Definitely Not Fried Chicken – Laundromat Empire Guide

Generate passive revenue the legal way! Grow your business empire of Laundromat services and steer clear of pesky Legal entanglements or risking the ire of The Major.

Guide to Laundromat Business

All credit goes to DunkleUrax!

Starting Your Legal Laundromat Empire

Earning a legal income through your own Landromat Empire is easy and fun. You can expect daily receipts around $700 to $900 per laundromat , if not more!

Lets delve in, get started, and we’ll go into some details of earning revenue with your Laundromat – what works, what doesn’t, and how to make a quick buck… the legal way!

The first thing you will need to do is to start a New Game, title what you like, but make sure you un-check Tutorial – unfortunately this game’s tutorial steers you into a life of crime, and we don’t want that do we? Hopefully you have already played the Tutorial since you are reading this guide. If you are new to the game, play the tutorial so you know the basics. Also remember ‘R’ rotates objects – which isn’t in the tutorial as of the Early Access Launch but is likely on the short-list of things to do.

The next step will be to entirely ignore your “Factory”. You don’t even need to redeem your free plots! After all we aren’t going to be manufacturing Washing Machines, we are here to operate legitimate businesses. In fact, you should move your camera away from the old Downtown park just to avoid any illicit temptations.

Your next steps will be to invest in a Small plot of land – You want an inexpensive location that is favorable to having a Laundromat at that location – ‘Center Lane’ is ideal for and is only $3000.

Next you will need to acquire a business license to run your Laundromat! You should immediately upgrade it to Level 3.

There are a few main reasons you do this:

• Nets you an extra Service Rating Star, which gets you more customer capacity.
• Access to the Fast Dryer and Fast Washer, more on this later!
• Access to added supplemental revenue streams.

Once You have those two things done, now you can start building your first Laundromat!

Building Your First Laundromat for Passive Income!

Now you can go ahead and start building your first Laundromat to generate you passive, legal, income. Construction should cost around $5000 or $6000, and your Operational costs between $65 and $100 in Daily Employee Salaries. A single simple 3-Star Laundromat should get you around $700 to $900 per day.

We’ll dive into some details shortly, but when building your first Laundromat, there are a few things to keep in mind as suggestions:

• Build a customer Bathroom – It doesn’t have to be big – you won’t often have that many customer at a time. A single 3×3 square room with 1 Toilet Stall, 1 Sink, and 1 Hand Dryer is sufficient.
• Sell Laundry Detergent – Since you have a manned register anyway, be sure have a Detergent Self your staff can sell.
• Gumball and Magazine Stand are great ways to up-sell your customers $6 at a time. You do not need these for your ‘Every Product for Sale’ star however, but at $100 for the pair, it’s a no-brainer!
• One Manned Register – As it turns out, your Laundromat will get loiterers looking for drugs but not otherwise buying anything, so you need an employee there to turn them away, letting your legitimate customers use your services.
• Fast Washers and Fast Dryers are essential for high-customer turnover and making sure they leave happy. I’d suggest a starting set of 4 of each unit. The Fast units nets $14 in revenue and only take between 10 to 14 minutes to service a customer – netting between $1.40 and $1.00 per minute average. Compare that to the more basic ‘Dryer’ which pays $10 but takes 66 minutes to dry a load… which will make your customer unhappy and earns a measly $0.15 per minute! The Fast units cost more, but are well worth it. The ‘Large’ units pay $12 per load, and take a bit longer in time as well.

Staffing/Employees

There are two fundamental ways you can staff Workers at your Laundromat and we’ll briefly look at each.

• Traditional Shift Workers whereby you have a single Worker for your Register, you build them a Break Room and Bathroom, and you have to deal with employee Breaks when customer may have to wait at the register.
• Single-Shift Workers involves having 2 Worker employees, and each only works half the work-day. Since employees come into work with fresh needs, you do not need to give them breaks, or more importantly, spend Capital building the facilities! This is also useful to setup anyway if you intend on going for the Cleaner All Business Hours Rating star since you need that schedule anyway.

Either way, when your employees are not working (or on a Break), you should send them home so they can fulfill their needs there, coming back to work fresh!

You should also hire 1 Engineer, which you will need for around 2-3 hours every day. I would suggest schedule them right before customers show up (your Business Hours). If a customer is using a machine that needs repair, the Engineer will wait in line behind that customer – Good customer service, but if your engineer is waiting, then machines aren’t getting fixed.

You will also need at least 2 hours for a single Cleaner. If you want the Cleaner All Business Hours Rating star for your business, then should hire 2 and split the operating hours into 2 even shifts with no breaks as above.

For all Employees, you should set them to have a 1 hour Break in the time slot before you expect them to work – When you send employees home, they have to walk back into work – this helps ensure they are present and ready. This is less important for your Workers and Cleaners, however it’s very important for your expensive Engineers

Since we are operating a Legal Laundromat, you shouldn’t need to equip any of your employees with any equipment. There are Builder’s Gloves slated in the future, which may help cut down on Engineer hours, but they are unavailable at this time. Also you shouldn’t need any weapons, after all we are a legitimate business! If an item fits with your branding, and you want to spend the money, you should go ahead and set your dress code as you deem fit!

Tips on Services and Revenues

There’s a few things to know about the products you offer with your Laundromat service. The first is Customer Turnover (getting a customer in, taken care of, and out the door) is important to ensuring the customer is happy and to make room for other customers.

• You need 1 Machine per Maximum Customers – Keep in mind this is Simultaneous/One-At-A-Time customers. This can be see under the ‘Customer Reviews’ of your business. The more Total Rating stars you have, the more Max Customers. A simple 5-star Laundromat I built at Center Lane has up to 10 Max Customers.
• Fast Machines good, slow machines bad – Mentioned already, but the basic Dryer and Washer machines, although only $120 each, generate poor revenue ($3 for the basic Washing Machine! Sure it can be used by 3 people at the same time .. for a max revenue of $9!), take long to process – preventing other customers from using it, and make customers angry.
• Happy Customers Tip sometimes anyway, and it’s usually $1 or $2 per process they go through. Keep your customers cycling quick, your facility clean, your machines in good repair. A little decoration may or may not help – but is great for your branding! Unfortunately there is no way to see average customer needs/satisfaction beyond the Thoughts they generate, so be sure to occasionally watch those for issues.
• Upsell – build that Magazine Stand and Bubblegum Machine – $100 for both, the Magazine Stand generates $8 per process while the Bubblegum is $6. Both can be Tipped on, but more importantly they only take 5 minutes each – generating over $1/minute!
• Seating – a Bench is $45, lets your patrons rest briefly fulfilling that need, but also generates a tipping opportunity.
• Filter Your Cash Register Products
  • Turn off anything you aren’t selling.. This should help ensure you get the All Product Accessible Rating Star.. and a clear signal to your customers and Workers that you are a legitimate business!
• Your Machines will Break every day – Machines degrade at a constant rate throughout the day if they are used or not. Ideally schedule your engineer with enough time to fix them all JUST before you open your doors for business.

Next Steps, Grow Your Empire!

Once you have your first Legit Laundromat running, you should be only a few days away from having $20,000 to purchase Advertising with, which impacts ALL your future Laundromats as well, and gives you an extra Rating Star, potentially allowing you more customers.

Once you have enough money, start looking for other locations to expand your empire – although it’s likely to change, the current Real Estate Market looks like, ordered by price. Obviously we only care about Laundromat Friendly locations, of which there are 4 total.

• Church Lane, $3000. Laundromat or Donut Shop. Size: 24×24.
• Center Lane, $3000. Laundromat or Donut Shop. Size: 12×24.
• Oak Lane, $3000. Laundromat or Donut Shop. Size: 12×24.
• Palm Drive, $3000. Laundromat or Donut Shop. Size 12×24.
• Beach View, $5000. Donuts or Chicken. Size: 24×24.
• Washington Avenue, $5000. Donuts or Chicken. Size: 24×24.
• Bishops Boulevard, $7000, Donuts or Chicken. Size: 24×48.
• Park Avenue, $7000. Chicken or Lobster. Size 24×24.
• Pine Street, $7000, Chicken or Lobster. Size: 24×48.
• West Street, $7000, Chicken or Lobster. Size: 24×24.
• Ninth Arcade, $7000. Chicken or Lobster. Size: 24×24.
• Main Street, $10000. Lobster or Nightclub. Size: 12×24.
• Seal Avenue, $10000. Lobster of Nightclub. Size 24×24.
• Ryder Place, $10000. Lobster or Casino. Size: 12×24.
• Seventh Boulevard, $12000. Nightclub or Casino. Size: 24×24.
• Fourth Street, $12000. Nightclub or Casino. Size: 24×24.
• Farm Drive, $12000. Nightclub or Casino. Size: 24×24.
• Bay View, $12000. Nightclub or Casino. Size: 24×48.
• Chestnut Road, $12000. Nightclub or Casino. Size: 24×48.
• Rare Drive, $12000. Nightclub or Casino. Size: 24×42.