CHICAGO — When linen needs to get cleaned for a business or institution, there are two main ways to go about it: Wash it yourself on-site, or have someone do it for you. On-premises laundries (OPLs) have served their purposes well for many years, but as costs of textile care increase, and as businesses look to find ways to outsource various aspects of their operations, having an on-site laundry may start to lose its appeal for some.
But if the outsourcing trend continues, what will become of OPLs? For this piece, American Laundry News spoke with several operators of OPLs in hospitality, healthcare and university settings about the challenges of operating and the factors that will allow on-site laundries to stay competitive and even prosper in the coming years.
WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS
Betty Champlin, laundry supervisor at Campbell County Memorial Hospital, Gillette, Wyo., doesn’t see OPLs going anywhere in the near future, at least in her part of the country, where outsourcing options are few and far between.
“We would have to go probably 140 to 200 miles to have somebody do our laundry and to get it back here to us,” she says. However, she understands that outsourcing is often the cheaper option for some major hospitals in more populated areas.
David Coe, director of facilities and purchasing at North Central Group, a management company for hotels in the Midwest and the Phoenix area, sees the value of on-site laundries for the hospitality segment.
“I think there’s great flexibility in having [an] on-site laundry,” he says. “I’ve been in the industry for 30 years now, and they’ve always been around, and I just don’t see them disappearing from a hotel, especially when you’re looking at even smaller operations.”
Of course, Coe adds, in areas with extremely high land costs, such as New York City, for example, hotels might see the value in outsourcing or combining their efforts to do laundry.
The key to staying competitive is the ability to be flexible in terms of products and services, says Jesse Clyma, operations supervisor at Spartan Linen Services at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Mich.
“If you stay the same, you’re not going to continue to do this for very long, I think,” he says.
Sandip Thakkar, vice president of HSM Hospitality Management Co., and owner of several hotels in the Cleveland, Ohio, area, says that he can’t fathom running his hotels without on-premises laundries.
“We’ve considered [outsourcing] before, but the things that could go wrong [and be] out of my control would be huge,” he says. “Can you imagine if you outsourced your laundry and the guy didn’t show up with your linen and you had to clean a bunch of rooms?”
However, Rick Haggard, laundry manager at the New Orleans Hilton Riverside, thinks OPLs have a tough future ahead. He knows firsthand what it’s like to see an OPL lose to the competition.
“I’ve been involved in closing a laundry, and it’s heartbreaking,” he says. “I used to be in healthcare, and I worked in a 500-bed hospital laundry for 25 years until they closed it.”
Haggard adds that for OPLs to be successful, upper management needs to have a solid understanding of laundry fundamentals and what it takes to run a successful operation. “If the people [who] are running the hotels don’t understand the laundry industry, they’re going to drop the ball on the laundry,” he says. “It’ll go away.”
Check back on Thursday for the conclusion!
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Matt Poe at [email protected].