For decades, the $115 billion laundry and dry cleaning industry has remained one of the most fragmented areas of consumer services. Dry cleaning has largely been dominated by local, family-owned operators, many of whom have served the same neighborhoods for generations. Laundromats, meanwhile, have often been associated with outdated facilities, inconsistent experiences and limited modernization.
Tide Services is changing that.
Through Tide Cleaners and Tide Laundromat, the company is building a national out-of-home laundry platform designed to serve consumers across multiple income levels, service needs and usage occasions. The goal is simple: make it easier for consumers to get laundry done outside the home, whether they need professional garment care, wash-and-fold, pickup and delivery or a clean, modern place to do laundry themselves.
“For consumers and for franchisees, it should be very simple,” said Todd Laabs, chief operating officer of Tide Services. “I need laundry done, and I don’t want to do it in my home. We have solutions for that. In dry cleaning, no one has really said, ‘This is the standard.’ In laundromats, the traditional model has often been dated. We are in a unique position to completely claim this space.”
Today, Tide Services has more than 225 locations across more than 30 markets and is seeing strong momentum across the business. The company expects to finish its fiscal year with approximately 25% total business growth, including roughly 20% growth on the cleaner side and 40% growth on the laundromat side. For entrepreneurs looking for a service franchise with brand trust, recurring demand and multiple growth pathways, Tide Services offers a timely opportunity.
The Tide franchise story began with Tide Cleaners, which launched in 2008 to bring Tide's trust and cleaning expertise to the out-of-home garment care space. The idea was to take an industry that had long been defined by local mom-and-pop operators and introduce a more modern, branded experience built around convenience, technology and quality.
For Laabs, who became a Tide Cleaners franchisee in 2013 before later becoming COO, that opportunity was clear from the beginning.
“What interested me about Tide was that the dry cleaning industry was lacking innovation,” Laabs said. “It was run by mom-and-pops, and there was a real opportunity for growth and innovation. The Tide brand was attractive, and the business itself felt stable. Once customers find a cleaner they trust, they tend to stay with them.”
Over time, the Tide Cleaners model evolved. Early locations were more rigid in design, but franchisees and the corporate team learned how to make the concept more flexible. The business grew from a single-store dry cleaning model into a hub-and-spoke system that could include plant stores, drop stores, delivery routes, acquisitions and other service formats. On the Tide Cleaners side, for example, an owner can begin with a plant store that serves as the operational hub for a market. From there, they can add drop stores in high-traffic areas, expand delivery, acquire existing dry cleaners or layer in other services.
“It took time for the cleaners' side to become scalable,” Laabs said. “But now we have multiple ways for franchisees to build a market.”
Tide Laundromat came later, launching in 2023 after beginning as an innovation project inside Procter & Gamble. The concept was created to reimagine the laundromat experience with bright, clean facilities, modern machines, premium cleaning products and technology that makes the process faster and easier for customers.
While Tide Cleaners serves customers who want full-service garment care, Tide Laundromat expands the platform to reach consumers who need access to self-service laundry in a cleaner and more comfortable environment. Together, the two concepts allow franchisees to become the out-of-home laundry provider in their market.
“We want franchisees to own that space locally,” Laabs said. “That could mean cleaners, laundromats, delivery, acquisitions or some combination of all of it.”
One of the biggest advantages Tide Services brings to franchising is consumer trust that is almost impossible to replicate. In laundry, Tide is already a household name. That gives franchisees a level of credibility that independent operators often spend years trying to build.
“What appealed to us was that Tide wasn't starting from scratch,” said Robert Lyons, a Tide Cleaners franchisee who owns a whopping 42 locations across five states. “The store concept was new, but the product brand already had decades of trust behind it. People grew up with Tide. Their parents and grandparents used Tide. That brand recognition was incredibly powerful.”
That brand strength matters because both dry cleaning and laundromats have historically lacked national leadership.
“The dry-cleaning industry hadn't changed much in the last 50 years,” Lyons said. “There wasn't a major national player or any real consolidation happening in the industry. There were larger regional brands, but nothing with the national recognition that Tide brought to the table.”
Unlike franchise concepts that depend on a single store format, Tide Services gives franchisees several ways to grow.
“The laundromat serves a different customer base than our dry-cleaning business, and we saw it as a great opportunity to diversify while remaining within a category we understand well,” said Lyons, who is opening his first Tide Laundromat location later this year. “Given the market opportunity, we believe it's an excellent fit.”
That flexibility is especially important in dry cleaning and laundry because customer habits are sticky. Many consumers have used the same local cleaner for 10 or 15 years. That is why Tide Services sees acquisition as a powerful way to enter those relationships, preserve the local customer base and elevate the experience.
“For us to grow, it often makes the most sense to buy that relationship and then improve it,” Laabs said. “You clean up the store, bring in new technology, add services and elevate the customer experience.”
This is also why conversions are expected to play a major role in the company’s next phase of growth. Many independent dry cleaners are family businesses facing succession questions. Some owners are ready to retire, but they do not have a clear path forward. Tide franchisees can step in, acquire those businesses and bring them into a larger branded platform.
“Acquisitions are emotional in this space,” Laabs said. “You’re often buying a family business that has been passed down for generations. It’s not always just about the number. It’s about legacy.”
Tide Services is also seeing growing interest from franchisees who are looking to diversify outside of restaurants. In particular, the company has seen prospects from major food brands who are drawn to the simplicity and stability of laundry services.
“When you compare it to restaurants, there are significantly fewer SKUs to manage,” Laabs said. “There are fewer moving pieces, less product complexity and fewer day-to-day operational headaches.”
That does not mean the business is passive or effortless. Tide leadership is clear that franchisees need to be engaged, especially in the early years. Laabs says the strongest owners are those who are willing to learn the business, build a strong general manager and develop a team before stepping back into a more strategic role.
“This requires patient money,” Laabs said. “This is not a quick ramp like some restaurant concepts. But if you build it the right way, it can become a very nice long-term cash-flow business.”
For Laabs, that long-term profile was part of the appeal when he first became a franchisee.
“It felt like a long-term family investment,” he said. “It was stable. It was sticky. It was something you could build over time.”
The timing for Tide Services is especially strong because the category is changing from multiple directions at once.
Independent dry cleaners are facing succession challenges. Laundromats are ripe for modernization. Consumers are demanding more convenience. Environmental shifts are pushing older operators to rethink their equipment and processes. At the same time, multi-unit operators are looking for alternatives to food-service concepts with high labor demands, rising costs and operational complexity.
Tide Services sits at the center of all of those trends.
The cleaners' business has now had years to refine its model, and the company is increasingly focused on acquisitions to accelerate growth. Laabs said he would like to see 70% to 80% of cleaner growth come through acquisitions going forward.
“The opportunity is significant,” he said. “There are a lot of operators out there who need a succession plan, and we can provide one.”
The laundromat side is newer, but the long-term opportunity is equally compelling. Tide Laundromat gives franchisees a way to serve a different consumer segment with a modernized version of an essential service. While the company is still refining the economics and value engineering the buildout, leadership sees a major runway ahead.
“We’re being thoughtful about how we scale laundromats,” Laabs said. “The worst thing we can do is grow too fast before we right-size the model. But the consumer need is there, and the opportunity is there.”
For the right franchisee, Tide Services offers a rare combination: a trusted national brand, a fragmented industry, recurring consumer demand, multiple revenue streams and the chance to build a market over time.
“This category is evolving, and we’re helping define what it becomes by partnering with qualified franchisees,” Laabs said.
For more information on franchising with Tide Services, visit: https://tidefranchise.com/
Tide Services
SPONSORED
With Tide Cleaners and Tide Laundromat, the brand is consolidating two fragmented industries under one trusted name, giving franchisees multiple paths to scale in a category built on recurring demand.
For decades, the $115 billion laundry and dry cleaning industry has remained one of the most fragmented areas of consumer services. Dry cleaning has largely been dominated by local, family-owned operators, many of whom have served the same neighborhoods for generations. Laundromats, meanwhile, have often been associated with outdated facilities, inconsistent experiences and limited modernization.
Tide Services is changing that.
Through Tide Cleaners and Tide Laundromat, the company is building a national out-of-home laundry platform designed to serve consumers across multiple income levels, service needs and usage occasions. The goal is simple: make it easier for consumers to get laundry done outside the home, whether they need professional garment care, wash-and-fold, pickup and delivery or a clean, modern place to do laundry themselves.
“For consumers and for franchisees, it should be very simple,” said Todd Laabs, chief operating officer of Tide Services. “I need laundry done, and I don’t want to do it in my home. We have solutions for that. In dry cleaning, no one has really said, ‘This is the standard.’ In laundromats, the traditional model has often been dated. We are in a unique position to completely claim this space.”
Today, Tide Services has more than 225 locations across more than 30 markets and is seeing strong momentum across the business. The company expects to finish its fiscal year with approximately 25% total business growth, including roughly 20% growth on the cleaner side and 40% growth on the laundromat side. For entrepreneurs looking for a service franchise with brand trust, recurring demand and multiple growth pathways, Tide Services offers a timely opportunity.
The Tide franchise story began with Tide Cleaners, which launched in 2008 to bring Tide's trust and cleaning expertise to the out-of-home garment care space. The idea was to take an industry that had long been defined by local mom-and-pop operators and introduce a more modern, branded experience built around convenience, technology and quality.
For Laabs, who became a Tide Cleaners franchisee in 2013 before later becoming COO, that opportunity was clear from the beginning.
“What interested me about Tide was that the dry cleaning industry was lacking innovation,” Laabs said. “It was run by mom-and-pops, and there was a real opportunity for growth and innovation. The Tide brand was attractive, and the business itself felt stable. Once customers find a cleaner they trust, they tend to stay with them.”
Over time, the Tide Cleaners model evolved. Early locations were more rigid in design, but franchisees and the corporate team learned how to make the concept more flexible. The business grew from a single-store dry cleaning model into a hub-and-spoke system that could include plant stores, drop stores, delivery routes, acquisitions and other service formats. On the Tide Cleaners side, for example, an owner can begin with a plant store that serves as the operational hub for a market. From there, they can add drop stores in high-traffic areas, expand delivery, acquire existing dry cleaners or layer in other services.
“It took time for the cleaners' side to become scalable,” Laabs said. “But now we have multiple ways for franchisees to build a market.”
Tide Laundromat came later, launching in 2023 after beginning as an innovation project inside Procter & Gamble. The concept was created to reimagine the laundromat experience with bright, clean facilities, modern machines, premium cleaning products and technology that makes the process faster and easier for customers.
While Tide Cleaners serves customers who want full-service garment care, Tide Laundromat expands the platform to reach consumers who need access to self-service laundry in a cleaner and more comfortable environment. Together, the two concepts allow franchisees to become the out-of-home laundry provider in their market.
“We want franchisees to own that space locally,” Laabs said. “That could mean cleaners, laundromats, delivery, acquisitions or some combination of all of it.”
One of the biggest advantages Tide Services brings to franchising is consumer trust that is almost impossible to replicate. In laundry, Tide is already a household name. That gives franchisees a level of credibility that independent operators often spend years trying to build.
“What appealed to us was that Tide wasn't starting from scratch,” said Robert Lyons, a Tide Cleaners franchisee who owns a whopping 42 locations across five states. “The store concept was new, but the product brand already had decades of trust behind it. People grew up with Tide. Their parents and grandparents used Tide. That brand recognition was incredibly powerful.”
That brand strength matters because both dry cleaning and laundromats have historically lacked national leadership.
“The dry-cleaning industry hadn't changed much in the last 50 years,” Lyons said. “There wasn't a major national player or any real consolidation happening in the industry. There were larger regional brands, but nothing with the national recognition that Tide brought to the table.”
Unlike franchise concepts that depend on a single store format, Tide Services gives franchisees several ways to grow.
“The laundromat serves a different customer base than our dry-cleaning business, and we saw it as a great opportunity to diversify while remaining within a category we understand well,” said Lyons, who is opening his first Tide Laundromat location later this year. “Given the market opportunity, we believe it's an excellent fit.”
That flexibility is especially important in dry cleaning and laundry because customer habits are sticky. Many consumers have used the same local cleaner for 10 or 15 years. That is why Tide Services sees acquisition as a powerful way to enter those relationships, preserve the local customer base and elevate the experience.
“For us to grow, it often makes the most sense to buy that relationship and then improve it,” Laabs said. “You clean up the store, bring in new technology, add services and elevate the customer experience.”
This is also why conversions are expected to play a major role in the company’s next phase of growth. Many independent dry cleaners are family businesses facing succession questions. Some owners are ready to retire, but they do not have a clear path forward. Tide franchisees can step in, acquire those businesses and bring them into a larger branded platform.
“Acquisitions are emotional in this space,” Laabs said. “You’re often buying a family business that has been passed down for generations. It’s not always just about the number. It’s about legacy.”
Tide Services is also seeing growing interest from franchisees who are looking to diversify outside of restaurants. In particular, the company has seen prospects from major food brands who are drawn to the simplicity and stability of laundry services.
“When you compare it to restaurants, there are significantly fewer SKUs to manage,” Laabs said. “There are fewer moving pieces, less product complexity and fewer day-to-day operational headaches.”
That does not mean the business is passive or effortless. Tide leadership is clear that franchisees need to be engaged, especially in the early years. Laabs says the strongest owners are those who are willing to learn the business, build a strong general manager and develop a team before stepping back into a more strategic role.
“This requires patient money,” Laabs said. “This is not a quick ramp like some restaurant concepts. But if you build it the right way, it can become a very nice long-term cash-flow business.”
For Laabs, that long-term profile was part of the appeal when he first became a franchisee.
“It felt like a long-term family investment,” he said. “It was stable. It was sticky. It was something you could build over time.”
The timing for Tide Services is especially strong because the category is changing from multiple directions at once.
Independent dry cleaners are facing succession challenges. Laundromats are ripe for modernization. Consumers are demanding more convenience. Environmental shifts are pushing older operators to rethink their equipment and processes. At the same time, multi-unit operators are looking for alternatives to food-service concepts with high labor demands, rising costs and operational complexity.
Tide Services sits at the center of all of those trends.
The cleaners' business has now had years to refine its model, and the company is increasingly focused on acquisitions to accelerate growth. Laabs said he would like to see 70% to 80% of cleaner growth come through acquisitions going forward.
“The opportunity is significant,” he said. “There are a lot of operators out there who need a succession plan, and we can provide one.”
The laundromat side is newer, but the long-term opportunity is equally compelling. Tide Laundromat gives franchisees a way to serve a different consumer segment with a modernized version of an essential service. While the company is still refining the economics and value engineering the buildout, leadership sees a major runway ahead.
“We’re being thoughtful about how we scale laundromats,” Laabs said. “The worst thing we can do is grow too fast before we right-size the model. But the consumer need is there, and the opportunity is there.”
For the right franchisee, Tide Services offers a rare combination: a trusted national brand, a fragmented industry, recurring consumer demand, multiple revenue streams and the chance to build a market over time.
“This category is evolving, and we’re helping define what it becomes by partnering with qualified franchisees,” Laabs said.
For more information on franchising with Tide Services, visit: https://tidefranchise.com/
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