The ‘Hours of Operation’ Debacle
What sort of hours would you expect a laundromat to be open? What about a dry cleaner? My dry cleaner is open 6:30 am to 7 pm. The laundromat 6:30 am to 9 pm. In an ideal situation, I would like my store to be open from 8 am to 8 pm, every day of the week.
But I’m not in an ideal situation. My bank account is constantly flirting with $0. They say you need 6 months worth of runway in the bank, I don’t even have 6 days worth. I definitely can’t afford to pay someone to be at the store 12 hours a day. Not that I didn’t try at first.
I quickly realized the limiting factor here is cash. Right now, the store can only be open when the employee is there, and she’s only there when there is laundry to do. Some days I have to give her the day off because there are too few orders to justify her coming in. And if I have deliveries or sales pitches I have to close the store.
The whole thing is a mess and the only way out of the mess is to increase business. I need to have enough laundry there everyday for at least one full time and one part time employee.
In the meantime, for now, we are open 10 am to 6 pm, Monday to Friday, but we do pick ups and deliveries everyday 11 am to 8 pm. Insane, I know. I’ll fix it as soon as I can.
This story is part of a series documenting the journey of a Dallas startup called Feather Laundry. For your reference here is the Table of Contents for the series.
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