Reference data

Laundromat industry statistics

How many laundromats there are, how small they are, where they are, and what buyers actually borrow to acquire or open one. Every figure is traced to a public federal dataset and dated, and the underlying tables are downloadable.

Census figures cover NAICS 812310, Coin-Operated Laundries and Drycleaners: County Business Patterns 2023 and Statistics of U.S. Businesses 2022. SBA figures are computed from SBA’s 7(a) FOIA loan-level file, snapshot 30 June 2026. Published 4 September 2026.

10,890US coin-operated laundry establishments with paid employees (2023)

75.4%of them have fewer than five employees

$442,700median SBA 7(a) approval amount for the industry, FY2020–FY2025

57.3%of those approvals were above $350,000

The industry

Roughly eleven thousand laundromats, and almost all of them are tiny

The Census Bureau counts 10,890 coin-operated laundry and drycleaner establishments with paid employees. Together they employ 41,351 people and pay $1.09 billion a year — an average of 3.8 employees per location.

8,207

establishments — 75.4% of the industry — employ fewer than five people. Add the next band and 94.0% employ fewer than ten. This is an industry of owner-operators, not chains.

9,639

firms operate the 10,735 establishments counted in the 2022 business register — about 1.11 locations per firm. Only 11 firms in the whole industry have 500 or more employees.

$26,359

average annual payroll per employee. Attendant and counter work dominates the payroll, which is one reason the business is usually described in terms of equipment and rent rather than labour.

US establishments in NAICS 812310 by employment size, 2023. Census suppresses the 250–499 band for this industry, so the published bands sum to 10,888 of 10,890. Source: Census County Business Patterns 2023.

What this count does and does not include. County Business Patterns counts establishments with paid employees. A laundromat run entirely by its owner with no payroll is outside the dataset by construction, so 10,890 is a floor on the number of laundromats operating in the US, not a total. Market-research estimates that put the figure higher are usually counting non-employer businesses too. When you see a store count quoted, check which of the two it is — they are not interchangeable, and the difference is large.

Geography

One state holds a fifth of the country’s laundromats

New York has 2,213 establishments — 20.3% of every coin-operated laundry in the United States, well ahead of California’s 1,235, in a state with a far smaller small-business base. The ranking does not track population, and this page does not attempt to say why.

Laundromat establishments and SBA lending by state.
State	Establishments	Share of US	Employees each	SBA approvals	Median approval
New York	2,213	20.3%	2.6	65	$400,000
California	1,235	11.3%	4.3	168	$607,500
Texas	869	8.0%	4.1	93	$705,000
Florida	705	6.5%	3.5	32	$384,500
New Jersey	589	5.4%	3.7	27	$275,000
Illinois	474	4.4%	4.0	35	$412,000
North Carolina	309	2.8%	3.4	11	$955,000
Pennsylvania	309	2.8%	3.7	31	$400,000
Massachusetts	283	2.6%	4.3	20	$219,000
Virginia	277	2.5%	4.3	8	$662,500
Michigan	271	2.5%	4.2	21	$88,000
Ohio	264	2.4%	5.0	31	$384,000
Georgia	258	2.4%	3.4	34	$495,000
Maryland	219	2.0%	5.0	11	$1,000,000
Indiana	177	1.6%	5.4	20	$360,000

Fifteen largest states by establishment count. Establishments and employees are Census 2023; SBA columns are FY2020–FY2025 approvals. Treat a median built on a handful of approvals with care — several states here have fewer than 15, and the full per-state counts are in the CSV.

The lending map is not the establishment map. New York has 20.3% of the establishments but only 7.5% of the SBA 7(a) approvals in this industry (65 of 869). California is the reverse: 11.3% of establishments and 19.3% of the approvals. New York’s laundromats are also the smallest in the country by headcount, at 2.6 employees each against California’s 4.3.

Financing

What laundromat buyers actually borrow

Published cost guides for opening a laundromat usually quote a range starting around $50,000. That describes the small end. Across 869 SBA 7(a) approvals to this industry in FY2020–FY2025, the median approval was $442,700 and a quarter were above $963,750.

$442,700

median approval amount across 869 approvals totalling $676.5 million. The mean is $778,516 and the 25th percentile is $187,500. This is the amount SBA approved, not a purchase price, a project cost or a startup budget.

57.3%

of approvals were above $350,000, and 14.2% were above $1.5 million. Only 22.4% were at or below $150,000.

120 months

median term — ten years. Laundromat lending is structured around long-lived assets: machines, a build-out, sometimes the property. 90.7% of approvals were recorded as secured.

20.4%

came through SBA Express, the fast small-dollar channel, against 33.0% of all 7(a) approvals nationally in FY2025. These are not quick working-capital loans.

SBA 7(a) approvals to NAICS 812310, FY2020–FY2025, by approval amount. Cancelled approvals excluded. Computed by Fundur from SBA 7(a) & 504 FOIA loan-level data, snapshot 30 June 2026.

Read the label, not the headline. $442,700 is the median SBA 7(a) approval amount for businesses SBA classified in NAICS 812310. It is not the median cost of opening a laundromat, not a purchase price and not a project cost. Buyers who use cash, seller financing, conventional bank debt or equipment finance are not in this dataset at all, and an SBA-financed acquisition of an established store is a different transaction from an equipment-only fit-out.

Who borrows

Two in five approvals go to a business that does not exist yet

42.6% of approvals went to a new business of two years or less, or to a startup the loan itself would open. Another 22.3% financed a change of ownership — someone buying an existing laundromat.

SBA 7(a) approvals to NAICS 812310 by business age, FY2020 to FY2025.
Business status at approval	Approvals	Share	Median approval
Existing or more than 2 years old	297	34.2%	$350,000
Change of Ownership	194	22.3%	$500,000
New Business or 2 years or less	187	21.5%	$412,000
Startup, Loan Funds will Open Business	183	21.1%	$611,000

The largest loans go to businesses that do not exist yet. Approvals for a startup the loan would open carry a median of $611,000 — above both change-of-ownership acquisitions ($500,000) and loans to established businesses ($350,000). Building a laundromat from scratch means buying every machine at once; buying one means inheriting them.

Approvals by fiscal year

SBA 7(a) approvals to NAICS 812310 by fiscal year.
Fiscal year	Approvals	Total approved	Median approval
FY2020	127	$96.2m	$433,100
FY2021	164	$129.6m	$494,150
FY2022	108	$95.9m	$551,000
FY2023	160	$125.7m	$400,000
FY2024	144	$85.5m	$326,250
FY2025	166	$143.6m	$500,000

Establishments by state (CSV) SBA by loan size (CSV) SBA by state (CSV) SBA by business age (CSV)

Method

How these numbers were produced

Industry definition. Everything on this page is NAICS 812310, Coin-Operated Laundries and Drycleaners, and only that code. It excludes 812320 (drycleaning and laundry services except coin-operated) and 812330 (linen and uniform supply). Those are different businesses with different economics, and figures that fold them in are not laundromat figures.

Establishment, employment and payroll counts. Census County Business Patterns 2023, US and state files, all legal forms of organisation. CBP counts establishments with paid employees as of the March reference period. Some cells are suppressed by Census for disclosure reasons; where that happens on this page it is stated rather than filled in.

Firm counts. Census Statistics of U.S. Businesses 2022, which distinguishes firms from establishments and is what makes the 1.11-locations-per-firm figure possible.

SBA figures. Computed by Fundur from SBA’s 7(a) & 504 FOIA loan-level file, 7(a) extract, snapshot dated 30 June 2026 (sha256 6c1e9132b5141a19…). From 388,338 rows we remove 391 byte-identical duplicate rows, keep NAICS 812310, keep fiscal years 2020 to 2025, require a positive gross approval amount, and exclude the 137 approvals recorded as cancelled and never disbursed — 13.6% of the industry’s approvals in the period. That leaves 869 approvals. Medians are reported rather than means because the distribution is right-skewed.

Duplicate handling. De-duplication is on the full row, all 42 fields. De-duplicating the SBA file on any column subset destroys genuinely distinct loans; our working note on that is public in the derivation.

Consistency. The SBA figures here are the same population, computed the same way, as the SBA section on our laundromat financing page. If the two ever disagree, one of them is wrong and we would like to know.

What these numbers cannot tell you

Not a cost of entry. The SBA figures are approval amounts for businesses that obtained SBA-guaranteed financing. Cash buyers, seller-financed deals, conventional bank loans and equipment-only finance are absent. Approvals also skew toward larger transactions because that is what the programme is used for.
Not a store count. CBP counts employer establishments. Owner-only laundromats with no payroll are excluded, so 10,890 is a floor.
No revenue or profit figures. Neither CBP nor the SBA file contains revenue for this industry at this level, so this page publishes none. Widely quoted per-store revenue figures come from market-research estimates, not from a public federal dataset, and we are not in a position to verify them.
No survival rates. BLS Business Employment Dynamics does not publish establishment survival at six-digit NAICS, so no laundromat-specific survival rate can be computed from public data. We would rather leave the section out than substitute an "Other Services" sector figure and call it laundromats.
Approved is not funded. Cancelled approvals are excluded here; 137 of the industry’s FY2020–FY2025 approvals were cancelled and never disbursed.
Different vintages. Census figures are 2023 (CBP) and 2022 (SUSB); SBA figures run to FY2025. They are not a single snapshot of one moment and should not be combined into ratios without saying so.
Association, never cause. The state and business-age patterns here are measured differences. Nothing on this page identifies why they exist.

Reuse and citation

You are welcome to reproduce any figure, chart or table on this page in reporting, research or educational material, with attribution and a link back to this page. No permission request is needed, and the underlying tables are downloadable above.

One request rather than a condition: if you quote the $442,700 figure, please carry the label with it. It is a median SBA approval amount, not the cost of opening a laundromat, and it is the single easiest number on this page to repeat incorrectly.

Suggested citation: Fundur, “Laundromat Industry Statistics,” published 4 September 2026. https://fundur.com/resources/laundromat-industry-statistics/

Sources

Every source on this page

US Census Bureau — County Business Patterns 2023 · US and state files by industry, NAICS 812310
US Census Bureau — Statistics of U.S. Businesses 2022 · firms and establishments by enterprise employment size
US Small Business Administration — 7(a) & 504 FOIA loan-level data · 7(a) FY2020–present extract, snapshot 30 June 2026
Fundur aggregate downloads — establishments by state, SBA by loan size, SBA by state, SBA by business age · CSV

Fundur is a financing marketplace, not a lender. If you are working out how a laundromat purchase would actually be financed, our laundromat financing page covers the products and the timeline, and SBA lending by state shows how 7(a) volume varies across the country. To see how laundromat approvals compare with every other industry — the FY2025 laundromat median sits well above the $182,000 national figure — see SBA lending by industry.

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