Laundromat KPIs: The Metrics That Decide Profit (and How to Track Them)

Laundromat KPIs are a short list: how hard your washers work (turns per day), how much your floor earns (revenue per square foot), what share of revenue goes to utilities, rent and labour, and what is left as operating margin. Add per-pound metrics for wash & fold and delivery, and locker metrics if you take drop-offs after hours. Below: each KPI’s formula, a sourced US benchmark, where the data comes from, and a weekly dashboard to copy.

Quick answer

• Turns per washer per day: cycles ÷ washers ÷ days. CLA’s industry overview puts the range at 3 to 8 or more.
• Revenue per square foot: trailing 12 months’ revenue ÷ floor area. CLA survey median $120, with 30% of stores at $150 or more.
• Cost ratios: CLA survey medians of utilities 20%, rent 18% (stores that lease) and payroll 20% (stores with staff) of gross revenue.
• Operating margin: median 27%, before taxes, debt service and owner pay.
• Wash & fold: pounds per week, revenue per pound (CLA median base $1.50/lb), processing cost per pound and pounds per labour hour.
• Track weekly, from your payment or machine system, utility bills, scale tickets and locker portal. Compare with a 4-week average, not last week alone.

The laundromat KPI table

Every benchmark below comes from the 2024 CLA Laundry Industry Survey (377 owner responses, 2023 data) unless marked otherwise. Assumptions from our own guides are labelled.

KPI	Formula	US benchmark (source)	How to track
Turns per washer per day	Washer cycles ÷ washers ÷ days open	3 to 8+ (CLA industry overview)	Machine or payment-system cycle counts, by machine size
Revenue per square foot	Trailing 12-month gross revenue ÷ total floor area	Median $120/yr; 30% of stores $150+	Accounts plus lease plan area
Revenue per machine	Gross revenue ÷ machines (or washer revenue ÷ washers)	About $5,400 per machine per year at the median revenue and machine count (our arithmetic)	Machine or payment-system reports
Dryer-to-washer income	Dryer revenue ÷ washer revenue	40–60% (CLA industry overview)	Split revenue by machine type
Utilities % of revenue	(Water + sewer + gas + electric) ÷ gross revenue	Median 20%; about 15% with all-new machines, 30–35% with old (CLA due-diligence paper)	Monthly utility bills
Rent % of revenue	Rent incl. triple net ÷ gross revenue	Median 18% for stores that lease; median $2.00 per sq ft per month	Lease and CAM invoices
Payroll % of revenue	Payroll excl. owner ÷ gross revenue	Median 20% for stores with payroll	Payroll reports
Operating margin	Operating profit ÷ gross revenue	Median 27%, before tax, debt and owner pay	Monthly P&L
Vend price per turn	Average price charged per cycle, by size	Mean $3.57 (18–24 lb front-load) to $8.16 (50–60 lb)	Machine price settings
Wash & fold revenue per lb	Wash & fold revenue ÷ lb processed	Median base $1.50/lb drop-off; $1.90/lb where delivery is in the rate	Scale tickets plus POS
Processing cost per lb	Labour, utilities, chemicals, packaging, card fees, space ÷ lb	About $1.13 (illustrative, our pricing guide)	Payroll hours, bills, invoices
Lb per labour hour	Lb processed ÷ wash & fold staff hours	20–30 lb (assumption, our pricing guide)	Timesheets plus scale tickets

A note on the revenue-per-machine figure: $335,000 median revenue divided by a median of 62 machines (the separate medians were 31 washers and 28 dryers) is about $5,400. A ratio of two medians is not the median ratio, so treat it as a rough reference only. Your own trend, by machine size, is the useful number.

Turns per machine per day

Turns per day is the utilisation KPI: how many paid cycles each washer runs. It tells you whether you have too many machines, too few, or the wrong sizes.

Formula: total washer cycles in the period ÷ number of washers ÷ days open. If your system reports revenue but not cycles, divide each machine’s revenue by its vend price.

Benchmark: CLA’s industry overview says the range for washers “is generally from three TPD to as high as eight TPD or more”. It names population density, the share of renters nearby, machine capacity and quantity, vend prices, market prices and competition as the drivers.

Worked example: an 18–24 lb front-loader at the survey’s mean $3.57 per turn, running 5 turns a day, 365 days a year, earns about $6,500 a year from washing alone. At 3 turns it earns about $3,900, at 8 turns about $10,400. Dryer income adds 40–60% on top, per CLA.

Read it by machine size. Small washers sitting idle while large ones queue tell you to change the mix or the pricing, not to add machines.

Revenue per square foot and revenue per machine

Revenue per square foot lets you compare stores of different sizes and test a seller’s claim. The 2024 CLA survey’s median was $120 a year, up from $100 a year earlier; 14% of stores reported $175 or more and 21% under $75. The median store was 2,740 sq ft, which at $120 is about $329,000, close to the median revenue of $335,000. If a claimed revenue implies $250 per sq ft with no wash & fold or commercial accounts, ask why.

Wash & fold is the usual way to lift it. The laundromat revenue guide shows 1,000 lb a week at $1.75 per pound taking the median store from $120 to roughly $153 per sq ft.

Cost ratios: utilities, rent and labour

Express each cost as a share of gross revenue so you can compare months with different sales.

Utilities. Median 20% of revenue in the survey, and the cost owners named most often as their biggest problem (53%). CLA’s due-diligence white paper notes that stores with all new machines may spend about 15% of wash and dry revenue on utilities and stores with old equipment 30–35%. Water is also a revenue check: the same paper says a careful water analysis can estimate washer income within 5–10% of actual, from water bills, each washer’s gallons per cycle and the vend prices, allowing about 5% for sinks, toilets, leaks and mopping. Run it on your own store quarterly. If turns from water and turns from your payment system diverge, look for a leak or unrecorded cycles.

Rent. Median 18% of revenue for stores that lease, or $2.00 per sq ft per month including triple-net charges. Rent is fixed, so the ratio falls as revenue rises.

Labour. Median 20% of revenue for stores with payroll, excluding the owner. The median attendant wage was $15.57 an hour. Split labour into self-service attendant hours and wash & fold processing hours (see below).

Operating margin. Median 27% of revenue, before taxes, debt service and owner compensation. Two surveys earlier it was 17%, so compare more than one year. After an equipment loan the owner can keep far less, as the P&L in the revenue guide shows.

Vend price per turn

Your average price per turn is a KPI as well as a setting: it shows whether price rises have actually reached the machines that do the work. The survey’s mean vend prices for 2023:

Machine	Mean price	Machine	Mean price
Top-load washer	$3.73	40–49 lb front-load	$6.32
18–24 lb front-load	$3.57	50–60 lb front-load	$8.16
25–29 lb front-load	$4.21	75–80 lb front-load	$10.75
30–35 lb front-load	$5.00	90–100 lb front-load	$12.22

Source: 2024 CLA Laundry Industry Survey, question 21b, stores answering. Dryers averaged 6.2 minutes per $0.25 on 30 lb machines and 4.9 minutes on 45 lb machines. Twenty-three percent of stores offered a fixed full-cycle dryer price, at a median of $2.00.

Watch turns per day for two to four weeks after any price change. A rise that costs a few turns but lifts revenue per washer is a win. The laundromat vending machines guide covers the other vend line, soap and snacks.

Wash & fold KPIs

Sixty-five percent of surveyed stores offered drop-off wash-dry-fold, at a median base charge of $1.50 per pound. It is a separate business sharing your machines, and it needs its own four numbers:

• Pounds per week. The volume measure. Record every order’s weight from the scale ticket, not an estimate.
• Revenue per pound. Wash & fold revenue ÷ pounds, after minimums, rush fees and extras. It is usually above your posted rate because minimums lift small orders.
• Processing cost per pound. Labour, utilities, chemicals, packaging, card fees and a share of equipment and space. The illustrative build-up in our wash and fold pricing guide comes to about $1.13 including card fees, or about $1.07 before them. The ROI calculator uses the before-fees figure because it deducts card fees separately. Either way it is an assumption, not an industry average. Replace it with your own.
• Pounds per labour hour. The KPI that decides the cost. The same guide assumes 20–30 lb per attendant hour for sorting, washing, folding and bagging. At an $18 loaded wage, 20 lb an hour costs $0.90 a pound in labour and 30 lb an hour $0.60.

Revenue per pound minus processing cost per pound is your margin per pound. Multiply by pounds per week and you have the wash & fold contribution. If you also take dry cleaning, track revenue per order separately: it is priced per item, not per pound.

Pickup and delivery KPIs

Thirty-eight percent of surveyed stores offered pickup and delivery, at a median $1.90 per pound where delivery is included in the rate. Route cost is set by density, so measure it:

• Stops per route hour. Stops completed ÷ driver hours, including loading.
• Pounds per route. The total weight collected or delivered on a run.
• Cost per pound delivered. (Driver pay for the route + vehicle cost) ÷ pounds carried.

Our pricing guide’s illustration: a driver at $20 an hour on a 2-hour route plus $25 of vehicle cost, carrying 225 lb, costs about $0.29 a pound. The same route carrying 60 lb costs about $1.08 a pound. Those are assumptions for the arithmetic, not benchmarks. A locker bank in an apartment building turns many scattered stops into one, which is why pounds per stop is worth tracking too.

Customer KPIs

The CLA survey publishes no repeat or retention benchmarks, so trend these against yourself:

• Repeat rate. Share of this month’s wash & fold or delivery customers who also ordered last month. It needs a customer identity per order, such as a phone number or saved card.
• Average order weight. Pounds ÷ orders. A falling figure lowers revenue per order and raises handling cost per pound.
• Complaints or re-washes per 100 orders. The early warning before the repeat rate drops.

Laundry locker KPIs

A locker should add orders your counter misses. These metrics tell you whether it does. We are not quoting results for them. They are what to measure.

• Orders per door per week. Locker orders ÷ doors. Low numbers mean the bank is too big for the site, or the site is wrong.
• After-hours share of drop-offs. Drop-offs outside counter hours ÷ all locker drop-offs. If this stays near zero, the locker is moving existing counter orders rather than adding new ones.
• Time to collection. Hours from “ready for pickup” to the door opening. Long waits tie up doors and cap capacity.
• Declined charges. Share of orders where the saved card declines at charge time and the customer has to use the payment link.
• Estimate-to-scale difference. On doors with optional weight sensing, the gap between the locker’s estimated weight and your scale’s reading. The locker reading is an estimate. Bill from a scale certified for trade use.
• Locker contribution. Locker revenue minus processing cost, minus the US$99 per location per month software fee, against the hardware cost.

The KioskForce operator portal records each order’s drop-off time, door, estimated weight (on sensed doors), final weight, price and status, so each metric above can be calculated from those records. Drop-off and pickup events are also available to other systems through the API and webhooks. To test whether a locker could pay back at your volume, put your own price, order weight and orders per week into the ROI calculator.

A weekly laundromat dashboard template

Copy this into a spreadsheet. Fill the first three columns every Monday. Flag any figure more than about 10% away from its 4-week average.

KPI	This week	Last week	4-week average	Same week last year	Target	Flag
Gross revenue (self-service)
Washer turns per day (all sizes)
Turns per day, largest washers
Dryer income ÷ washer income					40–60%
Wash & fold lb
Wash & fold revenue per lb
Lb per labour hour					20–30
Delivery lb per route
Locker orders per door
After-hours share of locker drop-offs
Average order weight (lb)
Labour % of revenue
Monthly: utilities % of revenue					~20%
Quarterly: revenue per sq ft (trailing 12 months)					~$120
Quarterly: operating margin					~27%

The targets shown are the CLA survey medians or our labelled assumptions. Replace them with targets for your own store once you have three months of data.

What data to collect, and where it comes from

You need four sources:

1. Your POS, card system or machine management system. Revenue and cycles by machine, vend prices, dryer revenue. If you take quarters, count coin boxes by machine, or you cannot calculate turns by size.
2. Utility bills. Monthly, kept for at least two years. Record usage as well as cost, so you can tell a tariff rise from a usage rise.
3. Scale tickets. Every wash & fold and delivery order, with weight, customer, price and staff member. Pair them with timesheets for pounds per labour hour.
4. Your locker or order portal. Drop-off and pickup times, door, weights, charge status. The only source for after-hours share and time to collection.

Add payroll reports split by role and your lease for floor area and triple-net charges, and every KPI here is covered.

Where these benchmarks are the wrong answer

• Outside the US. All the benchmarks are US data. Utility tariffs, rents, wages and vend prices differ elsewhere.
• Self-reported and skewed. The CLA survey had 377 responses, a 6% response rate. Engaged operators are more likely to answer, so its medians describe a reasonably run store, not a floor.
• Wash & fold-only plants. The survey covers stores with self-service machines. A drop-off-only plant has no vend revenue and a much higher labour share, so the self-service ratios do not apply.
• Our per-pound figures are assumptions. The $1.13 processing cost, 20–30 lb an hour and route costs are illustrative. Use your own payroll and invoices.
• New stores sit below most benchmarks while they build customers. Trend matters more than level.
• Lockers with no volume. At a handful of drop-offs a week, a shelf behind the counter costs nothing and a locker will not pay back.

Frequently asked questions

What are the most important KPIs for a laundromat?

Five cover most of the business: turns per washer per day, revenue per square foot, utilities as a share of revenue, labour as a share of revenue and operating margin. Add rent as a share of revenue if you lease. If you run wash and fold or pickup and delivery, add pounds per week, revenue per pound, processing cost per pound and pounds per labour hour, because labour decides whether that side of the business pays.

How many turns per day should a laundromat washer get?

CLA’s industry overview says washers generally run from three turns a day to eight or more, depending on population density, the share of renters nearby, machine capacity and quantity, vend prices and competition. Calculate it as total washer cycles in a period divided by the number of washers and the number of days. Track it by machine size, because large washers and small washers rarely turn at the same rate.

What is a good revenue per square foot for a laundromat?

The median store in the 2024 CLA Laundry Industry Survey reported $120 of gross revenue per square foot for 2023, up from a $100 median the year before. Thirty percent of stores reported $150 or more, and about one in five reported under $75. Divide your trailing 12 months of gross revenue by your total floor area, including back-of-house space, to compare like with like.

What percentage of laundromat revenue goes to utilities?

The median in the 2024 CLA survey was 20% of gross revenue for 2023. A CLA due-diligence white paper notes that stores with all new machines may spend only about 15% of revenue on utilities, while stores with old equipment can reach 30 to 35%. Water, sewer, gas and electricity together make up the line. A rising utilities share with flat revenue usually points to ageing machines, a tariff change or a leak.

How do I calculate revenue per machine?

Divide gross revenue for a period by the number of machines, or calculate it per washer from washer revenue only. As a rough reference, the CLA survey medians of $335,000 revenue and 62 machines work out to about $5,400 per machine per year, though a ratio of two medians is not the median ratio. The more useful view is per machine size: a washer that earns far less than others of its size is a repair, pricing or placement problem.

What KPIs should a wash and fold business track?

Pounds processed per week, revenue per pound after minimums and extras, processing cost per pound, pounds per labour hour, average order weight, turnaround time and repeat rate. Pounds per labour hour matters most, because labour is the largest cost. Our wash and fold pricing guide assumes 20 to 30 lb per attendant hour; at the same wage, moving from 20 to 30 lb an hour cuts labour per pound by a third.

How do I measure whether a laundry locker is working?

Track orders per door per week, the share of drop-offs made outside your counter hours, average order weight, how long clean orders wait before collection and how often cards decline at charge time. Compare the locker’s revenue after processing cost and the software fee with what the hardware cost. If after-hours drop-offs stay near zero, the locker is moving existing counter orders rather than adding new ones.

How often should I review laundromat KPIs?

Review revenue, turns, wash and fold pounds and labour hours weekly, against a 4-week average and the same period last year, because laundry demand moves with weather and season. Review utilities monthly when bills arrive, and margin, rent share and revenue per square foot quarterly on trailing 12-month figures. Investigate any weekly figure that moves more than about 10% from its 4-week average.

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

Related

• Laundry lockers for laundromats, wash & fold and dry cleaners: how the lockers work, door types and price bands
• How much do laundromats make?: revenue, margins and an illustrative P&L
• How to price wash and fold: cost per pound, minimums and locker orders
• Laundromat vending machines: soap, snacks and other vend revenue
• Wash and fold locker ROI calculator: payback from your own price per pound and order volume
• 24-hour laundry drop-off lockers: taking wash & fold orders outside opening hours

Talk to us about tracking after-hours drop-offs

Send us your current wash & fold pounds per week, your counter hours and where a locker would stand, and we will help you size a bank you can measure. The instant estimate prices your door mix with no email needed to see it, or use the form below.