Attention Laundromats: The 26% Revenue You’re Leaving on the Table

Article by Nayax: When it comes to growing their business, operators tend to focus on finding the next location. More sites mean more machines, and more machines mean more revenue. It makes sense. 

But there is a faster, cheaper, and less risky way to grow – adding a second machine type at existing locations. You already have the footfall – customers are there, waiting, spending, and in the right frame of mind to buy. They just need a reason to buy more.

Waiting customers spend more 

Not all footfall is equal. A customer walking past a machine in a busy corridor has two seconds to decide to stop what they’re doing and buy. A customer sitting in a laundromat has round 90 minutes, and not much else to do. 

That difference matters more than most operators realize. The longer a customer stays in a location, the more times the opportunity to spend presents itself – and the more likely they are to take it. Laundromat customers aren’t going anywhere until their wash cycle ends, so we’re talking about a sustained commercial opportunity, not just a potential transaction.  

The same logic applies at arcades and amusement centers. These locations are among the highest impulse-purchase environments in unattended retail: the combination of entertainment, dwell time, and a spending mindset creates conditions that operators can actively design for.  

In short, the customers at your best locations are already primed to spend. Installing a second machine type isn’t a hard sell. It’s a logical next step to capture existing demand. 

The pairings that work 

The combinations that drive the strongest results share a simple logic: they serve the same customer, in the same moment, with a complementary need. 

Laundromat + snack or drink machine. The customer is on site for nearly 90 minutes. They’re likely to get thirsty. It may even be over meal time. A snack or drinks machine doesn’t require them to make a special decision, just to notice it’s there – and most of them will. 

Car wash + coffee machine. After the automated car wash, the customer may elect to upgrade to an interior clean, or a polish. While your staff do that, they have nothing to do but wait. A coffee machine converts that waiting time into revenue almost automatically. No promotion required. No signage beyond the machine itself. The context does the selling. 

Kiddie rides + snack machine. Parents are present, and they’re in a spending frame of mind. Installing a snack machine captures the follow-on request from the child and the parent’s own impulse.  

These are not hypothetical combinations. They are the pairings operators running Nayax terminals see driving measurable uplifts, with locations operating two complementary machine types averaging 26% more revenue than comparable single-machine sites. 

The cashless effect – and why it matters for every machine in the location 

There is another factor that determines how much potential revenue you actually capture: whether your machines accept cashless payment. 

In its meta-analysis pulling together findings from 71 published studies, the Journal of Marketing Research confirmed that consumers consistently spend more when paying digitally than when paying with cash. In vending specifically, adding cashless payment capability to laundromat machines can increase revenue by 18 to 30%. 

This is not just a convenience argument. It’s a behavioral one. Here’s how: Kahneman and Tversky’s work on loss aversion shows that spending cash produces a measurable psychological response – a mild but real sense of pain at the moment of payment. Tapping a card or a phone does not. The friction is lower, the decision is faster, and the likelihood of completing the purchase is higher. 

The implication for pairing is direct. The customer who just tapped their card for a wash and wants a coffee shouldn’t have to scramble to find coins. If they do, many of them won’t bother. So, if your first machine is cashless and your second is cash-only, you’re creating a friction point at exactly the moment a customer is most likely to make an impulse purchase. 

Every machine in a paired location should accept every payment method. For example, terminals like VPOS Touch do this as standard. 

For more information visit https://www.nayax.com/business_type/laundry/.