Why We Started The Laundry Brothers

We started The Laundry Brothers because we couldn't find a laundry service in Vancouver that worked the way it should. Not for regular people. Not for small businesses. Not even close.

We figured we could build one. So we did.

The problem with laundry in Vancouver

Walk into almost any Vancouver laundromat and you'll find machines that are either broken, constantly occupied, or priced for one or two loads at a time. Fine for a studio apartment — not workable if you're trying to get through a week's worth of laundry for a family or a small business.

The app-based pickup services that launched in the early 2020s had a different set of problems. They ran on gig workers — contractors who were driving for three different apps at the same time and had no particular reason to treat your cashmere with any more care than the next delivery. Order mix-ups were common. Customer service, when something went wrong, was a chatbot.

The commercial linen companies that served hotels and restaurants had minimum orders that made them inaccessible to most small businesses — $400 minimums are not uncommon. A cafe with six tablecloths has no path into those contracts.

Every option had a gap. And the gap was always the same one: the person picking up and cleaning your clothes had no skin in the game.

What we decided to build

We wanted a service we'd actually use ourselves. That meant being honest about what that required:

• In-house drivers, not gig workers. If someone represents the company at your front door, they should work for the company — with training, accountability, and enough stake in the outcome to handle your clothes carefully.
• A flat-rate bag system. One price per bag. No per-pound calculations, no surprise charges for "heavy items." You know what you're paying before you book.
• A real guarantee. Not a "we'll look into it" policy. If your laundry comes back wrong, we re-clean it on the next pickup at no charge. That's the deal.
• Seven days a week, 6 AM to 10 PM. Laundry doesn't only happen on weekdays. The service runs when people actually need it.

How we actually run it

The facility is in Richmond. Every order goes through the same process: sorted on arrival, washed in its own dedicated machine, folded to your preferences, and returned the next evening. No mixing orders. No mystery about where your clothes have been.

The driver team is employed directly. They're the same people you'll see at your door on your first pickup and your fiftieth. When someone knows they're going to be the one knocking on your door again in a week, they tend to treat the job differently.

We serve residential customers — mostly people who've done the math on how much time laundry takes and decided there's something better to do with it — and commercial customers: small restaurants, dental offices, gyms, Airbnb hosts, anyone who needs a reliable linen service without a $400 minimum order.

Where we are now

We now serve thousands of customers and hundreds of businesses across 12 cities in Greater Vancouver — Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, North Vancouver, West Vancouver, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey, Delta, Langley, and Maple Ridge.

The operation has grown, but the model hasn't changed. Same bag system. Same guarantee. Same in-house team. We've added dry cleaning to the pickup loop, linen service for commercial customers, and a subscription tier for people who want a standing weekly pickup without thinking about it.

The name is still the question we get most often at the door. No, we're not actually brothers. We're two friends who thought the name should reflect how we run things — like family, with the kind of accountability that implies. We've been told it's either charming or confusing. Probably both.

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If you want to see what the service actually looks like from the first booking, here's how it works.