What are the Advantages of Choosing On-Premise Laundry Versus Outsourced Laundry Services?

If you own a business that deals with a large amount of laundry, you may be tempted to outsource your laundry tasks to a linen company instead of investing in an on-location laundry facility. As a provider of commercial laundry equipment across the US, we do a lot of calculations for clients. We look at available floor space, electrical and staffing needs, location, energy consumption, and cost before recommending a solution to a customer.

From our view, analyzing the needs before making a decision makes good economic sense. The industry agrees. About 97% of the estimated 525,000 global commercial laundry sites globally utilize the on-premise model (which comprises 71% of laundry chemical spend). 

A comparison of on premise laundry (aka OPL) versus outsourced laundry is dependent on several factors:

• Utility, chemical, and repair costs
• Labor costs and delivery fees
• Material replacement expenditures
• Availability of replacement linens and uniforms
• Employee and customer/patient safety

What are the Advantages of Choosing On Premise Laundry?

Let’s start with the core values of most services businesses: Convenience, attentiveness, and service. Many choose on-premise solutions because of the difficulty in providing these core values when you don’t have complete control over them.

Operational Costs

In terms of your laundry operation, traditional on-premise laundry methods will cost you money on operational costs, but the problem is somewhat overridden because there is a good chance the outsourced service you are using has these same costs and will pass them on to you as well. They may be able to offer economies of scale, but delivery costs may eat up these costs.

It’s also likely that those operations are not using the latest, most energy-efficient machines, which means their costs would be higher than those with newer technologies. Today’s commercial laundry technologies use less water, less power and clean faster, meaning your costs could be lower than allowing someone outside to set your pricing.

Backup Linen and Uniform Costs

Another consideration about outsourcing laundry is the cost of backup linens and linen replacement. Large organizations may cycle through towels, linen, and uniforms quickly and need faster turn-around times. Outsourced services are usually on a route and will pick up and drop off at certain times of day, leaving you with a limited number of linens and uniforms to use on hand. Outsourcing the task means you need to have four sets of linens: one in use, one that is dirty, one in the queue, and one that is being cleaned. You can cut an entire set of linens out of the equation by handling your laundry since the turnaround for fresh linen can be as little as an hour or two.

Like hotels and spas, some businesses have also found that the mass cleaning methods launders use may be tough on towels, uniforms, and linens, leading to higher replacement costs.

Control Over Safety

In some industries, like hospice care, where proper laundry processing is compulsory, there may be potential health risks to staff, patients, and visitors from exposure to medical waste and infectious materials. An on-location laundry facility gives you the ability to ensure all possible contaminants are properly treated.

Upfront Costs

The last argument may be that the cost of upfront equipment will cost more than outsourcing, however, if you look at the latest financing and leasing options offered by AAdvantage, Dexter, and others, you can see that your monthly costs may be less than the cost of outsourcing. And this includes maintenance of your machines.

Is My Business Too Small for an On-Premise Laundry Facility?

Organizations of all sizes can benefit from everything on-premise laundry facilities offer. Small salons that are tight on space, may opt for stacked or compact models. Hotels, correctional facilities, and athletic facilities can install equipment that makes the best use of your space and reduces energy and water consumption, even with larger capacity units. 

Dexter, a leading manufacturer of OPL Equipments, makes a wide range of commercial laundry machines that fit the need of most organizations. Dexter has been producing reliable machines for customers worldwide for over a century. Dexter offers several commercial laundry machines with cutting-edge features, a great warranty, and thoroughly tested machines for a long lifespan.

Choosing a machine does not have to be complicated. Still, the best way to determine which model is ideal for your fit would depend on your industry, your facility, and business-specific variables such as the volume of laundry produced.

Contact AAdvantage to discuss your on-premise laundry needs.