Every business has challenges to meet every day – sometimes, running your own café or restaurant could feel like it takes every minute of the day! If you’re that busy, then managing your own textiles, from purchase, to quality control, to laundering and ironing, is just one more time consuming operation.
Much of the time, it can seem like something that is a small part of the time that you allocate to your business. But when you add it up, it can be hours and hours – and that’s hours and hours that isn’t adding any value to your business, and is taking you and your team away from your customers.
That’s why reaching out to a trusted laundry service provider makes perfect sense – through the scale they can deliver, you will get the best of both worlds. High quality, crisp linen, managed by their expert team, and delivered to you when you need it.
So we’re agreed – the right managed linen service partner can be a powerful tool for you to manage and grow your business. What are three of the benefits?
Why Hire a Laundry Service?
Ease
The first benefit is the ease, and the peace of mind. By having a partner that you hand this time consuming task off to, you can rest assured that you will get what you need, without needing to do it yourself.
The right managed laundry service will mean that your staff won’t need to feel overwhelmed by extra work and tasks to just get the basics looking right in your business. Taking away the workload of washing, cleaning, ironing and presenting means that they can do the things you really hired them to do – serve your customers.
For instance, if you have a restaurant and are trying to do it all yourself, then you’ll have to have your own staff wasting their valuable time and effort in the whole linen process. Adding this kind of pressure to their roles, when they’re already working hard, can push them past the point they can stay.
With a managed service, again, there’s that peace of mind. Your staff just send off what needs to be laundered and returned, and receive regular replacement high quality ready to use linen. Your restaurant, then, is always ready for your next customer.
Time Saving
The saying goes, “time is money”. That’s very true -and it’s true for you, and your staff, just as much as for anyone else. You will have your operation to run, and the team you have working for and with you will have critical tasks that they need to complete to help your business do what it needs to do, for your customers.
One of the things that can be a time hog in businesses is managing textiles. It is a utility, something that has to get done, but is often bolted on right at the end of everything else someone has to do. But the working day has a finite amount of time – and your people can only fill 100% of anything! That means, even if it is just 5% of their day that they spend on back office operations that don’t add value, that is 5% of their day that they’re not doing what you really want them to do.
That is why selecting a laundry service, you’re gaining time back in your business. Your team ends up with that bit more time and energy to focus on the much more important tasks that you need them to focus on.
Responsible Economies of Scale
As with any process in your business, the cost is greater than just the time spent in the completion of the task. If you’re handling this yourself, then the cost is financial as well – you need to take into account all of the chemicals, machines, and the energy and water bills, that you need to pay for. All of this can be expensive for a single business to manage.
In addition, we are now in an era of environmentally conscious business, and that will only grow with time. That can be a real challenge to manage as a business owner – especially when you have to consider the safe management and disposal of chemicals, and your energy footprint as a business.
As with any outsourced service, the economies of scale that your managed textile and laundry partner can gain in purchasing of equipment, chemicals, and utilities, means that they can manage your whole linen process for you, at a lower cost than you could manage. And, additionally, you can still help to reduce the impact on the environment by making sure your laundry service provider incorporates environmental impact management into their operations.
Choosing Your Partner
So, the benefits for finding the right partner for your laundry services are there for all to see. What are some of the considerations, then, in finding the right partner for you?
1 – reliability. As with all your partners, you want to find a managed laundry service partner that you can trust. They are taking on part of your business operations, so you need to know that they will be there, when you need them, with what you need.
2 – not just the cheapest! In the same way as with every purchase, don’t be purely motivated by finding the cheapest price you can! Your business relies on this service; and if you go with the cheapest option, there’s a reasonable chance you will get what you pay for.
3 – scale. One consideration is to look for a partner who has been there, and done it, before, for thousands of customers. Larger providers will typically have better back up processes – which means you won’t have a single point of failure when it comes to this critical element of your business.
As every business grows, more and more work will need to be outsourced to help you keep your day-to-day activities in control. And when it comes to whether or not a laundry service would be of much use, it is pretty obvious that the advantages easily outweigh the disadvantages.
Incorporating a laundry service into your business operations will help smoothen your workflow, make it easy for your employees to focus on their other tasks, reduce your carbon footprint, and save you a lot of time and money.
Alsco offers steam laundry services to small and large businesses all over Australia. And if you need fresh, clean, and quality linens, we also offer a comprehensive range of linen for rent to suit your needs. Call us today!
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