PHILADELPHIA — Early on Christmas Eve 2024, things were going well for Arway Linen & Uniform Rental Service.
The local company that had launched in 1979 with a handful of products and a few employees was growing in terms of food and beverage clients and its customer service level.
The company was growing so much that in early 2023, it bought a location in the Port Richmond section of the city to expand its operations with a state-of-the-art facility.
The two-year renovation project was nearing the halfway point, and the Arway Linen team was enjoying Christmas Eve celebrations.
But later that night, managing partner Mario Stagliano received a phone call that changed everything — fire alarms were going off at the plant.
American Laundry News spent time with Stagliano to learn more about the fire and its aftermath and how Arway Linen set about to keep processing linens — without missing a day.
It’s been several months since the fire at your plant. Share a little about what you and the company are going through at this time.
It’s still kind of fresh. We’re dealing with the beginning stages of all the insurance stuff, the investigation stuff. That’s kind of challenging on its own. Not in a bad way, but it’s more about timing and needing to be spending time doing that.
We’re operating in a plant that’s not ours. We’re paying this plant to process as if we’re a customer of theirs, a fee-per-pound kind of thing. So, we’re getting used to a new building, a new model, dealing with the insurance stuff, still building out our other plants.
I also have two acquisitions that I contracted that I have to figure out how to delay a bit to onboard like 400 customers. That’s a lot all at once.
Take us through what happened on Christmas Eve and the days that followed.
It was our main processing plant that we had sold back in early 2023. We were in a leaseback with the new owner because we needed the proceeds to buy our new building. So, we bought our new building, and we’ve been in construction, basically, since the beginning of 2024. We’ve been in construction for a year.
That was our only processing facility, and Christmas Eve, you know, we have our little holiday thing there like we do every year. At 9:30 at night, I got a call from the fire alarm company that multiple fire alarms were going off, and they sent the fire department. That didn’t sound so good. I told my wife I had to get down there and see what’s up.
I arrived around 10:20 p.m., and the whole neighborhood was blocked off. It was a three-alarm fire.
Long story short, they determined that it was spontaneous combustion of a bin of mop heads, that, who knows, they didn’t have the grease or the oils out of it from the wash, it was too hot from the dryers, but the sprinkler system didn’t go off.
I had just had the sprinkler system certified on Dec. 4. The thought process around here was like our contractor didn’t do us any good. Did he test the system? I guess. I don’t know. That’s what I’m saying, we’re still going through the whole investigation portion of the claim and who’s responsible for what, but our insurance company, they’re going to pay. They’re going to subrogate (the insurance company pays a claim to its insured and then can pursue the at-fault party for reimbursement).
That was Christmas Eve. Christmas Day, we’re back down there. We still had the fire department there. It took them about 18 hours to contain it 100%.
So, Christmas Day I’m scrambling, thinking, What are we going to do? We’re not a small business, but we’re not a huge business. We do about 250,000 pounds a week of food and beverage linens, which, you know, again, nobody in our market can just welcome us in and say just process here. That’s a lot.
This one company that has a processing plant out of Long Island and a processing plant in South Jersey, they were decommissioning their South Jersey plant. They had lost some business, and they were going to sell the building and do everything out in New York. I got in touch with them, and they were like, ‘Alright, we were starting to take the equipment apart.’ I said put it back together. I’ll rent the building from you.
So, we’ve been processing here with their production staff. Still have our drivers. Still have my office staff, my management, my engineers. I had to retain all of them, but our production staff, we completely laid off, and we are using this company’s production crew, working hand-in-hand. It’s working. We’re serving customers, but, you know, it’s challenging.
Check back Thursday for the conclusion about Arway’s strategy to keep processing, the customer response, and future plans.
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Matt Poe at [email protected].
