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“Have a good ride and stay up” is what Mildred Monroe says to the cyclists who pick up and drop off laundry from her homebase laundromat at South Street Coin Wash. “You have to be very very careful as a cyclist. They bike in the street just like a car, and a lot of times, people get frustrated. Everybody’s in a rush to go nowhere,” the resident of the 2300 block of Watkins Street joked.
But these cyclists aren’t even on just any bike. Wash Cycle Laundry, a growing bike and wash delivery company founded by Gabriel Mandujano in 2010, has been improving its unconventional delivery vessels for the past four years. What started as bikes with what looked like giant Tupperware bins towed behind them is now a fleet of tricycles that are capable of hauling 450 pounds with the help of motorized assistance.
“We’re a sustainable laundry, dry cleaning and linen service that delivers by bicycle,” Leigh Goldenberg, the company’s director of marketing who calls the 1400 block of South Franklin Street home, said. “We have clients anywhere from a resident of Philadelphia at their home or office, to small businesses, spas, salons, gyms, up to large institutions – we are a federal contractor with the federal government, we work with [the University of] Penn, nursing homes and assisted living facilities.”
The staff has grown right alongside its list of clients and facilities. The South Street laundromat was the entity’s first wash locale, but the overseers now have four addresses where cycling deliverers dump dirty laundry and pick clean product up for delivery: the others are in Center City, East Falls and West Philly.
“We don’t own these [wash] facilities – they’re places we’re using on their off hours,” Goldenberg, pointing out one of the business’s finest economic saving graces – very little overhead, said. “The capital costs of owning the building and the machines” don’t fall on Wash Cycle, and the business is able to turn around and dump that money into affordable wages, training and focus on employee retention, another feather in her team’s cap.
The company proudly employs Philadelphians who would appear unemployable to the untrained eye because of a history of incarceration, homelessness or addiction.
“Twenty-five percent of our employees do have a reported history of incarceration,” Goldenberg stated. “We’re saying ‘Hey look, we’re hiring people with these backgrounds’ and we’re paying above the minimum wage and saying this is better than collecting your public assistance check.”
Jake Clark is Wash Cycle’s market leader of logistics, or chief cyclist. The resident of the 2500 block of South Third Street was drawn to the company for its attention to sustainability and cycling, but also for its fair labor practices.
“Almost the entire laundry team comes from workforce development programs, and we have a retention rate that’s triple or quadruple the city’s average,” the Whitman resident said.
He sees a great deal of value in “Giving people a chance and giving them the proper training and not giving up on them.”
This week the company started expanding into a District of Columbia market. Clark had just returned from checking in on the nascent Wash Cycle space in the nation’s capital, and Goldenberg said they’ll expand into more urban markets over the next couple years. But Philly will always be the company’s home.
The system is pretty simple.
“People can go online or call us and schedule a pick-up. A cyclist shows up at their door, takes their laundry, we wash it and get it back to them in 24 hours,” Passyunk Square’s Goldenberg said. “You can have your laundry and your dry-cleaning delivered to your door.”
The service area, at the moment, doesn’t dip below Snyder Avenue or go west of 25th Street into Grays Ferry. It’s $1.35 per pound with a ten-pound minimum (which the company says is “about one home load); $2 for a laundered and pressed shirt; $5 for “Half Your Body” (pants, blouses, skirts); and $10 for “All Your Body” (suits, dresses). Goldenberg said South Philadelphians hoping for their neighborhood to fall into a future catchment zone “can always call and get their name added to a list and when we can get to you we’ll let you know.”
As demand and business grows, tools have improved.
“Our new tricycles look like a pettycab with a box on the back,” a box capable of carrying 550 pounds of laundry, Goldenberg touted. “With the electric assist, we’re able to expand where we go, so that means that hills aren’t as much of a challenge and that increases our efficiency.”
For Clark, one of the things he’s proudest of is how dedicated cyclists are to fulfilling their routes.
“This past winter, with all of the snow that we had and all of the terrible weather conditions and freezing cold, we didn’t have a single cyclist call out the entire winter, and we only had one day when we had to cease operations,” he said with pride.
Clark says he’s used to seeing funny reactions to the pettycabs.
“The number one question is ‘Do you wash the clothes in there?’” It’s laughable to think, he says, that 150 gallons of water weight could be carted around on bike.
He used to be one of the only cyclists.
“I used to do a whole day’s worth of appointments by myself, and now we have eight to 10 people alone in Philadelphia riding each day,” Clark said. They’re “a team that’s very excited about the company and excited about making it grow,” he added.
“I love my job. I enjoy coming to work every day. I love what I do – I wouldn’t trade it for nothin’ in the world,” Monroe, a mother to five daughters and sister to four brothers, said. She’s proud of the growth, too, as she’s been with the company for more than two years.
“Someone took an idea and made the idea grow. [Mandujano] had a dream that he wanted to pursue, and he pursued it – that’s what I like about him,” the Point Breeze dweller said.
She is not ashamed of loving and being good at laundering.
“When you fold a million towels and they’re all lined up nicely, the perfection of how they’re folded, I like for something to have my name on it,” Monroe said. “I’m so pleased. It’s really growing.”
Contact Staff Writer Bill Chenevert at bchenevert@southphillyreview.com or ext. 117.
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