Operations · Staff training
Laundry POS Systems & Training Attendants with Omer Khan
Four stores, a production space in the pipeline and a straightforward test for any counter system: how long does it take a new hire to run an order without help.
- ●Omer Khan evaluates laundry POS systems by how fast a new attendant becomes useful, not by how long the feature list is.
- ●Machine start integrations let his counter staff take payment and start a machine for a customer, which changes what the attendant role covers.
- ●Training is continuous rather than an onboarding event, because coverage shifts and unfamiliar stores are where consistency breaks down.
- ●He sees self-service and wash and fold as separate growth levers, and is building a dedicated production space to stop the two competing for machines.
- ●The practical lesson: the counter system is a training tool first. If it takes a week to teach, it costs you every time somebody new starts.
Omer Khan runs Skyline Laundromats and judges laundry POS systems on one thing above all others, which is what a new attendant can do with them unsupervised. This article covers how he trains staff, why machine start integrations changed his floor, how he thinks about self-service versus wash and fold growth and what he is planning next with a dedicated production space.
This article is based on an episode
Omer Khan – Laundry POS Systems and Training Attendants
Laundromat Ownership · Episode 15 · with Omer Khan, Skyline Laundromats
Who Is Omer Khan?
Omer Khan is a second-generation laundromat owner who runs four fully attended Skyline Laundromats in Atlanta alongside his father, who started the business. Omer grew up pulling quarters on weekends, spent a few years in corporate America after college, and has now been full-time in laundry for more than a decade. His team runs about 24 to 25 people across the stores, the delivery drivers, and the overnight processing staff.
Two of his four stores are open 24/7 with a night attendant, and all four are fully attended. He owns the real estate under the two stores his father acquired first and leases the other two. As Omer put it, ownership brings a different kind of pride, but it also brings a different kind of responsibility — including the parking-lot resurfacing and underground-pipe repairs that come with older properties.
Owning vs Leasing — and the Hidden Costs of Both
Omer is candid that owning the property is not free money. A full parking-lot replacement ran him in the range of $45,000 to $50,000, and five years later he’s resealing and recoating those same lots. At one center built on old cast-iron underground pipe, a backup forced him to dig up a section of the lot and shut down for 14 days with no insurance claim and no makeup revenue. In his words, “a loss is a loss and you just gotta ride it out.”
Ian shared a parallel from Liberty Laundry: a water line leak between the building and the main line that cost roughly $10,000 and closed a store for half a day. The takeaway from both operators is the same — whether you own or lease, build a reserve for the infrastructure failures you can’t predict.
🔑 Insider Key
For Omer’s owned locations, parking-lot work alone ran $45K–$50K per lot. Owning real estate is an asset, but in his experience the capital-expense calendar never really stops.
Opening a Laundromat Processing Facility: Why It Works and Why It Fails
At Skyline, pickup and delivery is now starting to outgrow self-service at the single location where Omer processes those orders. That growth created a problem: filling the front-of-store washers and dryers with delivery orders runs off self-serve customers. A laundromat processing facility is a dedicated, non-retail space optimized specifically for fulfilling high-volume wash-dry-fold and pickup-and-delivery orders. Omer’s fix is to convert the storage space behind that laundromat into exactly that — a dedicated processing facility, moving roughly 80% of operations to the back so the retail floor can breathe again. He says he wishes he’d done it five years ago.
Ian has watched this play out across his customers for a decade, and he drew a sharp line. Operators who already have laundromats — and therefore already have demand and revenue — tend to succeed when they add a processing facility to supply that demand. The people he’s seen fail are the ones who try to open a delivery-only facility first, building supply before demand exists. In Ian’s experience, customer acquisition for delivery comes slower and costs more, so launching with no retail base behind it rarely pencils out. You can read how the software side of that operation works on the Wash-Dry-Fold POS pickup and delivery feature page.
Omer’s advice for anyone planning a combined space: if you’re going into 2,500–3,000 square feet you can manage, but you’ll have to run fewer machines to carve out a dedicated processing area. If you can go 4,000–5,000 square feet, dedicate part of it to pickup and delivery from day one so you have room to grow.
🔑 Insider Key
Based on Ian’s customer conversations over 10 years, a processing facility works when it’s added to existing laundromats with real demand. The delivery-only-first model is the one he’s repeatedly seen struggle.
Switching Laundry POS Systems Without Losing Your Best Attendant
When Omer moved his stores from Clover to a purpose-built Laundry POS system, the pushback was immediate. One of his employees flatly said she was going to quit rather than learn a new system. Omer’s response was simple: give it a week. Within three days she wasn’t just using it — she was thriving on it, and she remains one of his best employees today.
That’s the reality of changing any laundry POS system. The friction is rarely the software; it’s the change itself. Omer didn’t cave to the threat and he didn’t force it with pressure. He gave the rollout a short runway and let the new laundry POS system prove itself on the floor, which is exactly what happened.
Training Attendants on a New Laundry POS System
Here’s the detail Omer is most proud of. The employee who came around so fast wasn’t trained by a manager or a vendor — she was trained by a Spanish-speaking coworker who spoke limited English. Three days into the switch, that coworker was teaching the system to the very employee who had threatened to walk. If a laundry POS system can be taught attendant-to-attendant, across a language gap, in a matter of days, the training problem mostly solves itself.
That ease of training is by design. Attendants turn over, shifts change, and the people running your counter at 2 a.m. aren’t always the people you hired. A laundry POS system that’s easy to use and easy to train on is what lets a new hire be productive on day one instead of day thirty.
Omer also highlighted what the rebrand-plus-one-system move did for customers: with every store under the Skyline brand on a single laundry POS system, a customer’s information follows them from location to location, and orders get labeled and printed the same way everywhere. He’s a heavy user of credit card on file, which lets longtime residential and commercial customers drop off and walk out while the order bills to their card automatically — the kind of workflow the commercial accounts feature is built around.
🔑 Insider Key
The fastest training Omer saw came attendant-to-attendant: a Spanish-speaking employee with limited English taught the system to a skeptical coworker in three days. Easy training beats forced adoption every time.
When Your POS Provider Builds a Feature Overnight
Omer told the story that, in his words, “has kept me in the door until this day.” At one of his first conferences — the Elevate Conference in Huntington Beach — he mentioned to Brian, co-founder of Wash-Dry-Fold POS, that one feature would make the system more useful. He figured it might take months. Brian tapped him on the shoulder at breakfast the next morning: the feature was already in testing. Twelve hours.
Ian framed why that matters to how the company builds. Wash-Dry-Fold POS builds features that real laundromat owners actually ask for, not speculative tools nobody requested. With Brian plus three additional developers and modern AI tooling, product velocity has only accelerated. Ian was also clear about the flip side: when people who don’t own laundromats ask for features that make no operational sense, the answer is no. The team builds what helps working operators run a tighter business.
Card Systems, Machine Start, and Laundry POS Integrations
Omer’s hardware mix reflects a multi-store reality: two stores on CCI, one hybrid store on Laundroworks, and one quarter-only store he’s finishing a full retool on before adding a card system. He’d love a single card platform across all four, but he hasn’t been able to standardize the loyalty card side yet. He had nothing but good things to say about Steve at CCI — humble, friendly, and easy to work with.
This is where a laundry POS system earns its keep. Ian explained the machine-start integrations the team has built on both sides. With the Laundroworks integration, attendants use the WashLynx app: the order populates, they select it, and start the machine for that order straight from their phone. With the CCI / FasCard integration, the attendant taps the washers and dryers to start on the screen. Both beat handing a single floating card to staff with no record of what it started.
That said, Omer was honest about the limits of reporting. As he put it, no owner is going to sit and read every machine-start report line by line — at some point it becomes a trust system until you have a reason to dig in. The point of machine-start reporting and theft-prevention tools isn’t to police every transaction; it’s to have the record when you need it.
Why Sell Retail at Both the Counter and the Vending Machines
Omer sells soap and snacks at the counter and at the vending machines — and the redundancy is the point. Ian made the case both ways: sometimes the attendant is busy, or the customer simply doesn’t feel like talking that day, so the vending machine captures the sale. Other times the opposite is true — a customer who only leaves the house once a week to do laundry wants the human interaction and will buy a snack at the counter just to chat with the attendant.
Omer keeps his drink, snack, and soap machines on Nayax credit card readers rather than the loyalty card, deliberately. His stores sit at Marta bus stops and near a school bus stop, gas station, and shopping center, so he wants a non-laundry passerby to be able to walk in, buy a drink, and carry on. Capturing that traffic without forcing it onto a card keeps the door open to incremental retail. The retail and till management feature is built for exactly this counter-plus-vending model.
Why ATMs Aren’t Worth the $2 Fees
Ian pulled his ATMs when Liberty Laundry moved to coinless, and he hasn’t missed them. The math is simple: the $2 surcharge wasn’t worth the headache and the type of foot traffic it attracted. He noticed people making special trips specifically to use a standalone ATM rather than their own bank’s — and that wasn’t traffic that helped the business. Neither operator wants customers to feel unsafe, and in Ian’s view the small per-transaction fee didn’t justify the extra disturbance. With a value-add center, customers can load value without a separate cash machine on the wall.
Handling Homeless Activity and the Equipment That Attracts It
At three of Omer’s four stores, homeless activity is a non-issue — people pass through but don’t linger. At one location he’s owned for two years, it’s been a persistent challenge in the parking lot, and city resources are stretched thin. Omer keeps a good relationship with one or two regulars he’ll pay to clean the lot, empty the trash, or break down vending boxes when he’s on site. The problem is the few who harass customers.
His most practical decision: he deliberately did not install a bill breaker in that store’s payment-center wall. A bill breaker invites people to come in, break bills, and loiter, so leaving it out removed the magnet. Omer’s broader point is that being hands-on and “mom and pop” lets him make store-by-store modifications like this — a luxury that gets harder at 20 locations but pays off while you’re close to each store.
🔑 Insider Key
At Omer’s toughest location, leaving the bill breaker out of the payment wall removed a reason for non-customers to come inside and loiter. Equipment choices shape who hangs around your store.
Bill Breaker Jams and a 3D-Printed Fix
Bill breakers are not maintenance-free, and both operators agree on it. At Liberty Laundry, the bill breaker was one of the last things Ian outsourced — for years, when it jammed, the call came to him. They jam when they’re loaded with too many bills and also when they run too low, and often not at the moment of loading but a day later. Brian’s workaround was to 3D-print small bill-shaped inserts that flatten the stack and keep the bills straight, one of those little tricks that keeps a finicky machine running.
The repair side ran through the repair ticket system so issues got logged and assigned instead of lost. Omer’s bill-breaker saga was even longer: one unit was down for nearly a year, shipped to Chicago three or four times before a company in Louisiana finally fixed it. At $8,000–$10,000 a machine, he’s openly questioning whether a bill breaker belongs in his next build-out at all. As Ian noted, there’s no single right formula — pick one or two payment processes that fit your demographics and location and stick with them.
The Two Craziest Laundromat Stories
Omer closed with two stories worth the price of admission. The first: years ago, a thief got onto the roof, opened the metal panel on a commercial AC unit, and crawled through the ceiling beams into the store, cutting the alarm, phone, and camera wires on the way in. He had the place to himself for four or five hours, found the keys to the changer machines, and emptied the quarters — but the front door was a key lock from the inside, so he couldn’t haul the quarter buckets out. He took the cash and left back through the ceiling. The break-in was only discovered when responders asked why the rooftop AC units were open.
The second is more relevant to every operator reading this: a phone scam. Scammers called Omer’s older overnight attendant, knew his name and the staff’s names, got him on both the store phone and his cell so he couldn’t call out, and convinced him Omer was in trouble. They walked him through prying open a coin machine with a crowbar, hauling several thousand dollars in quarters across the street to a Kroger coin machine, cashing it out, and attempting to feed it into a Bitcoin machine. The Bitcoin machine was out of order, and the attendant finally realized the story didn’t add up and hung up — saving nearly $4,000. The same scam hit two other Atlanta owners Omer knows; in one case the employee fed $2,500–$3,000 into a Bitcoin machine.
The action item both Ian and Omer landed on: train your staff against this directly. Give attendants a short list of people to verify with, and make the rule explicit — if a caller ever instructs you to break into a machine or move cash, hang up and call your owner or another store. With AI voice cloning, the caller may even sound like you, so the red flag isn’t the voice; it’s the instruction.
🔑 Insider Key
Omer’s rule for staff: if a caller tells you to break into a machine or move cash, it’s a scam — hang up and verify with a known number. The voice can be faked; the instruction is the tell.
Questions owners ask
How do you train attendants on a new laundry POS system?
Give the rollout a short runway and let attendants learn on the floor. In Omer Khan’s stores, an employee who threatened to quit over the switch from Clover learned the new laundry POS system in three days — trained by a coworker, not a manager or vendor. A system that is easy to use and easy to train on lets a new hire be productive on day one.
Should you open a laundromat processing facility?
Based on Ian Gollahon’s customer conversations over 10 years, a dedicated processing facility works well when it is added to existing laundromats that already have demand and revenue. The model he has repeatedly seen struggle is opening a delivery-only facility first, before any demand exists, because customer acquisition for delivery is slower and more expensive.
Why sell retail at both the counter and the vending machines?
The redundancy captures different customers. Sometimes the attendant is busy or the customer doesn’t feel like talking, so the vending machine makes the sale. Other times a customer who rarely leaves home wants the interaction and buys a snack at the counter just to chat. Selling in both places captures both types of buyers.
Are ATMs worth having in a laundromat?
In Ian Gollahon’s experience, the $2 surcharge an ATM generates isn’t worth the headache or the foot traffic it attracts. After Liberty Laundry moved to coinless and removed its ATMs, he didn’t miss them. A value-add center lets customers load value without a standalone cash machine on the wall.
How do you protect laundromat attendants from phone scams?
Train staff with an explicit rule: if a caller ever instructs them to break into a machine or move cash, hang up and verify with a known phone number for the owner or another store. Give attendants a short list of people to call. With AI voice cloning, the caller may sound like the owner, so the warning sign isn’t the voice — it’s the instruction.
Ian Gollahon
CEO & Co-Founder, Wash-Dry-Fold POS®
Ian Gollahon is co-founder of Wash-Dry-Fold POS, a laundromat point-of-sale system built from the operating experience of laundromat owners, and co-owner of Liberty Laundry in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His commentary here draws on more than a decade of operator and customer conversations about laundry POS systems, attendant training, machine start integrations and growing wash and fold alongside self-service. Omer Khan, the guest in this episode, owns Skyline Laundromats.
Full episode transcript
Omer Khan 00:00
And they cut the alarm wires, the phone wires, everything, the camera wires as they went in.
Ian Gollahon 00:03
What? This is like
Omer Khan 00:04
Yeah, yeah, legit this happened
Ian Gollahon 00:05
Mission Impossible stuff. This is crazy. This is like Tom Cruise did this.
Omer Khan 00:10
Pretty much right? I wish Tom Cruise did it right, but no Tom Cruise did not do this and They got into the office somebody was planning this for some time
Ian Gollahon 00:20
Ocean's 11, they had like an acrobat come in.
Omer Khan 00:23
I've never seen the Ocean's 11 movie, so I couldn't tell you. But long story short, now there's no alarm, there's no cameras, there's no phone. So he had all the snacks to himself. He was there for like four or five hours all night, and he found the keys to the changer machines. He took out all the quarters, but the front door was not a turn lock, it was a key lock from the inside.
You
So he wasn't able to leave with the quarter buckets. Otherwise he would have opened the front doors, loaded his car with the quarter buckets too, and you know, carried on with his life. But he just took all the cash, went back through the ceiling. So he had to do more work. So you had to go back into the ceiling, crawl through the beams or whatever, go back into the AC unit and leave. And that's how we figured out
Ian Gollahon 01:21
Alright, today we have with us Omer Khan, who is the owner and operator of Skyline Laundromats in Atlanta. And how many do you have right now, Omar?
Omer Khan 01:35
We have four.
Ian Gollahon 01:37
That's what I was thinking. Are you trying to do a fifth anytime soon or? Always look at good.
Omer Khan 01:41
Always looking, always looking.
So it's my father and I that we run the business together and obviously he started the business. I'm second generation into it. Grew up taking out quarters all my life. On the weekends, I should say, right? Outside of school and weekends and so it was always like a field trip.
And then, but full time, almost 10 or 11, 10 plus years now that I did corporate America for a couple of years after college. And I found a few mentors along the way and found a few opportunities as I was transitioning from corporate to business world. And that's been a big,
piece of the puzzle of where I am today.
Ian Gollahon 02:34
How many team members do you have now?
Omer Khan 02:37
We're in the ballpark of 24 to 25 between the laundromats, the drivers, and then the overnight staff that does the processing for the pickup and delivery.
Ian Gollahon 02:40
Yeah, us too.
And you mentioned your dad actually bought some of the property for is that for all four laundromats that you guys own the real estate as well? Or is that just a few of them?
Omer Khan 03:01
No,
the two that he did initially, we own the property. The other two that we got over the last several years, he leased them.
Ian Gollahon 03:10
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. We have, we own two of ours and then we lease one of ours as well. But the one that, that we lease out, it's been really good too. And we like our landlords and all that. So it's, it's been okay, but you're fully attended it. Good.
Omer Khan 03:21
Both are, yeah,
we're sorry. I was just gonna say that we both have perks, right? Owning properties is obviously it's good. It's a different type of pride and…
Ian Gollahon 03:29
Yeah.
Omer Khan 03:35
It's a different vision, but it comes with lot of responsibility. Parking lot goes bad, you've got potholes, you've got to redo a whole parking lot, 45, 50,000 depending on the size, where you are, what state you're in. So four years, five years ago, we redid two of our parking lots that we own.
It was not cheap, right? But now five years later, we're in the midst of getting them resealed and repainted and a new coating, right? Especially with the World Cup coming in, we're like, hey, let's just go in and do it. But that's expensive, right? So they started yesterday, actually. So we're in the middle of that, right? So it's got to deal with that kind of stuff. And then with the two properties that we lease,
Ian Gollahon 04:07
Yeah. Yep.
That's awesome.
Omer Khan 04:24
It was not part of the plan, but we got lucky with both the landlords redoing both of our parking lots this year alone, just in this first half, first quarter of this year.
So it's kind of up to date and good looking, good for the brand, good for the business. So, I'm excited about that.
Ian Gollahon 04:44
It feels so good to have that done. And then, know, it's, it's good for another like five years or so. And we, uh, I was going to say the same thing is that, you know, owning the property is great, but then like, we just recently, in fact, this week we had to close for a day because, uh, we had a water line, uh, leak in between the building and the main line, I guess. I don't know how you say that, but, but yeah, it was a big.
Omer Khan 05:01
Mm-hmm.
Ian Gollahon 05:06
You know, $10,000 repair and we had to shut down the store for half a day.
Omer Khan 05:09
Yeah, yeah.
And for one of the laundromats where it's a big parking lot because we're in a center, right? And it's an old center The underground pipes are cast iron
Ian Gollahon 05:25
Right?
Omer Khan 05:25
Obviously,
I would have never known that and I've been dealing with this for the last eight years. About three years ago, four years ago, we had to be shut down for two weeks because the whole parking lot, not the whole, but there was like a big section of the parking lot that they had to dig up because it kept backing up and everything just kept backing up into our lint trap, into the laundromat.
And no one else was affected because they're just non water. They're only using bathroom for their businesses They're fine. But for us we were down for literally 14 days. It was bad. It was brutal I was not happy but came you know, it is what it is. He just right out the storm and there's no makeup for it There's no makeup business. There's no insurance claim on it Luckily landlord took care of it at the time. It was our previous landlord, but
Ian Gollahon 05:55
Oof.
Hate.
Omer Khan 06:13
Still like you know loss is a loss and you just gotta ride it out.
Ian Gollahon 06:17
Yeah,
Yeah. It's brutal. It's brutal. Are you fully attended at all for your locations? And are you still, do you still have a few open 24-7?
Omer Khan 06:24
Yes, yes, all four locations fully attended.
I have two 24-7s and they have a night attendant as well.
Ian Gollahon 06:32
Two are open 24-7. Okay.
Okay. What revenue mix do you think you're doing as far as you just give me percentages, but I know for us we did and some listeners may have heard these numbers before, but we did about 2.5 million in 2025 top line revenue for our three stores. And then of that revenue, about 70 % was self serve. And then the other 30 % was wash dry fold.
Omer Khan 07:02
Mm-hmm.
Ian Gollahon 07:05
And that includes some of our larger commercial accounts in that 30%. But I know you are more into delivery than we are, at least I think you were last time I talked to you. Do you know the revenue percentage?
Omer Khan 07:05
Mm-hmm.
We're starting to, the pick up and delivery is starting to outgrow the, like if I, I do, we process the pick up and delivery from one location only, right? So if I were to just compare from that location to pick up and delivery, my pick up and delivery numbers are starting to outgrow my self-service business. Right? Yeah. It is, it is, right?
Ian Gollahon 07:41
Wow, that's incredible. Yeah, those are big numbers.
Omer Khan 07:49
So obviously we want our cell service to grow as well. We want our wash dry fold to grow as well. But obviously we have to make some modifications for that to happen, right? In the evening or…
All the orders and then there's less washer and dryers available for customers and you tend to run them away, which has been happening over the years, right, unfortunately. But now we're at the point where we have some storage behind the laundromat and we're just gonna turn that into a production facility. I wish I had done that five years ago, right,
Ian Gollahon 08:20
Mm-hmm.
Got it.
Omer Khan 08:25
But now we're at the point I'm gonna have to turn my back storage space into a full production facility. That's at least 80 % of my operations move to the back. There's a few machines in the front being used, it's fine. But at least majority of the operations will move to the back eventually, sometime this year. So once that happens, then hopefully we'll, then the goal is to maybe even turn that longer amount into 24 hours. So now the production's in the back, higher.
Ian Gollahon 08:36
Mm.
Okay.
Okay.
Omer Khan 08:53
Front night attendant, then we'll be able to grow our,
you know, evening time, nighttime business back as well. So it's all thoughts right now. Haven't really come to a conclusion of what's going to happen. Besides, we are going to move everything to the
Ian Gollahon 09:08
We've been doing the point of sale thing for about 10 years. So just the second half of it, I've probably seen at least five of my customers open a processing facility that is just dedicated to commercial accounts and wash dry fold orders. And it's not open to the public. It's just an area that
Omer Khan 09:20
Mm-hmm.
Ian Gollahon 09:30
They do everything that's not, you know, what the basic laundromat is. When you think about that as a business model, I think people hear that. And I've had people try and open that without the laundromats first, and it never works. I've never seen that work without the revenue. Right. And so like when you have the revenue and you have the demand.
Then you open the supply to supply the demand. You open the processing facility versus, you know, anyone I've seen do it that way that has multiple laundromats and opens a processing facility. I've seen that succeed, but then I've had a few people that I've seen them do the opposite where they're like, I don't want to laundromat open to the public. I just want to do, you know, wash, dry, fold and delivery. I just want to have a processing facility. The demand for that is,
comes along a little slower, right? And the customer acquisition costs are a little higher and all that. And so if you try and create that supply before the demand, I've not seen that work, but it's interesting to hear that yet another one of our customers is doing a processing facility, which I think is great because it just shows that your business is going well and that you've got more demand than what you can supply. And like you said, you don't want to hurt your self-serve numbers.
By running them off, which I know is an issue.
Omer Khan 10:54
Was going to say, anyone that is looking to get into that self-service slash pick up and delivery space, right?
Or pick up and delivery space only, then it's a different story. Then of course you look for a warehouse type setting or a place where you don't open to public. It can be behind a center. You don't have to be street facing and you can run a pick up and delivery facility. But if you're trying to do both, self-service and pick up and delivery, obviously it's harder, but you wanna try to find a space where you can kinda have both.
Both things in one space but divided. That way you're only paying one rent, right? Or you own the property. Obviously it gets a little expensive or it gets into your profits if you have to, let's just say you're renting a laundromat and now you're outgrown your pickup and deliveries. Like if I, where I'm at right now, if it was a smaller space and if I was outgrowing my self-service and I have to go rent another space,
Ian Gollahon 11:35
Yeah.
Right.
Omer Khan 11:59
To do pick up and delivery in a whole different facility, I think twice to do the business, right? Until unless you're doing really big numbers, like really ridiculously big numbers, like six figure type business numbers and multiple six figures, then of course, then it's worth it, right?
Ian Gollahon 12:05
Yeah.
Yeah.
Omer Khan 12:20
A little blessed where my laundromat is, my pickup and delivery is. Can, behind the wall, I have some square footage. I can put some machines there and not go anywhere else and pay another five, six, seven, $8,000 rent, right? I'm already paying for one space and I can now do both things, right? Was it part of the plan eight years ago when I bought this laundromat?
Ian Gollahon 12:28
Yeah.
Right.
Omer Khan 12:43
But it worked out. So anyone in the future that is looking for a laundromat slash self-service slash pickup and delivery space, then, if you're trying to go into a 2,500 square foot space or 3,000 square foot space, you can manage, but you're have to put a lot of less machines to have a separate dedicated pickup and delivery space, right? But then if you have the option to go 4,000 or 5,000 square feet space and you can dedicate some of that
just for pickup and delivery, then you'll be comfortable to grow and you'll even outgrow that space one day too, hopefully, but you'll just have to plan accordingly.
Ian Gollahon 13:22
Was talking to Sharon Brinks about this on our last episode and I was telling her how, you know, her stores look so nice and it's got our little point of sale system there and all that. And she had based that store on Delaware, but the biggest difference is that Delaware has like this kind of space in the back where you can store all the soaps and the vending and the, you know, and then it's got more storage for finished orders. And I was complimenting her on
I mean, her laundromat does look amazing. She was like, yeah, but I wish I had gotten more space for the processing, for the storage. And I think that that's pretty consistent. I mean, we have a 5,000 square foot facility and I think you need to dedicate at least a thousand square feet to the wash dry fold and the little office and the processing and the, mean, so yeah. And I think.
Omer Khan 13:56
Or wash and fold.
Ian Gollahon 14:17
I mean, that was the third one we did, right? So that was the one we had kind of learned that, you need to dedicate more space to that than you think. And in the, in the other one, the one that we lease, we had like a, a dog grooming place next to us.
We got that space when, you know, and then we had like a different, so we ended up just getting like a dish every time there were to be a business next to us, we would just grow bigger and bigger. You had something similar like that, right?
Omer Khan 14:42
Speaking of that, I'm
speaking of dog grooming. Want to set up an animal station.
Ian Gollahon 14:50
For watching.
Omer Khan 14:51
Yeah, I'm thinking about it. It's part of the it's in my pipeline. I think once I'm done setting up my production space and if I stumble across another laundromat opportunity, of course, I'm to jump on that first. But in one of my existing stores, I have space to put a animal washing station. So that's something that I've been really hardly think like really thinking about for the last maybe six months. Like if I did it, how would I do it? What would I do and where would I put it and all?
So it's all in my head right now. I haven't put it on pen and paper, but that's something I'm really considering.
Ian Gollahon 15:28
Well, logistics is something that a lot of people don't think a lot about. And obviously as you scale and as you get years under your belt, you do kind of figure out that there is kind of this workflow through each area of the business. And I was hoping you could tell us a little bit about your workflow for the wash, dry fold and for any commercial accounts and kind of how that works with the, attendance and you know, how do they utilize the.
Software and the hardware that you have there.
Omer Khan 16:01
With the Watchtrival POS system. Yeah, so I'm a big advocate of the Watchtrival POS, right? Now, of course, there's a lot of great softwares out there now, and they're all doing their own, you know, part.
Fan of your system and I think we're maybe four years plus now I think if I'm not mistaken on the system so I have two of your new registers and two of the older ones but it's working fine right now and
Ian Gollahon 16:30
Good.
Omer Khan 16:33
And my employees love it, right? Initially when I first got it, one of my employees like, I'm going to quit because we were going from clover to this. I don't want a new system and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, just give it, give it, give it a week. You're going to be. And my Hispanic employee who, you know, speaks a little English, not too much was training the American employee, you know, like three days, three days into it. I was so excited. I was like, thank God, because she's one of my favorite. She's still is, you know, one of our best. And
Ian Gollahon 16:54
My God, that's awesome.
Omer Khan 17:03
And she learned it very fast and the system does great, right? It's helped, especially with having a credit card on file and allowing that for your residential or commercial customers to have that on file and you be like, hey, just drop it off and we'll bill it to your card. So that's been very…
Successful I would say. I don't know how many time my employees are actually using it for the customers, but time to time when I do see that it's good because then customers are happy, they just drop it off and they walk off. They don't have to worry about it, especially our old customers that has been with us for a long time.
Ian Gollahon 17:40
Mm-hmm.
Omer Khan 17:47
And then the other good part is that it's a one customer base, right? So now I have customers that can go from before my laundromats were branded differently. So now all of them are branded same. We have the one POS system. My card systems, I want it to be one. I couldn't do one card system, unfortunately, the loyalty card system for the washers and dryers. So that…
Ian Gollahon 17:53
Mm-hmm.
Omer Khan 18:14
I'm a little bummed out but when it comes to the POS system, one brand of the laundromats has really helped customers kind of have the liberty to go from one location to another and their information is there. Everything gets labeled the same way, printed the same way. So that's been rewarding for sure.
Ian Gollahon 18:15
Mm-hmm.
I appreciate you saying that and we've really enjoyed having you as an advocate for us and we're always, Brian told me to tell you that he did not forget about your feature request and he is working on it, the alphabetical sorting thing, yes.
Omer Khan 18:41
Yeah.
Yes, yes. I was
gonna send him a friendly email reminder. You know, I've told this story many times and I'll say this on the podcast too. And it may not happen every time for anybody that will try to do this, right? But I think I got lucky. It was my first, second conference in my laundromat.
Ian Gollahon 18:52
Reminder, hey, come on.
Omer Khan 19:11
It was not called the excellence, it was called the Elevate Conference that was at the Huntington Beach, right? So we were there and it was some feature I asked Brian before going to bed, like we were in the lobby, we were about to go to bed, and I was like, you know, Brian, if your POS system just had this one feature, at that time, it was early on, I think it would be really nice and helpful.
Ian Gollahon 19:15
Yeah, I remember that. Yes.
Yeah.
Omer Khan 19:36
And I just left it at that. Didn't think too much of it. I thought it might be a couple of months, maybe six months until it'll happen, but that was it. He comes down the next morning at breakfast and he taps me on my shoulder. He's like, Omar, the feature's already in testing. I'm like, I just told you like 12 hours ago. And I'm thinking, you might have some developer that's out of the country that's gonna be doing it. No, I don't know how long he stayed up, but he stayed up. He put it in works.
Ian Gollahon 19:48
That's awesome.
Omer Khan 20:03
And the next morning it was already in testing by the time I think I was back in Atlanta, if not the following week, it was in the POS. And literally that one service from Brian has kept me in the door until this day. That one act.
You know, so when I told him about this feature, I was like, with the feature that I told him last week at the conference, I was like, I know you won't do it tonight, but if you can do this soon, it'll be great. 12 hours lease. But yeah, that one, that one act of his, you know, has kept me in the door.
Ian Gollahon 20:31
Just like last time, I'd like this in 12 hours, please.
Omer Khan 20:45
And I wish there were other vendors that would not, I'm not saying a 12 hour timeframe, but you know, act fast like that. That'd be nice.
Ian Gollahon 20:54
You know, I think one thing that's always been important to us is that we are solving real problems for real people. And like, this is, this is not a tool that's going to revolutionize the world or some crazy thing. This is like, no, this is for laundromat owners so that they can save time and like make more money and like have an efficient, well-run business. And that's, that's what we build. And Brian has always been, for one, he's incredibly a fast developer. And we now have.
Omer Khan 21:11
Correct. Yeah, yeah.
Ian Gollahon 21:24
Three other developers as well, two other full-time developers that are developing just as fast. With the AI tools now, you can develop even faster. So we're trying to kind of accelerate that, I guess you call it product velocity. But yeah, I mean, we're always trying to do new features, and we always build features that people actually ask for instead of like the features that are just kind of like.
Omer Khan 21:35
Sure.
Mm-hmm.
Ian Gollahon 21:52
Who knows,
maybe it'll work or maybe it'll help one of these days. But no, I appreciate you saying that about Brian. And I know that we've really enjoyed your feature requests. They're always good suggestions. To give you the credit where credit's due, we do have people ask for ridiculous stuff. And we just say, no, we're not going to build that. But if it's an actual laundromat owner who actually needs something real, we're like, yeah, that makes perfect sense.
Omer Khan 22:06
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Ian Gollahon 22:20
Because if it benefits you, it's gonna benefit a lot of other people versus like, I've literally had people that have never owned a laundromat and they don't own the system be like, well, can you build this? And it's like, I don't know how to tell you this, but that's a terrible idea. Like no one's gonna use that if we do build it. You know what I mean? So it's like, we definitely, if you ask for something that's valuable, we will build it. Not always in 12 hours, but.
Omer Khan 22:23
For sure.
Of course, of course. Of course, alongside
Brian, you have been an essential part of this relationship as well. And along with your one of your workers, Chelsea, and I've told her this 100 times. Yeah, she's she's she's a gem. And she's amazing. So anyways, but yeah, so the system is great. Anybody that's looking for a POS, you know, definitely check out WDF.
Ian Gollahon 22:56
Chelsea, yeah. Yeah.
Cheers.
I really
appreciate you saying that. It was so funny when we were at the last Clean Show, Chelsea was like a celebrity. Like the people that I sold systems to, they would just walk right past me and right to Chelsea, Chelsea, we love Chelsea. It's just so fun.
Omer Khan 23:23
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I told her, was like, the next time I come to is it Kentucky, right? I was like, Kentucky, I'm gonna come horseback riding. Yeah.
Ian Gollahon 23:33
She's in Kentucky,
Yeah, she'll do it too.
She's amazing. So you mentioned that you've tried to have the same coinless systems, the same card systems, loyalty card systems. Do you have two CCI right now and then two something else? Or tell me what the mix is.
Omer Khan 23:41
That's good.
Yeah, two CCI, one is a hybrid store with Laundrow Works, and then I have one that's quarter only, and here in the next couple of months, going to, I just have to finish, that one's, that store's just been like a partial retool over the last few years. My other three Laundromats are completely retooled in the last like five years. And then this one's just been, we've been partially retooling, so we're just gonna finish the whole retool and add a card system.
Ian Gollahon 24:19
Very nice.
Omer Khan 24:26
And then I just gotta make a hard decision of which direction I'm gonna go in.
Ian Gollahon 24:33
It's always a tough one. I will say something that has been important to us in this past year or two is we've built these machine start integrations with both Laundroworks and with Steve from Fastcard, LaundryCard, CCIS. And so either system you go with now, with the Laundroworks, the way that one works is you do the WashLynx app and you basically, the employees would just…
Omer Khan 24:47
CCI. Yeah.
Ian Gollahon 24:59
The order will populate in their app and they'll just select the order and then start the machine for that order from their phone. And then with CCI, you basically just tap the screen of which washers and dryers you want to start and it'll just start those, which is a little bit better than them having just the card that they can use for every, you and you don't know if they're using the card for, I mean, you can run the reports obviously, and I think that's good thing to do, but.
Omer Khan 25:14
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
But how many times,
right? How many times are you gonna sit there and go through every single report and go? Sometimes it just becomes a trust system, right? Until unless you start catching each, it doesn't matter if you catch one person, then you start opening a can of worms, right? So.
Ian Gollahon 25:29
Yep.
Right. Yep.
That is exactly how it works and everyone I talked to, yeah.
Omer Khan 25:47
Both systems are great. Both systems
have their own perks. But yeah, I just have to make that hard decision. I don't know. I don't know. I want to go in one direction, just technology and some things. Like if I want to keep it a hybrid store, then one system doesn't support it. One system does. So just trying to figure it out.
Ian Gollahon 26:06
That's curd.
Yeah, Steve's always been pretty good about the hybrid card thing.
Omer Khan 26:13
Oh yeah, for sure,
for sure, 100%. And Steve has been a very essential part of CCI too. He's awesome, he's humble, he's amazing, very friendly. And I enjoy talking to him a lot. Very like personal, you like you kind of have that personal relationship. So it's good.
Ian Gollahon 26:17
With
Yeah, me too.
He was the first guest on this podcast. And part of it was because I just knew how easy is to talk to and get along with. And, and, he's just a great guy. Yeah. Do you have, do you put the little card systems on? Cause I know you do retail at both your counter and your, you have vending machines. And I was listening to your, episode, your other podcast or your, your YouTube video or whatever it is.
Omer Khan 26:39
Yeah, for sure.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Ian Gollahon 27:02
And I heard you say one of the same things that we say a lot, which is, yeah, sure. You've got the soaps and the snacks at the counter, but also you have them at the vending machines because what if someone at the counter is busy or what if they just don't want to talk to someone that day? Or we actually have the flip of that happen a lot where these people, they don't get out of the house more than once a week and that's just to do their laundry. And so they want to go talk to someone to buy a snack or they want to have some interaction and
Omer Khan 27:28
Mm-hmm.
Ian Gollahon 27:31
And chat with the attendants at the counter or whatever. And so I think there are a lot of benefits to having both. But I wanted to hear your thoughts on that. And also if you had the card systems connected to that, like if you have put that through Laundroworks and CCI and stuff.
Omer Khan 27:46
For the carcassum, I've only connected them to the bathrooms and the register. When it comes to the…
Ian Gollahon 27:50
Okay, that's right. Okay.
Omer Khan 27:58
Drink machine snack machine and even the soap machine. I have them on credit card readers like NIACS credit card readers I've kept that only because we're very transient city. There's a lot of people that live nearby or there's a shopping center There's a nearby there's a gas station next door to one of us. We're at a school bus stop or The Marta bus stops all four of our laundromats are Marta bus stops Yeah, some of them I don't want them inside
Ian Gollahon 28:06
Yeah, okay.
I see.
Omer Khan 28:28
But if they're just coming in to buy a drink and a snack and they're minding their own business, you know, it's okay. So it kind of keeps that door open to allowing a non-laundry customer to come in, go ahead and buy a drink and snack and carry on, right? But we don't have an issue where if people are coming in and trying to use your Wi-Fi and just buying a drink and hanging out, they know better. It's not gonna be tolerated.
Ian Gollahon 28:32
Yeah, that is fun.
Mm.
That's right.
Omer Khan 28:57
Happens once a year, it's okay, you it's not a big deal. It just, you know, just try to keep it, try to keep both options open.
Ian Gollahon 29:05
Now that makes a lot of sense and I hadn't even thought about that before, but we did have ATMs before we moved to coinless. You know, we had ATMs and people could pull out cash. Now you can just, you know, use the value add center, but we would have people come in and use the ATMs. And sometimes it was like a little bit like there was a reason they weren't using their bank's ATM or whatever. They wanted a weird kind of ATM on a standalone and they would make a special trip just for that. So
Omer Khan 29:12
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Ian Gollahon 29:35
Yeah, I haven't necessarily missed that foot traffic because you get the $2, but then like, you know, there's, right, right. You don't necessarily want people to feel unsafe, you know? Well, obviously you don't want people to feel unsafe, but it's not necessarily worth the $2 to have in that extra traffic and disturbance.
Omer Khan 29:41
The headache that comes with it.
Yeah, yeah.
Correct, no.
It's funny you
say that, right? On my other laundromats, I have ATM, Buildbreaker, let's just say a card system all together, right? And so yeah, customer will get an ATM, they'll get a user Buildbreaker, and then put in a loyalty card system and then.
Ian Gollahon 30:04
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Omer Khan 30:15
Wash and dry. And at three of my four laundromats, I don't have a homeless issue, right? They come and go, they're walking by, whatever, but not hanging out. But at one of my locations…
I've been there for two years and boy, it's been brutal, right? Just getting them out of that parking lot, it's like not happening. I just have to like, City of Atlanta, please forget it, right? They're busy, they're understaffed, they're working hard and…
Ian Gollahon 30:31
Mm-hmm.
And.
Omer Khan 30:46
They're probably tired of them too, right? Obviously there's one or two homeless I try to keep a good relationship with. I like to help them out when I can. And then they wanna make a few bucks and hey, clean the parking lot, empty the trash.
Ian Gollahon 30:54
Sure.
Omer Khan 31:02
Vending machines come and break the boxes and throw them in the dumpster, you know, or clean the ceiling fans or something. But if I'm there, then they know that for them to come in. Then there are some that they're just there and they harass customers. It's annoying. It's really bad. Right. And so for that reason, I did not put a bill breaker in my payment center wall.
Ian Gollahon 31:10
You
Omer Khan 31:25
Because then they're just gonna come and break the bills and try to do whatever and just be inside. So I just had to modify my whole system because these guys just won't leave the parking lot, right? So these are just different issues you deal with from, obviously you wanna have one system, you wanna have tomorrow, God willing, I have 20 laundromats, then I'll be less…
Worried and I'll just do one system, period, right? But because we're still mom and pop and very hands-on, then you can make those modifications.
Ian Gollahon 32:01
Yeah,
the bill breaker too for our stores. That was like one of the very last things that we outsourced to because I mean, you know the reasons why obviously, but that was kind of like my thing of like, you know, we had other people fixing the machines and other people fixing this and that and doing all this. But like if the bill broker, if the bill breaker broke, then you would call Ian. Whereas actually we would use the little
repair ticket system. And then Brian would usually call me and be like, Hey, can you stop by? And, those bill breakers jam a lot because they like, if you have too many bills, they'll jam, but not like right when you're loading them, you'll leave. And then like a day later, they'll jam. Or if you have too few, they'll jam. And so Brian, like 3d printed these little like bill shaped things that like flatten it out and they keep them more straight. And so it's almost like there's so many like little tricks and tips and like these little things, but
Omer Khan 32:57
Nice.
Ian Gollahon 33:00
But yeah, the bill breakers are not maintenance free. And so I have to agree with you 100 % on that one.
Omer Khan 33:07
It just took me almost one year to fix one of them. I had one bill breaker down in one of my location. It was down for one year. We sent it to Chicago like three or four times. They weren't able to figure it out. And it was like a lot of just back and forth, back and forth. And it's just sitting in the box and it is sitting in the bill breaker. Then they're sending it off for a couple of weeks. And finally they were like, okay, send it to one company in Louisiana. We sent it to them and then they figured it out and
Ian Gollahon 33:35
Wow.
Omer Khan 33:36
Got it up and running right away. Said, you know, sometimes you deal with it, right? It is what it is.
Ian Gollahon 33:40
Yeah, and
it's not like they're cheap either. I mean, we paid a lot for ours and they still… Yeah.
Omer Khan 33:46
Yeah, they're $10,000 machines, eight
to $10,000 machines. Then you start questioning yourself, do I really need it? Should I put it in my next build out? Maybe I can save that cost and put it in something else, right? Maybe we can just change our system, but who knows? There's no right or wrong formula, but obviously it's best to just have one to two processes and just kind of stick to that, depending on your demographics, your location and all that.
Ian Gollahon 33:52
Right.
Yeah.
That's right. That's right. And we eventually did.
Yep, we eventually did get the bill breakers off our plate. We've got a guy that now refills them and he can fix them when they break, which is regularly and yeah. And, and, when they get jammed rather, and you know, there's a whole thing of pulling them out and pull it back in and then you get, this is a whole lot of thing, but I know you've got to leave relatively soon. So I want to make sure we get to this question.
Omer Khan 34:23
Amazing. Sure. Yeah.
Yeah.
Ian Gollahon 34:38
What do you think is the craziest thing that you have ever seen or that has ever happened to you in all your years across all your laundromats?
Omer Khan 34:50
Hmm.
Ian Gollahon 34:50
Best
story, know, the best story to tell the other laundromat owners. If they're afraid it's going to be dull, what would you tell them?
Omer Khan 35:02
You know.
Obviously there's a lot of crazy stories out there and I know people have had some really funny ones, some really bad ones. I would say I've been blessed to say that I haven't had too many bad ones, right? Obviously that's happened all the times. Like, hey, like when employee left her purse openly, of course someone's going to walk in and make sure you're in the back and or they're going to send somebody else to divert them and steal the purse or steal the cell phone, right? Small things like that happen, right? That's normal stuff. Yeah, that's all normal stuff.
Ian Gollahon 35:28
We've had that happen too.
Omer Khan 35:34
Nothing crazy about that. The two
Ian Gollahon 35:35
Yep.
Omer Khan 35:36
Craziest ones that I've kind of dealt with, would say one of them, I was much younger when this happened, but it happened, actually, wait, I have two really good ones, yeah, nevermind, I have two good ones. And this could be, one of them is definitely a lesson because this is real time happening and this one happened back in October with us. I completely forgot about this one. So the first one though, it happened when I was much younger.
Ian Gollahon 35:47
Okay, let's hear it.
Omer Khan 36:04
My employee at that time the laundromat was or was not 24 hours. I don't remember but
My employee came in the morning, it was not 24 hours, correct, it was not 24 hours. The employee came in, opened the front door, she then opened her employee office door, noticed it was a little bit open, then noticed there were a couple buckets of quarters over there, and she was like, maybe my dad came in and left it there, or maybe he's around the corner, maybe he's in the back, she couldn't figure it out. Then once she tried to disarm the alarm, couldn't disarm the alarm. Then,
Ian Gollahon 36:39
Mmm.
Omer Khan 36:41
Get a little suspicious and then she sees our door handle broken, like our office that goes from inside the employee office that was kind of open or loose or something. So then she was able to open our door and then like everything was just all over the place. So long story short, this guy or group of guys, I don't remember, but what they did was they went from the roof.
Into the commercial AC units and on the roof.
Ian Gollahon 37:10
What?
Omer Khan 37:12
So they opened the metal panel where the filters are. And they went inside the panel and I wouldn't even know how they would basically crawl through the ceiling because it's all ceiling tiles. But I guess they used the metal beams inside to kind of make their way in. And they cut the alarm wires, the phone wires, everything, the camera wires as they went in.
Ian Gollahon 37:16
Huh. Huh.
What? This is like
Omer Khan 37:38
Yeah, yeah, legit this happened
Ian Gollahon 37:39
Mission Impossible stuff. This is crazy. This is like Tom Cruise did this.
Omer Khan 37:44
Pretty much right? I wish Tom Cruise did it right, but no Tom Cruise did not do this and They got into the office somebody had to be like kind of it was a pre-plan It's not like you just do this right away, right? Somebody was planning this for some time
Ian Gollahon 38:00
Ocean's 11, they had like an acrobat come in.
Omer Khan 38:03
I've never seen the Ocean's 11 movie, so I couldn't tell you. But long story short, now there's no alarm, there's no cameras, there's no phone. So he had all the snacks to himself. He was there for like four or five hours all night, and he found the keys to the changer machines. He took out all the quarters, but the front door was not a turn lock, it was a key lock from the inside.
You
So he wasn't able to leave with the quarter buckets. Otherwise he would have opened the front doors, loaded his car with the quarter buckets too, and you know, carried on with his life. But he just took all the cash, went back through the ceiling. So he had to do more work. So you had to go back into the ceiling, crawl through the beams or whatever, go back into the AC unit and leave. And that's how we figured out because when the fire and the police came and they started investigating, they were like, why is the AC units open upstairs?
That's how we figured that out.
Ian Gollahon 39:04
Wow.
That is actually a really good story. That's pretty incredible. That's crazy.
Omer Khan 39:08
Yeah, so that was story number. That's
the one crazy one. The recent craziest one. This is like the funny one, like funny and crazy at the same time. And it's funny, it happened to someone, two other people in Atlanta that I personally know. Okay.
Scammers, they're calling and they'll call your store phone and then they'll all they'll they'll tell they'll they'll basically like make you go puzzle I don't know how they do it, but they're good at this right there scammers. So they basically got my overnight. He's an older man
much older guy, so they scared him, they hypnotized him, they called the store phone, they knew my name, knew his name, knew all my employees' names, and then they were like, hey, we're gonna call you on your cell phone too, so now they got him on both phones. So now he can't call 911, he probably won't answer my call, and not call anyone else, right? So now they have him on both phones, and they're like,
you we need you to go inside the main office Omar's in trouble and we need to wire some money and he's like I don't have access somehow they knew that we had a crowbar in the back they're like go find something go find a shovel go find a crowbar go find something in the back room so he goes and he does it if I picks up the crowbar gets into the office breaks the crowbar with the office granted this all happened around
1 30 in the morning it's a 24-hour laundromat this happened around 1 30 in the morning
I'm at my sister's home, we're having coffee at that time, we're drinking tea or something around that time, and probably 15 minutes prior to this, I was checking the cameras, okay? And I was, because we had just gotten our store painted like two days prior to that, so I was kind of admiring the paint, and I was like, okay, there's only one or two customers. I see him walking around the laundromat, but he was on, he, I remember seeing him on both phones, like he had both phones in his hand, I'm like.
Ian Gollahon 41:03
Okay.
Omer Khan 41:18
He's tired of somebody, like, whatever. But he's inside the laundromat, that's all that matters, right? And long story short, he took the crowbar, broke into one of the coin machines, yeah, not the cart machines, broke into the quarter machine. The scammers got him to put several thousand dollars worth of quarters all on the laundry cart, take it across the street to Kroger.
Ian Gollahon 41:22
Right.
Omer Khan 41:46
At 2, 3 a.m. In the morning at this point and started putting quarters into the machine where you get the cash out. So he did that. So he gave almost, I would say, 80 % of our quarters in until that machine said, we're full. And then he got all that cash. He has it in his pocket. And then he's saying, and then he told my employee to put it into one of those Bitcoin machines.
Ian Gollahon 42:13
Right, right,
Omer Khan 42:14
Luckily,
the Bitcoin machine was out of order. So then he said, why don't you just go down the street? There's a Chevron gas station. They have it. So he was about to, after three, four hours of doing this, okay, this is like three, four hours, and it's like 5 a.m. Now, then something kind of like struck his mind. Was like something's not adding up. He's like, you want me to go, you went from there to the Kroger, now from here.
Ian Gollahon 42:17
My goodness.
Omer Khan 42:42
To the gas station, this doesn't make sense. He's like, no, no, no, go do it, blah, blah, blah. He's like, but why? Now he starts questioning, now he starts thinking like, okay, this is not making sense. And then he hung up. Luckily he hung up, he called back, and it was not going through. And it was almost $4,000 in cash that he was about to just give away, right?
Ian Gollahon 43:01
Ha ha ha.
Omer Khan 43:08
So then he came back to the laundromat, he called me, and I'm like, bro, come on, you gotta be kidding me right now, but it happened. He luckily, luckily, like he didn't go to Chevron, didn't go to, the machine was down at Kroger, so our cash got saved. He gave every single penny back, he didn't run away with it, he didn't do anything with it.
Ian Gollahon 43:18
That's crazy. That's so crazy.
Thanks
Omer Khan 43:33
And he brought it back to the laundromat and waited until I got there and I got there till like 11 a.m. He's like, I'm not leaving until you have, I'm like, just leave it in the office, I'll handle it. He's like, nope, you come and then I'll give you the cash. I'm like, okay. He was scared. He was upset. He was scared. He was frustrated. He was like at the verge of crying. So that happened, but it happened to my other employee two years ago. There was a new lady, I hired her at another laundromat.
Ian Gollahon 43:47
Well, sure. Yeah.
You
Omer Khan 43:58
The guys told her, Omar's in the hospital, don't call his dad, don't call him. And they took a fire extinguisher and she started banging on my office door. But because we have metal doors, we don't have residential doors. A lot of people put residential doors in their laundromats, like in their bathrooms or their janitorial rooms. Spend the money, put metal doors. Because we have strong metal doors, she spent 35 to 40 minutes.
Ian Gollahon 44:19
Mm-hmm.
Omer Khan 44:25
With that fire extinguisher, all she did was break our lock and a lot of like dents on our door, but she couldn't get in. So yeah, there's some crazy, this is like the of the crazy stuff that's happened to us, but yeah, it's happened. So train your employees and let them know any scammers call this hangup. Don't say, don't believe it. Hey, you've got your, you know, your.
Ian Gollahon 44:36
Wow.
Omer Khan 44:53
Boss is in the hospital, can't call them or he'll go to jail or he'll die. They'll come up with the craziest stories, they'll hypnotize you and it'll happen. It happened. And it happened to two other laundromat owners here in Atlanta.
Ian Gollahon 45:05
Wow, that is crazy. That makes me wanna do like a little like meeting with all the staff and be like, these are the signs that you're talking to a scammer and don't do these things that they, that is so crazy. I've never heard that before, but man, I believe it. I've heard those podcasts where they'll like hypnotize people or like get them to do such crazy stuff. And it's like, they don't even know that they're doing it. Yeah.
Omer Khan 45:08
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
The other guy in Atlanta whose employee it
happened to, she actually ended up giving, I think, $2,500 or $3,000 into the Bitcoin machine. Then she actually ended up going to jail that same night, but then obviously the owner didn't feel good. He bailed her back her out, kept her the job, but then she paid him back over the next like two, three, four months, whatever. But it happened.
Ian Gollahon 45:51
Wow, that is so crazy. That's okay. Can you imagine they're going to have AI that's going to be good enough to do that too? And so they'll just have AI calling all the laundromats trying to. Yeah. Yeah.
Omer Khan 45:54
Yeah.
Because your voice it's your voice right they can they can use your voice they can use my
voice to call my employee right now and say do this and do this and do this but if I'm telling you on the phone to break my door that's your red flag that's your red flag right if I've never told you
Ian Gollahon 46:09
Yeah
Right. Or to do anything with the cash like that,
Omer Khan 46:21
364 days out of the year, then that one day I'm not gonna do it, right? If you can't call me, if you think something doesn't sound right, hang up, call my dad. If something doesn't make sense, call another store. Just call anybody and whoever you can to make sure that this is fake.
Ian Gollahon 46:24
Yeah. Yeah.
Damn.
Yeah, that's a good point. We need to have a list of like, these are the four people you verify with. If you get asked something unusual, then here's your list of phone numbers and any of the management. Do what?
Omer Khan 46:42
Yeah.
Which I probably should do. Yeah,
which I probably should do.
Ian Gollahon 46:51
Well, that's the thing is if
you would call any of the managers like you and your dad or for me, it's, it's me or Brian, but then also we have three managers. If you call them on their cell and they pick up, they're going to tell you that it's a scam, but you know, you make such a good point with the AI and then what if it's my voice or Brian's voice and they're just trying to do their job and keep their job then. Yeah, that's a man. I feel like we, we covered some good ground today, man. I know you've got to go, you've got to go pick up some kids, right?
Omer Khan 47:02
Yeah, 100%.
Yeah, it's okay. Yeah, yeah,
no worries. I hope I was able to, you know, have a good podcast. Good.
Ian Gollahon 47:26
It was amazing, man. It's my favorite.
It really was incredible. And your stories were excellent there at the end. You did not disappoint with the craziest stories. They're actually actionable too. I actually want to go take some action for our laundromats, because I could totally see this happening to some of our employees. So I really appreciate it,
Omer Khan 47:36
Yeah
My dad actually
messaged me last week or called me or something like, hey Omer, make sure we remind all employees about scamming and this and that. Yeah, yeah, I need to and I'll probably do it sometime this week, but yeah.
Ian Gollahon 47:59
No, we need to.
That's what we, this is what I'm going to put some stuff together. I'll CC you on what I put together. We just need to have like a plan together for the staff and maybe that'll be included with wash, dry, full POS systems in the future. Here's the thing you give you just input your phone numbers and your names. You give this to all your employees.
Omer Khan 48:03
Please, yeah, please, anything that would be great.
Yeah.
There you go. Yeah.
That might not be a bad feature to have on the POS where all the staff can be reached from, at least their information can be retrieved from there. Like an emergency something. Yeah. Cool.
Ian Gollahon 48:29
Emergency button or something like that. It's not a bad idea. You're always helping us build
our software, man. You're our product developer. Yeah, Honorary. Honorary. Put that on your LinkedIn if you want. Honorary product developer now. Man, I really appreciate it. I always have so much fun seeing you. It's always great to see you at the Clean Shows. And you really, really appreciate your time today, man. Have a good one.
Omer Khan 48:37
Unofficial product developer. On my LinkedIn. There you go.
Always a pleasure.
Yeah, no, I appreciate it.
I'm glad I was able to do it. And thank you for the opportunity as