Laundromat Safety and Security Tips

Shears Laundry    Salem, OH	Laundry by Alco Washer Center

Maintaining a safe and secure environment not only benefits employees and customers, but as a laundromat owner, it can impact your bottom line. By properly maintaining and securing your store, you can not only protect your profits, but you can also keep your customers and employees secure while making sure your store is operating at its fullest potential.

Prevent Dryer Fires
Dryer fires constitute the most devastating (and costly) property insurance claims for self-service laundries. Over the years, many stores have been lost as a result of a dryer fire. Prevention begins with good maintenance habits and lint control. Develop a schedule to keep lint screens clean, prevent lint from accumulating inside the dryer cabinet and clean out ductwork on a regular basis. Other dryer fire culprits include improper installation, insufficient makeup air and spontaneous combustion caused in garments containing grease, cooking oil, etc. For proper preventative maintenance on your Dexter dryers click here.

Protect Changers
The second most costly claims in laundries result from an overnight break-in and the subsequent destruction of coin changers. The property damage adds up as damage is done to the building and the changer itself, as well as the loss of the cash inside. Ask a local security store to help alarm the changers themselves. If you have security cameras, make sure at least one camera is on the coin changer area at all times.

Achieve Safety Through Design
When planning a new store or remodeling the existing location, keep safety at the forefront. This can mean everything from the proper flooring materials to adequate lighting; from well-placed floor drains to the installation of sprinklers. Always consider aisle widths and multiple exits for customer convenience and safety. Don’t forget to plan back room areas for easy maintenance and safety for the employees.

Train Attendants
The attendants are the best means of protecting the dollars invested in the laundry. The attendants should be well trained to prevent injuries to customers. If an accident occurs, do they have a written procedure for dealing with a problem when the owner is not there? Attendants should also be trained to use fire extinguishers; shut off machines and utilities quickly and safely; and contact emergency services when required. Is the attendant ready to handle a fire? A hold-up? Unruly children? An injury to a customer? As business owners with a place of public accommodation, owners have a threshold of responsibility for the patrons who enter the laundry.

Facility Inspection and Maintenance
To keep your laundromat as safe as possible and to minimize the possibility of insurance claims, be sure to inspect your facility for possible problems on a regular basis and to fix any issues immediately. This includes not only the inside of your laundry, but the outside of the building as well. As a laundromat owner you can prevent many insurance claims just by operating your coin laundry properly and maintaining the store.

Many slips, trips and falls occur outside the walls of the laundry. Be sure to inspect your parking lots and sidewalks for cracks, potholes, uneven pavement, ice, snow and accumulating water. Even if you’re just renting, you could still be held liable for injuries customers might incur just coming to, or leaving from your commercial laundry. If you notice problems with the outside of your store that need the landlords attention, be sure to not only immediately notify the property owner, but to keep all copies of correspondence including package delivery receipts, or confirmations from a certified letter.

Cleanliness and adequate lighting are key factors to ensuring a safer store environment and reducing your insurance liability. Be sure to regularly clean your laundry, and to keep floors free of water at all times. Most slip and fall claims result from water that has leaked from a washer and has not been promptly mopped and dried. Also, broken or chipped tiles can cause serious injuries to customers and employees alike. When replacing the floor, use slip-resistant materials and follow manufacturer’s recommendations for maintenance. Also be sure to replace burned out light bulbs promptly both inside and outside your laundry. If street lights in front of your laundromat are out, contact the landlord (if it is their responsibility) or the city when appropriate.

Check Safety of Laundry Equipment
Unfortunately, the industry has experienced high-profile accidents resulting from safety door locks not operating properly. These accidents have resulted in loss of limbs and other serious medical consequences. No frontload washer door should ever open while the washer is in cycle. No topload washer should ever continue in cycle upon lifting the lid (all lid switches must be in proper working order). All dryers should stop tumbling immediately upon opening the door (all kill switches must be in proper working order).

All Dexter new Dexter commercial washers feature a red “stop button” prominently on the front of each machine. This allows customers, attendants and store owners to interrupt a wash should an emergency occur such as child trapped inside or an item caught in the door causing water to leak and flood the store. For more information on how Dexter’s stop button can help keep your laundry and your customers more secure, ask your Dexter Authorized Distributor for more details.

Regular inspections can help reduce the chances of someone being injured as a result of visiting the laundry. As a laundry owners, do everything you can to make your washateria claim resistant.

Employee Theft
According to some estimates, approximately 30 percent of business failures can be attributed to employee theft. When employees steal and get caught, the methods used and the reasons for the theft can be as varied as the number of employees. A common occurrence is for attendants to provide their friends, relatives or favorite customers with a free wash. This tends to happen most frequently when drop-off laundry customers are undercharged for the amount of laundry involved or when an attendant has a key and can start the machine from the timer without having to deposit money into the machine.

Another common problem in laundries is attendants who “borrow” a small amount of money from the till when they are short of cash and then forget to repay the debt. If the attendants find the job boring or if they are experiencing financial problems at home, they may be tempted to beat the system. If they are successful in cheating just once and get away with it, they may be inclined to do so again and again.

Store owners must be cognizant of that fact and take reasonable precautions to guard against internal theft, which can take a variety of forms. Be sure to take the time to know your laundromat employees. Commercial laundry owners who disregard the possibility of internal theft can be making a monstrous mistake and providing a lucrative hunting ground for would-be thieves. Try to get to know your staff as people rather than just employees, and they are less likely to steal.

It is sometimes surprising to see how cash shortages in the till tend to disappear when attendants are asked to sign cash count slips. Experience has shown that most shortages appear at the end of a particular shift. Let employees know that no one will “look the other way,” when it comes to skimming cash from the store, and that they will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law if they care caught stealing.

Cash shortages always tend to be in even amounts: $5, $10 or $20. Several store owners suggested that when this occurs consistently and the facts point in one direction, consider re-arranging the work schedule so that it becomes inconvenient for an employee to continue working at the store. This approach frequently leads to the elimination of the persistent shortage. The fact is that most employees are honest and loyal to their jobs and employers. But store owners must be alert to the fact that “bad apples” do exist and a means for sorting them out must be established. When bad employees are allowed to continue, the store owner is the loser, and good employees have their reputations tarnished.

How do you detect employee dishonesty? Here are a few things to keep in mind. Observe your employees’ personality. Are they living beyond their means? Do they abuse alcohol and/or drugs? Are they compulsive gamblers who may ask for salary advances?

Employees who ask for frequent salary advances or to borrow a little money may be those tempted to take money from your cash register without permission. Watch your employees who are consistently “short” or “over” particularly in even increments ($2, $5, $10, etc.) this may suggest they are borrowing and then (sometimes) repaying the “loans”

Be sure to establish a cash handling system for the drop-off laundry or any other services offered. The system should put responsibility on each individual employee, so that he/she becomes accountable for their transactions. By having each employee sign a cash count slip at the end of each shift, you will know where to look if a shortage occurs.

To help identify employee theft at your laundromat, be sure to talk to your regular customers and see if they mention anything suspicious about your staff. Spending extra time in your laundry can often be very enlightening. Be sure to also alternate the days and time of day that you make collections. It’s easy to fall into a routine of making your laundromat collections a particular time, however if no one knows when the laundry owner is expected to appear, it limits the chance that someone might try to steal from your business.

Bad Debt & Customer Theft
Another source of internal theft experienced by laundromat owners can be customers. This can come in a couple different forms, but most commonly commercial laundry owners will have either fraudulent loss claims or bad checks.

Occasional in your laundry, you may have fraudulent loss claims by customers who come into the store and claim that they put money into the machine but that it didn’t start properly. The attendants should be instructed to follow a procedure where they insert the coins themselves to see if the machine starts. If it does, something might be amiss. If it doesn’t, the attendant may be able to make immediate repair to minimize downtime on that machine.

When giving customer refunds at your laundromat, be sure to have your attendants have the customer sign his/her name on a piece of paper stating the problem. Then you have records to use to determine if this customer is routinely not paying the vend price and attempting to cheat your store. Many laundromat owners have found that by simply having the customer sign his or her name to a claim slip, the fraud problem immediately stops.

Short of instituting a “no check policy”, the best way to minimize your laundromat’s loss due to bad checks is to have your attendants obtain a valid driver’s license with a picture or photo I.D. with each check they accept. Establish a policy to always view a driver’s license and jot down the license number before accepting a check. The photo on the license assures that the person writing the check is actually the person whose name is printed on the check, and if the check is bad, you can then provide the license number to the police department. Frequently, a call from the police will result in the check writer making good on the payment.

Video Surveillance and Locks
If you are a security-conscious laundromat or washateria owner, you probably try to face the challenge of keeping up with the latest security technology. Video surveillance helps deter potential robbers, burglars, thieving employees and would-be scam artists from staging fraudulent slips and falls. Video evidence is the best way to protect oneself from phony slips, trips and falls. When you do have security cameras or devices you do need to anticipate the possibility of people tampering with or destroying them. If you put in a security device in your laundry, do make it obvious. Use signage in your laundromat to inform people that cameras are present. Also, having visible security can give your staff and customers a feeling of safety when they are in your laundry

Having security equipment and video systems can also help tech savvy laundromat owners with insurance liability, thefts and other security issues. These high-tech cameras can allow you to watch over your store 24/7 via the internet and provide valuable evidence when needed for insurance claims or to prosecute vandals or theft.

Insurance
Likewise, no one wants to experience the devastating effects of a major fire or another type of property loss against their laundromat. Even with insurance in place to provide financial protection, a claim is never easy to handle and at the very least can cost a commercial laundry owner time, money and aggravation.

If you’re unsure of what to do when it comes to any type of insurance or possible claim, call your agent and get some advice. Tell them your situation and details and they can give you professional recommendations on how to handle the situation. If you offer extra profit centers in your laundromat, be sure to let your insurance agent know about these additional concerns including tanning booths, exercise equipment, video games, children’s rides and etc.

When purchasing insurance for your laundry, be sure to talk to your agent about having high enough liability coverage. The amount of insurance you had a few years ago might not be any where near enough for today’s economy. Be sure to also investigate hazard insurance to cover your equipment. In some cases, your lender might require flood insurance before offering laundromat financing.

Another concern is the cost to replace your coin laundry. Don’t just think in terms of replacing your commercial washers and dryers with new laundry equipment. There’s plumbing, electricity, tile, the drop ceiling, folding tables, changers, etc. Be sure to stay in touch with your Dexter Authorized Distributor to help you truly estimate what the replacement cost of your business is.