the mean $334,000, up from a $250,000 median a year earlier.

The Census Bureau gives a second view. The 2022 Economic Census counted 10,773 employer establishments in NAICS 812310 with $5.50 billion of revenue, an average of about $510,000 each. Two things make that average higher than the survey median. It counts only establishments with paid employees, so owner-run stores without payroll are left out. And the industry definition includes route operators that supply and service machines in apartment buildings and dormitories, some of them large. IBISWorld’s public summary, a modelled estimate, puts the US laundromat market at about $7.3 billion in 2026.

Most of these businesses are small. In County Business Patterns 2023, 8,207 of the 10,890 employer establishments in NAICS 812310 (75%) employed fewer than five people.

How much does a laundromat make a month?

At the survey median, about $28,000 a month in gross revenue and roughly $7,500 a month of operating profit at a 27% margin, before loan repayments, tax and owner pay. A store under $100,000 a year takes in less than $8,300 a month. Revenue moves with the seasons and the weather, so judge a store on 12 to 24 months of figures, never one month.

Revenue by store size

Store size is the easiest way to sanity-check a revenue claim. The CLA survey’s median store was 2,740 sq ft, with 31 washers and 28 dryers. Its median revenue per square foot was $120 a year, and 30% of stores reported $150 or more.

Store size	At $75/sq ft	At $120/sq ft (median)	At $175/sq ft
1,500 sq ft	$112,500	$180,000	$262,500
2,740 sq ft (median)	$205,500	$328,800	$479,500
4,000 sq ft	$300,000	$480,000	$700,000

Arithmetic on the CLA survey’s revenue-per-square-foot results, not a forecast. Location, vend prices, machine mix and wash & fold volume decide where a real store sits.

Are laundromats profitable?

Mostly, yes. In the 2024 CLA survey the median store kept 27% of revenue as operating profit, about a third of stores reported 30% or more, and only 1% reported a net loss for 2023. Profitable before debt is not the same as profitable for the owner, though. The P&L below shows how an equipment loan can take most of that margin until it is paid off.

Laundromat profit margin: where the money goes

The CLA survey reports each expense as a share of 2023 gross revenue, using medians, which are not distorted by a few extreme answers:

• Utilities: 20% (mean 21%). Water, sewer, gas and electricity. Owners named utility costs as their biggest problem (53%), well ahead of rent (22%). CLA’s due-diligence guide notes that stores with all new machines may spend about 15% of revenue on utilities and stores with old equipment 30–35%.
• Rent: 18% of revenue for stores that lease (mean 24%). Median rent was $4,000 a month including triple-net charges, or $2.00 per sq ft per month. Forty-four percent of respondents own their building, so they have no rent line but have capital tied up in the property.
• Payroll: 20%, counting only stores that have payroll and excluding the owner’s own pay. Half the stores (49%) are attended for all opening hours and 10% are never attended. The median attendant wage was $15.57 an hour. BLS puts the median for laundry and dry-cleaning workers at $16.78 an hour (May 2025).
• Operating net profit: 27%, before taxes, debt service and owner compensation (mean 26%). Two surveys earlier (2022) the median was 17%, so margins move from year to year.

Everything else, such as repairs and parts, insurance, card processing, cleaning, marketing and soap, accounts for the remainder of revenue.

An illustrative laundromat P&L

The table builds a year for a store at the CLA survey medians, then adds an equipment loan, the line the survey’s operating profit leaves out.

Line	Assumption	Per year	% of revenue
Gross revenue	CLA median, 2023	$335,000	100%
Utilities	CLA median	−$67,000	20%
Rent incl. triple net	CLA median for renters	−$60,300	18%
Payroll (excl. owner)	CLA median for stores with payroll	−$67,000	20%
Repairs, insurance, card fees, supplies, marketing, other	Balancing figure to reach the CLA median margin	−$50,250	15%
Operating profit	CLA median 27%	$90,450	27%
Equipment loan	Assumed $300,000 over 7 years at 9%	−$57,900	17%
Left for owner pay and income tax		$32,550	10%

Illustrative only. The loan line is a hypothetical to show the effect of debt, not a price for equipment or a lending rate. Replace every line with your own figures.

How much does a laundromat owner make?

The bottom two lines of the P&L answer it. A store with paid-off equipment keeps the whole $90,000. The same store carrying a large equipment loan leaves its owner about a third of that until the loan is repaid. If the owner works the counter instead of paying staff, the payroll line falls, but the owner is being paid for labour, not earning a return on capital.

Laundromat ROI. For a store you buy, the return follows from the price. CLA’s typical sale price of 3 to 5 times net cash flow means each year’s cash flow repays a fifth to a third of the purchase price: roughly a 20–33% annual return before financing, with the higher figure on cheaper stores with shorter leases or older machines. Borrowing to buy lowers the cash left each year, as the loan line above shows, but it raises the return on the cash you put in, as long as the store’s cash flow holds.

Self-service vs wash & fold vs pickup and delivery

Laundromat revenue now comes from three businesses that share one set of machines.

	Self-service	Wash & fold drop-off	Pickup and delivery
How it earns	Vend price per wash or dry cycle	Price per pound, minimum order	Price per pound, or a delivery fee on top
Typical US price	Mean $3.57 per turn for an 18–24 lb front-loader, $8.16 for a 50–60 lb	Median $1.50/lb base charge	Median $1.90/lb where delivery is included in the rate
Offered by	Every store	65% of surveyed stores	38% of surveyed stores
Main cost	Utilities, rent, equipment	Labour, roughly 20–30 lb per staff hour	Labour plus driver, vehicle and route time
Limited by	Machines, floor space, opening hours	Staff hours and counter hours	Route density

Prices and adoption from the CLA 2024 survey (questions 4, 5b and 21b). The throughput range is the assumption used in our wash and fold pricing guide, not an industry statistic.

Self-service is the high-margin, low-labour core: customers do the work and you sell machine time. CLA’s industry overview puts washer use at 3–8 turns a day depending on location, with dryer income typically 40–60% of washer income. Wash & fold sells labour on top of machine time, so each dollar carries more cost. But it fills machines in quiet hours and earns more from each square foot. Pickup and delivery adds route cost, and pays only when stops are dense.

Fifty-one percent of surveyed stores also served commercial accounts, such as hotels and gyms, in the 2024 survey, up from 36% in the 2023 survey.

What wash & fold adds: revenue per square foot and hours

Wash & fold does not need more washers on the floor. It needs a folding area, staff time and machine capacity in off-peak hours. That is why it lifts revenue per square foot.

Take the median 2,740 sq ft store at $120 per sq ft. Add 1,000 lb a week of wash & fold at $1.75 per pound, and the store brings in about $91,000 more a year from the same floor. That takes it to roughly $153 per sq ft. Using the fully loaded processing cost in our pricing guide, about $1.05 per pound for labour, utilities, chemicals, packaging and a share of equipment and space, plus 3% card fees, the contribution is about $33,700 a year. At $1.50 per pound it is about $21,000. The 25 cents is the difference between a useful sideline and a strong one, which is why pricing wash and fold from your cost per pound matters.

Hours are the other limit. The survey’s median store is open 16 hours a day, and only 18% are open 24 hours. A drop-off counter takes orders only while someone is behind it. A laundry locker takes drop-offs at any hour without staff: the customer saves a card, the bag goes in a door, and you weigh and charge it when you process the order. With per-cell weight sensing, an optional extra fitted at the factory, a sensed door also shows the customer an estimated weight and price range at drop-off. Bill from a scale certified for trade use. The 24-hour laundry drop-off guide covers the setup.

What a locker tower adds: worked example

Using the defaults in our ROI calculator, for a 12-door tower inside your own store:

Input or result	Value
Locker orders	20 a week × 15 lb at $1.75/lb
Revenue	$525 a week
Processing at $1.05/lb + 3% card fees	−$330.75 a week
Contribution	$194.25 a week
Profit per month after US$99 software	about $743
Upfront: 12 doors at US$550 + US$1,000 freight and other	US$7,600
Payback	about 10 months

Illustrative. Door prices are indicative, before freight, duties and taxes. Move the tower to an apartment building that needs a $75-a-week driver run and payback stretches to about 18 months.

Lockers do not create demand; they capture orders your counter misses. If 20 orders a week is not realistic for your site, the payback is not either. Put in your own price, order weight and volume.

Is owning a laundromat a good business and a good investment?

The case for it is real. Laundromats hold no inventory and no receivables, and demand comes from households without in-unit machines. In the 2024 survey, 65% of stores reported 2023 revenue above 2022 and only 4% reported a fall. The risks are specific, and most can be checked before you sign:

1. Lease. CLA notes laundromats typically sit on 10–25 year leases. Equipment you cannot move needs a lease long enough to pay it back. Check assignability, rent increases and triple-net charges.
2. Equipment age. CLA’s useful-life guide puts top-load washers at 5–8 years and front-load washers and dryers at 10–15 years. A store priced on today’s cash flow with machines near the end of their life comes with a replacement bill.
3. Utilities. Utilities are the largest cost owners worry about, and old machines use more water and energy. Ask for 24 months of water, gas and electric bills.
4. Unverifiable revenue. CLA’s due-diligence guide is blunt: income in a mostly cash business is hard to verify. It recommends checking claimed revenue against water consumption and utility bills, and writing contingencies into the purchase agreement.
5. Survey bias. The CLA survey is self-reported by 377 owners (a 6% response rate), and engaged, better-run operators are more likely to answer. Treat its medians as a benchmark for a decent store, not a floor.

Buying a laundromat for sale vs building one

Buying gets you a track record and customers from day one, at a price set by cash flow. CLA’s investor overview puts the typical sale price at 3–5 times net cash flow, with broker commissions of 8–10% and 60–90 days on the market. BizBuySell’s benchmark data on sold listings reports a median multiple of about 3.5 times owner earnings, with the middle half of sales between about 2.7 and 4.5 times. A store earning $90,000 would therefore change hands at roughly $270,000–$450,000 under CLA’s range, with the low end for short leases and old machines.

Before you make an offer on a laundromat for sale, check five things, all from the risks above:

1. Revenue against utilities. Compare the seller’s claimed revenue with 24 months of water, gas and electric bills, as CLA’s due-diligence guide recommends.
2. The lease. Remaining term, renewal options, assignability and triple-net charges. It must outlast the payback on any equipment you plan to replace.
3. Machine ages. Price in the replacements due within your payback period.
4. Services already offered. A store without wash & fold, pickup or after-hours drop-off has room to grow. A store that already runs them is priced on that revenue.
5. Contingencies. Write verification of figures into the purchase agreement.

Building lets you choose the location, machine mix and payment systems, and plan wash & fold and locker drop-off from the start. You carry the full equipment and build-out cost, and revenue takes time to build. The illustrative P&L above shows why the financing line decides early profit. If you are starting from zero, how to start a laundry business covers wash & fold-only and pickup-and-delivery models that need far less capital than a full store.

Where these numbers are the wrong answer

• Outside the US. Every figure here is US data. Rents, utility tariffs, wages and vend prices differ elsewhere.
• A specific store for sale. Medians describe the industry, not the listing in front of you. Verify that store’s bills, machine counts and lease.
• Wash & fold-only businesses. The CLA survey covers stores with self-service machines. A drop-off-only plant has a different cost structure, with more labour, less floor space and no vend revenue.
• Lockers without volume or a route. A locker bank in a building you cannot visit daily, or at a store taking a handful of drop-offs a week, will not pay back. A shelf behind the counter costs nothing.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a laundromat make a year?

The median self-service laundry in the 2024 CLA Laundry Industry Survey reported $335,000 of gross revenue for 2023, with a mean of $334,000. About one store in five reported $600,000 or more, and about one in five reported under $100,000. The 2022 US Economic Census counted $5.5 billion of revenue across 10,773 employer establishments in NAICS 812310, an average of about $510,000, but that figure leaves out owner-run stores with no payroll and includes route operators that run machines in apartment buildings.

Are laundromats profitable?

Most are. The median store in the 2024 CLA Laundry Industry Survey reported operating net profit of 27% of revenue for 2023, about a third reported 30% or more, and only 1% reported a net loss. That margin is measured before taxes, loan repayments and owner pay, so a store bought or equipped with heavy borrowing can leave its owner far less until the debt is repaid.

What is a good laundromat profit margin?

The median operating net profit in the 2024 CLA survey was 27% of gross revenue, measured before taxes, debt service and owner compensation. About 36% of answering stores reported 30% or more, and about one in ten reported under 10% or a loss. A margin in the mid-20s before debt is ordinary for an established store. What matters for an owner is what is left after loan repayments, and on a store bought or built with heavy borrowing that can be a small fraction of the operating profit.

How much does a laundromat owner make?

There is no fixed salary; the owner keeps what is left after expenses, loan repayments and tax. At the CLA survey medians, a $335,000 store with a 27% operating margin leaves about $90,000 a year before debt service and tax. CLA’s own investor overview puts annual cash flow between $15,000 and $300,000 per store. Owners who work the counter themselves save payroll but are effectively paying themselves for that labour out of the profit.

How much does a laundromat make a month?

At the CLA survey median of $335,000 a year, a laundromat takes in about $28,000 a month in gross revenue. At a 27% operating margin that is roughly $7,500 a month before loan repayments, tax and owner pay. Smaller stores under $100,000 a year take in less than $8,300 a month, and the largest stores take in $50,000 or more. Revenue is also seasonal and weather-dependent, so a single month says little.

Is a laundromat a good investment?

It can be: there is no inventory, no receivables, and demand comes from people without in-unit laundry. The risks are specific. The lease must run long enough to recover your equipment cost, utilities are the largest variable cost and rise with tariffs, and old machines cost more to run and replace. Sellers of a mostly cash business can overstate revenue, so CLA advises verifying income from water and utility usage. Buy or build only with a long lease and verified numbers.

What are laundromats sold for?

CLA’s investor overview puts the typical sale price at three to five times annual net cash flow, with broker commissions of 8% to 10% and an average marketing time of 60 to 90 days. BizBuySell’s benchmark data on sold laundromat listings reports a median multiple of about 3.5 times owner earnings. The multiple moves with lease length, equipment age, competition and how well the seller’s figures can be verified.

How much more does wash and fold add to a laundromat?

It depends on volume and price. Sixty-five percent of stores in the 2024 CLA survey offered drop-off wash-dry-fold, at a median base price of $1.50 per pound. As an illustration, 1,000 lb a week at $1.75 per pound is about $91,000 a year of extra revenue from the same floor space. After an assumed fully loaded processing cost of $1.05 per pound and card fees, about $34,000 of that is left as contribution. Labour is the cost that decides whether it pays.

Do laundromats make money?

Yes, most do, coin laundries included, though coins are no longer the only way to pay. In the 2024 CLA survey 71% of stores still accepted quarters, but only 21% took quarters only, and 42% accepted credit or debit cards. Sixty-five percent of answering stores reported higher 2023 revenue than 2022, and only 4% reported a fall. Only 1% reported a net loss for 2023.

References

• CLA, The Laundry Association, “2024 CLA Laundry Industry Survey Results” (Readex Research, 377 responses, 2023 data; accessed 3 October 2026). https://member.laundryassociation.org/hubfs/IndustrySurvey24.pdf
• CLA, The Laundry Association, “Industry Overview” (accessed 3 October 2026). https://laundryassociation.org/for-investors/industry-overview/
• Coin Laundry Association, “Best Practices for Due Diligence in Laundromat Acquisitions”, white paper vol. 3 no. 7 (accessed 3 October 2026). https://laundryassociation.org/membership-files/white-papers/Best%20Practices%20for%20Due%20Diligence%20in%20Laundromat%20Acquisitions.pdf
• US Census Bureau, “2022 Economic Census, Sector 81, EC2281BASIC”, NAICS 812310 (released November 2024; accessed 3 October 2026). https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/economic-census/data/2022/sector81/
• US Census Bureau, “County Business Patterns 2023, US detail file”, NAICS 812310 (accessed 3 October 2026). https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/datasets/2023/cbp23us.zip
• US Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2025: 51-6011 Laundry and Dry-Cleaning Workers” (accessed 3 October 2026). https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes516011.htm
• IBISWorld, “Laundromats in the US: Market Size Statistics” (accessed 3 October 2026). https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/market-size/laundromats/1729/
• BizBuySell, “Laundromat Business Valuation: Multiples & Financial Benchmarks” (accessed 3 October 2026). https://www.bizbuysell.com/learning-center/valuation-benchmarks/laundromats-coin-laundry/

Related

• Laundry lockers for laundromats, wash & fold and dry cleaners: how the lockers work, door types and price bands
• Wash and fold locker ROI calculator: payback from your own price per pound and order volume
• How to start a laundry business with lockers: wash & fold and pickup-and-delivery, step by step
• How to price wash and fold: cost per pound, minimums and locker orders
• 24-hour laundry drop-off lockers: taking wash & fold orders outside opening hours

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