Business Data & Benchmarks · United States
Laundromat Revenue, Costs and Continuation
A laundromat is a self-service laundry business: customers pay per load to wash and dry, and many locations add wash-and-fold or pickup and delivery. See average laundromat revenue per location, operating cost benchmarks and business continuation data, with dates and sources shown for every figure.
Average Laundromat Revenue per Year Industry association estimate
The Coin Laundry Association estimates the number of US laundromat locations and their combined annual gross revenue. Dividing one by the other gives the average revenue per location.
≈$170,000 /year
Average annual gross revenue per laundromat location
29,500
Laundromat locations operating in the United States
nearly $5 billion
Combined annual gross revenue, all laundromat locations
How this is calculated: nearly $5 billion in combined revenue divided by about 29,500 locations, both figures published by the Coin Laundry Association, works out to roughly $170,000. Both inputs are rounded, so the result is rounded too. Two honest warnings. This is an average per location, and averages get pulled up by big, busy stores, so a typical location may sit below it. And this is revenue, not profit: what the owner keeps comes after rent, utilities, and everything else. Operating cost data appears below.
Source Coin Laundry Association, Industry Overview · Vintage Not stated by source · Calculation BusinessNES · Accessed July 2026
Source and definition
Employer Establishments at Year Five Industry group
Drycleaning and Laundry Services, NAICS 8123, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.
61.2%the year-five count as a share of the starting count
Across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts, five-year results ranged from 55.9 to 61.2 percent. This benchmark covers Drycleaning and Laundry Services, NAICS 8123, as a whole. It is not a survival rate for laundromats on their own: they are 10,773 of the 29,408 employer establishments in that group, about 37 percent of it. How this is measured
Laundromat Operating Cost Benchmarks Tax returns · Australia
Based on Australian Taxation Office data from 2023-24 tax returns, covering laundry and dry-cleaning businesses including coin-operated self-serve laundries. In the datasets we audited, no US federal source publishes a laundromat-specific expense benchmark; these Australian figures, in Australian dollars, are the closest tax-verified view of how costs behave in this business at different sizes.
| Annual turnover (AUD) | Total expenses to turnover | Average |
|---|---|---|
| $65,000 to $150,000 | 62% to 76% | 69% |
| $150,001 to $600,000 | 63% to 79% | 71% |
| More than $600,000 | 75% to 87% | 81% |
Key benchmark: total expenses as a share of annual turnover, by turnover band.
| Annual turnover (AUD) | Rent to turnover | Motor vehicle to turnover |
|---|---|---|
| $65,000 to $150,000 | 21% to 33% | 4% to 7% |
| $150,001 to $600,000 | 14% to 22% | 3% to 5% |
| More than $600,000 | 7% to 13% | 2% to 3% |
Read: rent is the heavy line item at small scale, taking up to a third of turnover in the smallest band, and its share falls as turnover grows. Not every business reports every expense line, so the tax office advises treating these as a guide.
Source Australian Taxation Office, Small Business Benchmarks · Year 2023-24 tax returns · Scope Laundry and dry-cleaning services, Australia
Source and definition
Beyond the Benchmark BusinessNES analysis
What the census figures leave out about laundromats, and what to look at instead.
What the numbers do not show
Location economics dominate this trade, and the census figure says nothing about the site. Population density, parking and the share of nearby households without a machine at home determine the result more than anything the operator does inside.
Utilities are the other invisible line. Water, sewer and gas rates vary by municipality and can differ enough between two towns to change whether the same equipment is viable.
Operator lens
- Cycles sold are the unit that matters. Self-service revenue depends on paid cycles, vend prices and the mix of machine sizes, and equipment downtime is lost sales that cannot be made up later.
- Attended and unattended sites are different businesses. Staff enable wash-and-fold, reduce vandalism and change the cost base completely.
Questions to ask before starting or buying
- What are the utility costs and who pays them? Ask for twelve months of water, sewer, gas and electricity bills, because these utilities are usually the largest controllable line.
- How old is the equipment and what is the replacement plan? Machines have a known service life and replacing a floor of them at once is a capital event.
- What is the lease length relative to the equipment life? Buying machines with more life than lease is a common and expensive mismatch.
- Is there a wash-and-fold or commercial side? Services attached to the same equipment change both revenue and staffing.
- What does the neighborhood look like at night? Security, lighting and hours are operational realities in an unattended site.
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Sources and Methodology
Every figure here carries a source, a reference period or an explicit vintage not stated label, and a clearly defined scope, and where data exists only for a broader category, the label says so in plain words. Sector-level means the sector, not the laundromat.
None of the U.S. public datasets audited for this profile provides a median owner salary, so none appears here. Operator-contributed figures, when collected, will be shown separately with sample sizes, never blended with public sources. This page is educational statistics, not financial, legal, or investment advice.
Read the full data standards, definitions, and corrections policy on the Business Benchmarks methodology page.
All sources on this page
US Census Bureau, Business Dynamics Statistics, establishment age by industry: census.gov
Australian Taxation Office, Small Business Benchmarks, laundry and dry-cleaning services, 2023-24: ato.gov.au
Spotted an error? Corrections are logged and published. Business data and benchmarks by BusinessNES.