You Property Needs a Laundry Facility!
By Isaac French
Laundry Operations & Storage — not the most enticing parts of the experiential hospitality business, right?
Wrong.
To us hosts and operators, it’s like candy.
Whenever I visit a cool property, I just have to know what’s under the hood — where the “sausage is made,” so to speak. In fact, I even did this at $6k/night Amangiri. I struck up a conversation with a friendly lady in the restaurant. Turned out she managed all the laundry for the world-famous resort.
Next day, after checkout, she graciously gave me a 1-hr tour of her facility. One of the highlights of my stay. She manages 10 employees, and showed me the whole process, as well as where they get their linens, towels, mattresses, etc. and other extremely valuable stuff.
Fascinating! (And now she’s planning to come visit Live Oak Lake)
If cleaners are the lifeblood of the lodging business, then the laundry / operations area is the cardiovascular system.
Constructing your own operations area is paramount in the process of master planning a micro-resort. And you need a laundry facility as part of it. I’ve seen others skimp on this - or forgo altogether - and it always backfires.
It doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg, but here are my two pro-tips:
Quality Over Cost: don’t use cheap equipment
Space Matters: don’t make it too small!
Let’s look at Live Oak Lake as a case study. This is what I did for our 7-unit (12-beds total) property:
I ordered a pre-fab 12x20 shed and we set it up on a simple concrete block foundation. Quick and inexpensive.
It’s hidden out of the way behind a bunch of trees so it is invisible to the rest of the property.
Then we ran utilities, insulation, drywall, paint, vinyl flooring, climate control and lighting. The carpenter built shelves to the ceiling with raw 2x4 lumber and sprayed with clear finish. Very sturdy.
$22,000 for a finished-out building.
I purchased a commercial 50-lb capacity SpeedQueen washing machine (an “extractor” in industry terms) for $12,000, and a 75-lb capacity UniMac dryer for $4,000.
This part isn’t cheap. But so worth it in the long run.
CHOOSE HIGH QUALITY energy-efficient machines suitable for commercial use.
Our distributor financed 100% of the equipment cost. They provided excellent training and service as well. The quality of these machines is phenomenal. Should last 10 years with no issues.
Another tip: make sure you have adequate ventilation in the building. You don’t want moisture buildup. Your HVAC contractor can install an exhaust fan.
And again: make sure you have plenty of storage space. We keep 2-3x overstock of all linens, supplies, kitchen counter appliances, etc on hand at all times.
Wish we had more square footage. If I could do it again, I’d get a shed twice as big.
A good rule of thumb is ~50 sq ft of laundry/storage building space per unit.
This is key infrastructure for the highly efficient operations I had in place at Live Oak Lake. The cleaners love to stay onsite and have state-of-the-art equipment. It’s also another little cherry on top of the verticalized model I’m so proud of with a turn-key property like Live Oak Lake.
That’s a wrap. Don’t forget your laundry shed!
Would love to hear how I’m doing with the newsletter. Tell me — would you prefer more tactical advice like this? Or more visionary and general thoughts on experiential hospitality like last week? Or some of both? Hit that reply button and let me know, and thanks so much for reading!
—Isaac
P.S. I just launched a free 7-day email course called the Experiential Hospitality Crash Course. It's a free, lite version of the masterclass. Click this link to opt-in and get it now!