Enter your weekly WDF pounds processed, attendant labor hours dedicated to WDF (intake + sorting + drying supervision + folding + packaging + customer notification), and your fully-loaded hourly wage. The calculator returns pounds processed per labor hour, labor cost per pound, and WDF gross margin at your current pricing. Industry healthy is 12–18 lb/hr; top quartile operations run 22+ lb/hr through workflow optimization and equipment choice.
Why It Matters
WDF labor cost is the single biggest profit lever in service-based laundromat operations. The difference between 12 lb/hr and 22 lb/hr at $18/hr fully-loaded labor is $0.68 per pound — at 800 lb/week WDF volume, that's $28,000/year of contribution margin difference between a healthy and an excellent WDF operation. Most operators have no idea where they sit on this curve.
How to Improve Efficiency
(1) Larger washers and stack dryers reduce per-pound machine touch time. (2) Folding tables sized to garment type (shirts vs. towels vs. linens) cut sort time. (3) Color-coded customer bags eliminate re-sorting. (4) Scheduled batch processing (rather than one-at-a-time) compounds efficiency. (5) POS-integrated customer notification automates the 'order ready' step. The calculator quantifies expected lift from each lever.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I measure WDF labor hours separately from coin-side labor?
Have attendants clock in/out under different categories, or estimate by observing 1–2 typical days. Most operators dramatically underestimate WDF labor — when measured properly, it's typically 60–80% of total attendant labor in WDF-active stores.
Should this include delivery driver time?
Pickup-delivery time is a separate cost center. Track it separately and price delivery as an explicit add-on rather than bundling into per-pound rate. The calculator focuses on in-store WDF productivity only.
What does it cost?
Free. Save and export with a free WashBizHub account.