Sample issue

Issue #02 — Reading a laundromat P&L like an investor

The seller's P&L is lying to you. Here's how to read it.

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The lead story: normalize or walk away

Every laundromat for sale comes with a P&L. Almost none of them are usable as presented. The seller's bookkeeper (often the seller) has spent years optimizing that P&L for taxes, not for truth. Your job as a buyer is to rebuild it into something an investor would recognize: Seller's Discretionary Earnings, normalized.

Here's the rebuild, line by line:

Revenue: split it into three streams. A serious laundromat P&L has (a) self-service vend revenue, (b) wash-dry-fold / drop-off revenue, and (c) commercial accounts. If the seller hands you one blended "sales" number, that's your first red flag — you can't underwrite what you can't see. Wash-dry-fold carries higher margins but real labor cost; commercial is lumpy and concentrated. Ask for the split. Then ask for it by month, for 24 months, to see seasonality.

Owner labor: add it back — then subtract the real cost. The classic distortion: the owner works the counter 40 hours a week "for free," so the P&L shows no labor cost and inflated profit. Normalize by pricing what it would cost to hire someone to do exactly what the owner does. If the store can't pay a manager and still cash-flow, you're not buying a business — you're buying a job.

The phantom expenses. Family members on payroll who don't work there. The seller's car, phone, and "business trips" running through the store. Personal insurance. These get added back to earnings — but document each one, because the bank's underwriter will ask.

The missing expenses. This is where sellers get creative in the other direction. Deferred maintenance (that 12-year-old boiler [VERIFY — illustrative] isn't going to replace itself), below-market rent from a related-party landlord, no reserve for machine replacement. A store showing 40% margins with original equipment from 2009 isn't a great business — it's a capex time bomb [VERIFY — margins figure illustrative].

Utilities: the tell. Water, sewer, gas, and electric are the industry's No. 1 expense — American Coin-Op's industry survey ranks utilities ahead of rent and labor, at roughly 20–30% of revenue. Get 12 months of actual utility bills, not the P&L line. Compare per-machine or per-revenue-dollar against whatever benchmarks you can find — this is exactly the dataset we're building with our operator survey, because right now nobody publishes it.

The math that matters. Normalized SDE = reported net + owner salary/benefits + personal expenses + one-time items − market-rate manager salary − deferred maintenance reserve − capex reserve. Value the business on a multiple of that number, not the seller's.

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Short items

Multiples are creeping up. With PE entering modestly and corporate-escapee buyers bidding (per CLA's Full Cycle, Sept 2026), listed stores are commanding richer multiples than the old 3–4× SDE rule of thumb — BizBuySell data on 855 laundromat sales (2021–2025) shows a median 3.50× SDE and a 2025 average around 4.1× (via KMF Business Advisors). Underwrite conservatively; the buyer paying 4× or more with an SBA loan at today's rates needs everything to go right.

Card systems change the P&L shape. Stores converting from quarters to card/app payment report cleaner revenue tracking and less theft — but the processor takes its cut and the hardware isn't free. When you see a coin-only store, price the conversion into your offer. We'll do the full card-ROI math in a future issue.

Our benchmark survey is live. We're collecting real operator numbers — revenue, vend prices, utility costs, machine counts — to build the dataset this industry has never had. Takes ~10 minutes, responses are anonymous, and every respondent gets the benchmark report free. (Link in the footer.)

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By the numbers

Figure	Value	Source
US laundromat industry size	~$7.3B	IBISWorld, 2026
US stores	~30,000	Coin Laundry Association
Typical indie newsletter paid tier	$50–$150/yr	Market research, 2026
Substack paid subs, Q1 2026	8.4M (+68% YoY)	Company reporting

Illustrative P&L benchmarks (margins by line item, utility ratios) are exactly what our survey will establish. Until then: [VERIFY] on anything a broker tells you.

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Operator takeaway

Never make an offer on a seller's P&L. Make it on your normalized rebuild. The three documents that matter: 24 months of bank statements, 12 months of utility bills, and the lease. Everything else is a starting point for questions.

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Suds & Cents is the independent intelligence brief for laundromat owners and investors. Next week: new vs. used vs. retool — the equipment math nobody puts in writing.