That's $3/load+drying. When I worked as a mechanic that is what it cost me to wash work clothes (didn't want them in my washing machine). I did the same thing--it would cost me ~$20 and 2 hours sitting at the laundromat, wash and fold service was 28. Even for someone making minimum wage, $4/hour is pretty poor value for time.
The pricing is $10 per load to do wash/dry/fold and extra $10 if you want pickup/delivery. For example, 2 loads with pickup would be $20 (for laundry) + $10 (for delivery), total of $30.
I don't know where you live, but in New York City there are several services that come pick up your laundry and drop it off when it's done. No matter how you slice it, it's probably a lot less than $5k per year.
2. In the US it would cost at least $400/yr per person for a pickup/drop off laundry service. Foldimate sells for $850, and can presumably service an entire household. If it was more capable (just put clean clothes in a hopper, or connects directly to a dryer) it would be significantly more economic then human labor.
I would pay to have my laundry done. Not dry cleaning, just plain, old, toss-it-in-the-washer laundry. I would pay a significant amount for this service. I wouldn't bat an eye at $30-40/load.
I don't care if someone comes and picks it up, or if I go somewhere to drop it off. I don't care if it's done by a professional service or by a 12 year old neighbor kid. I would pay you, and the whoever does my laundry, if you could connect me with someone.
I pay $60-$70/month to have my laundry done. They do a better job than I would, and I value my time highly. Plus the capex of a washer/drier, and the opex of detergents and dryer sheets, and I think I'm coming out well ahead...
When I was living alone as a bachelor, I crunched the numbers and decided it was kind of stupid to do my own laundry rather than drop it off at the laundromat for their wash-and-fold service.
Doing a load of laundry coin-op would cost me about $2/$3 a load. Plus the cost of detergent, fabric softener, and dryer sheets. And the aggravation of going to a grungy, depressing laundromat, waiting around for the washer to run, running the dryer several times because things wouldn't get dry, and then folding it all and lugging my baskets home.
When I was in an apartment that did have hookups, but no laundry machines, buying a basic washer and dryer ran about $1000, unless I found some ticking time bomb of a used set on Craigslist. And then there is the water and electricity costs. Not to mention the hassle of either abandoning them or having to drag them off somewhere else when I moved.
In contrast, I could drop off a huge barracks bag full of laundry at the laundromat once every two weeks, and they would weigh it up, charge me a dollar a pound, then I'd go off to work and pick it up at the end of the day, perfectly washed and expertly folded. Just in the amount of time saved at drudgery, it was worth it, besides the fact that they did a far, far better job than I would do myself.
This is my single biggest justification for not doing my own laundry. I've run experiments.
If I take my laundry to a laundromat, run it through the washer, move it to the drier, (run it through the drier again because it isn't dry), fold and put it all away, it costs me about $12 in quarters. It also costs me two or three hours of time, where I'm pretty much stuck at the laundromat, unable to do anything really worthwhile.
If I drop the laundry off at the laundromat and have them do it for me, that wash-dry-fold service usually costs about $30. I toss it in a bag, stop at the laundromat on the way to work, then on the way home that night I stop in again and pick up bags of fresh, nicely folded laundry, with all my shirts on hangers. It's so much easier, and trading a little bit of money for time not spent doing something tedious is a big win.
Yeah, if I could get a couple roommates/neighbors in on it, the $20 minimum can easily be met. I don't remember the price/pound of Washio, but it was probably higher than 80 cents.
Also, I hope you're still washing your clothes semi-frequently, or at least your workout clothes.
My laundromat has free pickup and drop-off. It has a minimum order of $20, too...but that's at eighty cents a pound, so it's a lot of laundry. I just bought more clothes and let it build up a little longer.
Unless it's gone up, the cost of fluff and fold service in the mission is cheap enough that it's not much more than doing it yourself. Especially when many laundromats where is > $2 for a wash load and similar for a dry load. If you have to separate your loads it can easily be $12 to do your laundry yourself. You can probably get it done for $15 and have several hours of your life to do something else.
At $20-$30 a month on coin-op laundry you are probably better off looking for full-service laundry that charges by the pound. Before I moved into a place with a washer/dryer of my own I was spending ~$10-$15 every two weeks (50 cents per pound) to drop a laundry basket full of cloths in the morning and pick it up perfectly folded later that day (took about 4 hours, but I would pick up in the evening).
If you've ever done any business travel, you know that a week's worth of laundry (Two Pants, five shirts, six pairs of t-shirts, socks and underwear) through the Hotel - usually goes for about $200-$225. If you are thrifty, and order a service, and are willing to wait for a week's delay, you can get your laundry done for about $100, but then you need to juggle logistics of actually getting your laundry to the service and back (and then worry about having to leave early, and stranding your laundry in a remote city)
If you are a freak (like me) - you actually track down a local laundromat, and burn a couple hours on a Saturday Morning doing your laundry to save the company $200, but 95% of business travelers just throw it on the company tab.
My advice to Prim - If they haven't already, reach out to Casto Travel (Typical corporate travel agency) - and every similiarly focussed travel agency, and see if they can get traction with the business travel market. You won't make any friends with the Hotels, but when I see a $250 laundry invoice for a single bag of laundry, I can't help but think that's a market ripe for disruption from below.
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