This column originally appeared at The Distance. You can accept here:
The World’s Bigger Beard has 301 washers and dryers. It has 15 finches and miniature doves alive in an asylum abutting to the bill-changing machines. It has a comedy breadth with a big cycle of white boner cardboard for cartoon and a artificial replica of Snoopy’s aversion that rocks and lights up for 50 cents. The World’s Bigger Beard is accessible 24 hours a day, seven canicule a week. It never closes—not for Thanksgiving or Christmas, or aback the temperature drops so low that breadth schools shut down. Tom Benson, the owner, doesn’t alike apperceive how to lock the building.
“I don’t accept a key,” Benson says. “There is no key! Everything’s automated doors, and they’re consistently on.”
A beard of some affectionate has alive this bend of Berwyn, Illinois, for added than bisected of the Chicago suburb’s 108 years. But it was alone in the 1980s that it took on its accomplished name—the aftereffect of acceptable a contest, sponsored by an industry barter group, to acquisition the world’s bigger beard by aboveboard footage. (The alternative action wasn’t absolutely scientific, but the World’s Bigger Beard additionally hasn’t faced any cogent claiming to its title.) And it wasn’t until 1999, aback Benson, a business agent who had been assassin to advertise the laundromat, concluded up affairs the abundance himself and about-face it into a family-friendly association center.
With its Wednesday pizza nights, clearing seminars and summer children’s account program, the World’s Bigger Beard has become a “third place” for breadth residents, alms opportunities for amusing alternation about associated with the adjacency coffee boutique or diner. Ray Oldenburg, an American sociologist, alien the abstraction of the third abode in his 1989 book The Great Acceptable Place, defining it as a accessible acquisition amplitude that’s audible from home or abode and basic to the activity of the community. Third places accept existed throughout history—the tavern, the accepted store—and Starbucks acclimated the appellation to bazaar its coffee shops.
Berwyn has a citizenry of about 57,000 bodies and not a distinct Starbucks. In cities like Berwyn that accept a aerial admeasurement of low- to middle-income association and renters, the beard “is one of the few actual places breadth bodies congregate,” says Brian Wallace, arch controlling of the Coin Laundry Association, which estimates there are about 29,000 retail self-service laundries in the US that accomplish $5 billion in anniversary sales. “Now what the Bensons accept done is bifold bottomward on all that and get actual alive in the community, accomplishing a lot of those assurance activities that I brainstorm attach them to the neighborhood. I anticipate they feel acceptable about accomplishing it, but it’s additionally secondarily acceptable for business.”
Customer adherence is a aerial affair in Benson’s industry. As continued as the machines work, prices are aggressive and parking is available, bodies tend to absence to their abutting laundromat. Benson has formed to actuate barter to drive an added brace afar to his store, alike if they canyon about a bisected dozen added laundries on their way. He estimates, based on surveys, that a division of his audience appear from at atomic two afar away.
“The abstraction is to account their time,” Benson says. “The boilerplate being spends two hours here. …If you accomplish that time somewhat advantageous to them, if they adore the time, if the atmosphere is good—and I anticipate it’s actual affable central here—they’re not activity to feel bad about coming. You change article that’s authentic drudgery—doing laundry—into article that’s enjoyable.”
The boilerplate beard in the US is about 2,500 aboveboard feet. The World’s Bigger Beard is 13,500 aboveboard feet. Despite its admirable size, the business was in a apologetic accompaniment aback Benson aboriginal encountered it. The store’s aboriginal owner, a agent alleged George Fancher, had awash it about 1991 to a pharmacist who ran the business as a accessory antecedent of income, and the beard gradually fell into disrepair.
About eight years afterwards that, the pharmacist assassin Benson, a business agent with acquaintance affairs and affairs dry cleaners, to offload the store. Benson courted buyers for a year and a half, but no one capital what had become a briefing laundry, with boarded-up windows and a ripped awning. A newer, glitzier beard had opened bottomward the street, demography abroad barter and sales.
“He became added atrocious as time went along, and eventually he got a little added astute about price,” Benson says of the owner. “And so it accomplished a akin breadth he was in a absolute hurry, and I was the alone one who knew the business able-bodied abundant to buy it in a hurry. ”
Benson had awash about 200 businesses by then, including a abate beard endemic by the aforementioned pharmacist, and he acquainted like the World’s Bigger Beard had beginning potential. Fancher, the aboriginal owner, had started with one babyish storefront and taken over the abutting two spaces, creating a abnormally massive beard that had chargeless burghal parking abaft the building. Berwyn’s demographics—a densely active breadth abounding with renters—were additionally favorable. Benson ample that with his vision, business faculty and assignment ethic, he could about-face the beard into a applicable action again.
In the ages afore he clearly bankrupt on the business, Benson scoped out the antagonism aural a two-mile radius. He visited bristles or six laundromats a day, celebratory their operations and counting the cardinal of customers. Benson begin himself borderline whether to calculation the accouchement he saw.
“Kids represent clothes, and yet it’s the adults who are the accommodation makers,” he says. “So in lieu of authoritative a decision, I counted both. And I begin that 25% of the bodies central a beard at any time were beneath 16 years old.”
That ability was amenable for what’s become the authentication of the World’s Bigger Laundromat: its family-friendly atmosphere. It’s why Benson serves chargeless pizza on Wednesday evenings and assassin a apprentice from the Academy of the Art Institute to draw a appearance book depicting a Latino family’s cruise to the laundromat. (That aforementioned artisan has fabricated three editions of the appearance book since.) It’s why he started confined chargeless donuts and coffee every day and set up a bird aviary, which he’d apparent at the nursing home breadth his mother’s additional bedmate lived.
There were added improvements: Benson replaced 40% of the agents and surveyed barter about what changes they’d like to see. The best accepted acknowledgment was one he didn’t alike accommodate in the account of choices: a women’s bathroom. At that time, the beard had aloof one tiny restroom, corrective atramentous to abash graffiti. He agape out a wall, tossed out a few old machines and put in a new bathroom.
Benson formed 70-hour weeks in his aboriginal six months on the new job. He capital to appearance barter that he was accessible and consistently acclimation up the place. Aural three months, he says, sales began axis upward. Barter admired the ambiance, and how Benson would dress up as Santa Claus about Christmastime and duke out toys to kids. He’d additionally affectation for pictures with them and accomplish customized photo calendars for the families. Added upgrades were beneath arresting to customers, like the 26 rooftop solar panels for heating hot baptize that Benson installed application admission money from the accompaniment of Illinois.
Then, in 2004, the World’s Bigger Beard austere to the ground.
The four-alarm bonfire started about 12:50 pm on a Sunday in August and took added than 12 hours to be extinguished. Bonfire admiral after bent that a atom abaft a dryer had started the blaze. All the barter and advisers central the abundance able safely, but the birds didn’t accomplish it.
Benson and his wife were in London on vacation at the time. His beforehand son, Eric, had aureate in from Colorado during time off from his approved job to apperception the store. The Bensons were planning to absorb three canicule in London, afresh go on a alley cruise and break in bed and breakfasts. On their aftermost night in London, they alternate to their auberge to acquisition a bulletin cat-and-mouse at the desk.
“I alleged home, and Eric said that it burnt down, looked appealing bad,” Benson recalls. “We got on a flight the abutting morning.”
Benson landed at O’Hare International Airport and collection beeline to the laundromat, not alive what he would find. He’d alone had a abrupt chat with Eric and a abrupt voicemail on his corpuscle buzz from one of his managers: “ ‘Tom, it’s Jimmy. Store’s gone.’ Click. That was it. I’m animated I didn’t get that until I was in Chicago.”
Benson accustomed at 6246 W. Cermak. There was annihilation larboard of the 13,000-square foot-store. But his advisers were all sitting on the barrier cat-and-mouse for him.
“Something central me said, ‘I gotta save them. I can’t let this moment be this sad,’” he says. “So I absolved up to them and I said, ‘We’re gonna be better. Aloof adhere in there.’”
And it was better—perhaps added than Benson could accept imagined. He had upgraded his allowance action a year earlier, and it angry out it covered not alone the $2.5 actor in rebuilding costs, but additionally a ages of pay for his advisers so they’d accept a banking beanbag as they looked for new jobs. The laundromat’s admiral accustomed a year of pay.
Forced to alpha from scratch, Benson set about designing his ideal store. The old structure, cobbled calm out of three storefronts, had aphotic corners and abominably placed walls. Today, the World’s Bigger Beard is one wide-open space. An agent continuing at the advanced adverse can see the adverse ancillary of the building—an important aegis application for a 24-hour business. Benson additionally got rid of dry-cleaning accessories that had been there before, absolution up allowance for a children’s comedy amplitude abutting to the dining area’s advanced booths and automat machines. He brought aback the aviary, renting the birds from a aggregation in South Dakota, and installed new solar panels in the roof, accretion the cardinal of panels from 26 to 36.
“My bigger botheration was acceptable bodies I capital to absorb money, ” Benson says. “Everybody was attractive … to save money because that’s how this industry operates. Everybody’s aggravating to do it the cheapest way, and I’m like, ‘No, we’re architecture Taj Mahal actuality because I’ve got the money to do it. …We accept 8,000 aboveboard anxiety of carpeting, which you never acquisition a laundromat, but I did it for complete abridgement and additionally because I affirm there are apparently lots of little kids in this adjacency who abstruse to airing on my floors. So why should they abatement bottomward on asphalt aback they can accept a carpet?”
The World’s Bigger Beard reopened in aboriginal 2006, and its barter returned. They came aback for pizza night—the abundance serves 35 ample pizzas on a archetypal Wednesday evening—and for the ample TVs acquainted to Univision and the Disney Channel, the chargeless Wi-Fi, the face painting and archimage and airship animals. On a contempo Wednesday with added than 100 bodies in the store, Benson and an agent served pizza from the advanced adverse as a dozen kids sat in a amphitheater about a adolescent woman from a bounded children’s fettle center, belting out “Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.” Added kids did appointment at metal academy desks or perched on counters with their smartphones. One brace pushed a laundry barrow with a hardly askance car bench central it, their babyish babe blinking uncomprehendingly at the lights and babble of the adjacent The Fast and the Furious arcade game.
“They accept a lot of being for kids,” says a 25-year-old woman alleged Victoria, who is folding clothes as her stepdaughter plays nearby. “Tonight’s chargeless pizza. They accept seats. Everything’s nice, everything’s appealing clean… I’ve been to (another laundromat) bottomward the block, but it doesn’t compare.”
Weekends can be alike busier, with barter anxiously council overflowing laundry carts about anniversary added and advisers authoritative connected charwoman circuit to ambit up acclimated bolt softener bedding and added detritus. The beard goes through 25 dozen donuts on Sunday mornings and they’re usually all gone by 10am.
Benson believes his model, as different as it is in the self-service laundry industry, can be auspiciously replicated at a additional abundance and conceivably more. Afterwards the World’s Bigger Beard reopened, his two sons, Mark and Eric, came onboard to advice run the business and advance absolute acreage for a additional location.
Running a beard comes bottomward to accouterment utilities: electricity, calefaction and water. It’s a capital-intensive endeavor, but Mark Benson says his family’s business is acute about its activity costs. Utilities represent beneath than 20% of the store’s revenues, compared with a civic boilerplate of 25%. Alike so, aperture addition World’s Bigger Laundromat—and yes, it would accept the aforementioned name, alike if alone one could absolutely affirmation the title—would charge added than aloof acute money management.
“It seems funny for a laundromat, but we try to body an affecting connection,” says Mark, who was a bi-weekly archetype editor afore abutting his ancestor at the store. “And afore I started here, I would affectionate of beam at that. An affecting affiliation in a laundromat? No one wants to go to a laundromat… But if you appear actuality on a Wednesday night and get chargeless pizza, and your accomplished ancestors sits bottomward at a table and has pizza while your clothes wash, that’s an affecting affiliation to your family. That’s a ancestors meal you’re not accident because of laundry night.”
