If you operate a wash and fold service, you already know one thing for sure: convenience sells. Customers are not buying soap and water, they’re buying time!

Now here’s the opportunity most laundromat owners miss.

Your best wash and fold customers still leave your ecosystem every week to get dry cleaning done somewhere else. Suits, dresses, delicate fabrics, uniforms, specialty items. That money is walking out the door, not because they don’t trust you, but because you don’t offer the service.

The good news is you don’t need to become a traditional dry cleaner to capture that revenue. You just need a smart strategy, the right partner or equipment and a clear understanding of how dry cleaning actually works.

Let’s break it down in plain language.

Why Dry Cleaning Complements Wash and Fold Perfectly

Wash and fold customers already trust you with their clothes. That trust is the hardest part of any laundry business, and you’ve already earned it.

Adding dry cleaning allows you to:

• Attract higher-value customers who were never a fit for wash and fold alone

• Increase average order size by bundling services

• Become a true one-stop solution for busy households and professionals

• Reduce customer churn caused by “I still have to go somewhere else”

Here’s the key insight most owners miss:
Dry cleaning customers are not a different audience. They’re the same people, just with different garments.

When you offer both, customers stop price shopping and start loyalty shopping.

The Easiest Entry Point: Partnering With a Vetted Dry Cleaner

For most laundromat owners, the smartest first move is partnering with an established dry cleaner and acting as the intake, quality gate and customer relationship holder.

You collect the garments.
They do the processing.
You control the customer experience.

This model works extremely well if you do it right, and it can quietly add a meaningful revenue stream without major capital investment.

Understanding Wholesale Dry Cleaning Pricing (Without Getting Burned)

Dry cleaners price very differently than laundromats. If you go in blind, you will either underprice and lose margin, or overprice and kill demand.

Here’s how to think about it.

You should be negotiating wholesale per-piece pricing, not retail pass-through pricing.

Example:

• Dry cleaner charges you $4 to clean and press a shirt

• You retail that service at $8-$12

• Your margin covers labor, handling, customer service and risk

You are not “upselling,” you are providing convenience, logistics and accountability. That has real value.

Important note:
Do not race to the bottom on pricing. Dry cleaning customers care far more about quality and reliability than saving two dollars.

Quality Is Non-Negotiable (Your Brand Is on the Line)

This is where many laundromat owners get hurt.

Customers will never say, “The dry cleaner your laundromat uses messed this up.”
They will say, “Your wash and fold ruined my clothes.”

If your partner does bad work, you own the damage to your reputation.

That’s why vetting matters more than price.

Questions Every Laundromat Owner Should Ask a Potential Dry Cleaning Partner

Most laundromat owners have never stepped inside a dry cleaning plant, so here’s a practical checklist you can actually use.

Ask these questions before you agree to anything:

• What is your standard turnaround time and how often do delays occur?

• What garments or fabrics do you refuse to clean and why?

• How do you handle stain treatment and what happens when stains do not come out?

• What is your process if an item is damaged or lost?

• Do you separate work by customer or batch items together?

• How do you label and track garments from intake to delivery?

• Can we test wholesale pricing with a trial volume?

• Are you open to service level agreements tied to quality and turnaround?

If a dry cleaner gets defensive answering these, that’s your answer.

Why Trial Runs Are Mandatory (And How to Do Them Right)

Never launch dry cleaning based on promises.

Before you offer the service publicly, run real-world tests.

Here’s how to do it correctly:

• Submit (Secret Shopper Style) a mix of garments you actually see from customers

• Include easy items and problem items

• Track true turnaround time, not quoted time

• Inspect pressing quality, stain removal and packaging

• Have your staff process the return like a real order

If you would hesitate handing the garment back to a paying customer, you’re not ready.

The Next Evolution: Bringing Dry Cleaning In-House With Presso

After working with partners and understanding demand, Wash Bar made a strategic decision to bring dry cleaning capabilities in-house by investing in a Presso machines for our locations.

This was not about replacing traditional dry cleaners. It was about controlling quality, speed and customer experience.

Presso systems are designed for modern garment care and allow us to process dry clean-type items without traditional solvents, large infrastructure, or the operational complexity of legacy dry cleaning plants.

What this unlocked for our business:

• Faster turnaround for wash and fold customers who add dry cleaning

• Higher margins by keeping work in-house

• Fewer handoffs, fewer mistakes, better consistency

• Seamless upsells during wash and fold intake

Most importantly, dry cleaning now works with our wash and fold operation instead of living in a separate universe.

Customers love it because their laundry life just got simpler.

Final Takeaway for Laundromat Owners

If you operate wash and fold and you are not offering dry cleaning in some form, you are leaving money and loyalty on the table.

You do not need to become a traditional dry cleaner.
You do need to think like a service business, not just a laundromat.

Start with a partner.
Protect your brand.
Price for margin, not volume.
Then decide if in-house solutions make sense for your growth stage.

Dry cleaning is not complicated.
Ignoring it is.