Coin-Operated Laundries and Drycleaners (U.S.) — NAICS 81231

An investor's primer for a rollup level. NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) 2022 code 81231 — a NAICS "industry" (the 5-digit level). Core figures are the most recent official federal statistics; forward-looking statements are labeled as judgments, not facts.

Read this first — this is a pass-through level. NAICS industry 81231 contains exactly one national industry beneath it: 812310, Coin-Operated Laundries and Drycleaners. At the U.S. level the two codes are effectively identical — same businesses, same dollars, same dynamics. This page gives the rollup's own ground-truth stats and orients you; for full detail — unit economics, the investable universe, demand drivers, regulation, and how to invest — see the 812310 primer.

---

1. Overview

This is the laundromat business: the self-service, coin- and card-operated stores where people wash and dry their own clothes, plus the "route" companies that install and service self-service machines inside apartment buildings, condos, and dorms.[1] It is a classic small-business, cash-flow industry — high upfront equipment cost, then years of steady, largely passive income. Demand is unusually stable (people wash clothes in good times and bad), and it is widely treated as recession-resistant, even mildly counter-cyclical.[6]

The one thing to know before investing: there is no pure-play public laundromat operator to buy. The storefront and route operators are private. Public-market investors get exposure one step removed — through equipment makers, distributors, chemical suppliers, and franchise brands. For most people this is a private-market industry (buy or build a store, buy a franchise, or acquire a route/multifamily business). All of that lives in the 812310 primer.

---

2. What's inside — and why this level equals its one child

NAICS nests from broad to narrow: sector (2-digit) → subsector (3-digit) → industry group (4-digit) → NAICS industry (5-digit, this page) → national industry (6-digit). Code 81231 is the 5-digit industry, and it has a single 6-digit child:

Because there is just one child, the 5-digit rollup adds nothing the 6-digit code doesn't already contain: the scope, the two business models inside it (fragmented storefront laundromats and consolidated route/multifamily operators), and the exclusions (staffed dry cleaners in 812320, linen supply in 812331, industrial launderers in 812332, and the equipment-maker codes 333310/335220) are all defined at 812310.[1] This page therefore stays short by design and defers to that primer.

---

3. Size (rollup figures)

Because 81231 has one child, its federal totals equal 812310's. These are our ground-truth figures for the level (employer businesses — those with paid staff):

CBP = County Business Patterns; EC = Economic Census. Note the vintages differ (receipts and firm counts are 2022; establishment and payroll counts are 2023), so these are not a clean single-year series. The ~$505,000 average is pulled up by the large route operators inside the code; a typical single storefront runs well below it.

Concentration. Top-four firms account for 30.8% of industry revenue, top eight 33.5%, top 20 37.5%, top 50 42.4%.[3] The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI), the standard concentration measure, is suppressed in the federal data, so we do not state it.[3] Those ratios look moderately concentrated only because a few large route operators capture a big slice of the code's dollars; the storefront half is far more fragmented than the four-firm ratio suggests.

Undercount caveat (important here). These federal figures count only employer establishments. Laundromats are the textbook case of a business with zero paid employees — unattended, absentee-owned, cash-in / cash-out.[9] Those are tallied, if at all, in the Census Bureau's separate Nonemployer Statistics, not in County Business Patterns.[5] Our stats file carries no 81231 nonemployer total, so we do not state a full-economy count — but the true number of laundromat businesses is well above the ~10,890 employer establishments (the Coin Laundry Association has long put the total in the ~20,000–35,000 range).[6] Employment (41,351) is likewise low by design — machines, not labor, are the main input. Treat the federal count as a floor, not a full census.

---

4. Investable universe (where value concentrates)

With a single child, the investable map is 812310's map. Value does not sit in the fragmented storefront tier that gives the code its name; it concentrates in the surrounding layers:

• Equipment makers — Alliance Laundry (NYSE: ALH, Speed Queen; the closest listed proxy, ~40% of North American commercial-laundry equipment, public since October 2025) and private, employee-owned Dexter.[10][8]
• Distribution / roll-up — EVI Industries (NYSE American: EVI), consolidating regional equipment distributors.[11]
• Consumables and brands — Ecolab (NYSE: ECL, laundry chemicals) and Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG, Tide detergent and the Tide Cleaners franchise), for whom laundromat exposure is immaterial to the whole.[12][15]
• Private route/multifamily operators — CSC ServiceWorks (largest, ~1M+ machines) and WASH, both private-equity-backed.[16][17]

The full company table, tickers, and the "adjacent, not this code" names (Cintas, UniFirst) are in the 812310 primer.

---

5. How the money works

Same as the child. A storefront is a real-estate-plus-machine-utilization business — an annuity with a heavy upfront cost ($300K–$1.5M to build or re-equip), then thin-labor cash flow.[9] The core operating metric is the turn (turns per day — wash cycles per machine per day); revenue ≈ machines × turns per day × vend price × 365.[8] Costs are dominated by utilities (water, sewer, gas, electricity) at roughly 20–40% of revenue; net margins run ~20–35% for a well-run store.[8] The route/multifamily model is different — the operator owns machines in a building's laundry room and shares revenue with the property owner, an infrastructure-services model that is steady but capital-hungry.[16][17] Businesses change hands at roughly 3x–5x SDE (seller's discretionary earnings) or 4x–6x EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization), heavily SBA-loan-financed (U.S. Small Business Administration).[15] Full unit economics and diligence guidance are in the 812310 primer.

---

6. Demand drivers

Unchanged from the child: renters without in-unit laundry are the single biggest driver (roughly 60–70% of laundromat customers),[9] alongside housing stock and homeownership trends, dense-metro household formation, large-capacity/bulky-item demand, mild counter-cyclicality, the growth of wash-dry-fold and delivery, and payment modernization (card/app conversion lifting throughput and pricing power).[6] See 812310, §6.

---

7. Regulation

Day-to-day laundromats are lightly regulated (local licensing, zoning, building/fire/plumbing/gas codes, wastewater discharge, accessibility). The exposures that actually matter — water and sewer rates / drought restrictions (the largest cost line), Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Title III accessibility, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rules for attended and route operations, and the federal perchloroethylene ("perc," or PCE) drycleaning-solvent phase-out under the Toxic Substances Control Act (which mainly hits the staffed dry cleaners of adjacent code 812320, not self-service laundromats) — are all detailed at 812310, §7.[18][18]

---

8. Consolidation

The pattern is the child's: storefronts stay fragmented (tens of thousands of mom-and-pop, single-store owners; no dominant national laundromat brand), while route/multifamily is consolidated into two private-equity-backed nationals, the equipment layer is concentrating (Alliance's October 2025 IPO put a public price on the sector's most important supplier), and franchising is arriving (WaveMax, Tide Cleaners, ZIPS).[6][10][16][17] The durable scale economics accrue to equipment, laundry-room platforms, payment/monitoring systems, and routes — not to a nationwide chain of storefronts. See 812310, §8.

---

9. Risks

The child's risk set carries straight up: utility-cost inflation (the number-one operating risk), capital intensity and rising equipment cost, lease risk, the slow secular erosion of the base as new apartments add in-unit laundry and homeownership rises, operational hazards in cash-heavy unattended stores, technology-transition/cyber risk in the card/app conversion, the structural decline of the drycleaning side, and private-deal risk — especially the common error of confusing supplier growth (equipment makers, platforms) with growth in 812310 storefront revenue.[8][9] Full detail in 812310, §9.

---

10. How to invest & outlook

Public-market routes. You cannot buy a listed laundromat operator; the public proxies are one layer removed — bets on equipment demand, consumables, brands, and industry health. The names to study are Alliance Laundry (ALH), EVI Industries (EVI), and the diversified giants Ecolab (ECL) and Procter & Gamble (PG) — read price-to-earnings (P/E) and enterprise-value-to-EBITDA (EV/EBITDA) multiples against each company's actual business mix, not against "laundromats."[10][11][12][15]

Private-market routes (where this industry mostly lives). Buy or build a single store (SBA-financed), buy a franchise (a Federal Trade Commission Franchise Disclosure Document applies — not passive ownership), buy the real estate plus the business, assemble a portfolio via a search fund or small private-equity roll-up, or supply the industry with equipment, financing, and payment technology.

Outlook (forward-looking judgment). Expect what this has long been: a stable, cash-generative, low-growth, income-style industry rather than a growth play. Tailwinds — a high renter share, card/app modernization, growth in wash-dry-fold and delivery, and a consolidation premium — are offset by utility-cost inflation, the slow erosion of the customer base, and high capital intensity. Because 81231 is a single-child pass-through, this judgment is identical to 812310's; go there for the complete treatment.

---

Sources

Drawn from the child primer (812310). Numbering matches that primer.

1. U.S. Census Bureau. "North American Industry Classification System — 812310 (and adjacent 812320, 812331, 812332, 333310, 335220)." NAICS 2022. https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=812310&year=2022
2. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns (CBP), 2023 — NAICS 812310: establishments (10,890), employment (41,351), annual payroll ($1,089,970 thousand), Q1 payroll ($264,412 thousand). https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/2023/econ/cbp/2023-cbp.html
3. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census — NAICS 812310: receipts ($5,497,369 thousand), firms (9,538), concentration ratios (CR4 30.8%, CR8 33.5%, CR20 37.5%, CR50 42.4%; HHI suppressed). https://data.census.gov/table/ECNSIZE2022.EC2200SIZECONCEN?q=EC2200SIZECONCEN
4. U.S. Census Bureau. "Nonemployer Statistics — program overview and methodology." https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/nonemployer-statistics.html
5. Coin Laundry Association (CLA). "Industry Overview" and Laundry Industry Survey, 2024–2026. https://laundryassociation.org/for-investors/industry-overview/
6. ProjectionHub / KMF Business Advisors / Metrobi. "Laundromat financial statistics: revenue, utilities, and profit margins," 2025–2026. https://www.projectionhub.com/post/9-laundromat-financial-statistics
7. Cents / The Laundry Boss. "Laundromat demographics, ownership, buildout cost, and customer mix (~60–70% renters)," 2025. https://www.trycents.com/our-2-cents/laundromat-demographics
8. Alliance Laundry Holdings (NYSE: ALH). IPO coverage (~$1.6B revenue, ~40% N.A. equipment share, Oct 2025) and Form 10-K. https://www.iposcoop.com/the-ipo-buzz-alliance-laundry-prices-upsized-ipo-at-22-top-of-range/
9. EVI Industries, Inc. (NYSE American: EVI). Company overview and SEC filings, 2025. https://www.evi-ind.com/
10. Ecolab Inc. (NYSE: ECL). "Commercial Laundry Industry Solutions." https://www.ecolab.com/industries/commercial-laundries
11. Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG). Tide Cleaners franchise brand; Form 10-K FY2025. https://tidecleaners.com/en-us/our-difference/who-we-are
12. CSC ServiceWorks — route/multifamily structure and ownership history. https://www.cscsw.com/services/
13. WASH — company overview and EQT sale to Northleaf Capital Partners and AVALT (2025). https://www.wash.com/company-overview/
14. Dexter Laundry — private, employee-owned commercial-equipment maker and financier. https://dexter.com/about-us/who-we-are/
15. BizBuySell / Raincatcher / KMF Business Advisors. "Laundromat valuation benchmarks: SDE and EBITDA multiples, buyer types, SBA financing," 2025–2026. https://www.bizbuysell.com/learning-center/valuation-benchmarks/laundromats-coin-laundry/
16. WaveMAX Laundry / Tide Franchise / ZIPS — franchise pages and disclosure summaries, 2025–2026. https://wavemaxlaundry.com/franchise/
17. Federal Trade Commission. "A Consumer's Guide to Buying a Franchise" (FDD requirement — 23 items, 14-day delivery). https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/consumers-guide-buying-franchise
18. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "Risk Management for Perchloroethylene (PCE) under TSCA" — final rule Dec 2024; phase-out dates. https://www.epa.gov/assessing-and-managing-chemicals-under-tsca/risk-management-perchloroethylene-pce
19. ADA.gov. "Americans with Disabilities Act Title III Regulations" (laundromats and dry cleaners as public accommodations). https://www.ada.gov/law-and-regs/regulations/title-iii-regulations/