Retail

Pickup lockers eliminate wait at CD One Price Cleaners

Customers drop off their laundry in an outdoor drop-off bin, then return and pick it up from a pickup locker.

Photo courtesy of CD One Price Cleaners.

October 6, 2021 by Elliot Maras — Editor, Kiosk Marketplace & Vending Times

Tired of standing in line at the dry cleaner? CD One Price Cleaners in Hopkins, Minnesota, allows customers to drop off their laundry in an outdoor drop-off bin, then return and pick them up from a pickup locker.

The company, which has 36 stores throughout the Midwest, recently installed its first pickup lockers at its company-owned store in the Minneapolis area on a test basis.

Customers can drop off laundry inside the store in drop off bins as well as using outdoor drop off bins.

Previously, customers would come in, wait in line, walk up to a counter and provide their garments to a counter associate. When their garments were ready, they would come back, wait in line, walk up to a counter and the associate would use the rotating rack to find their garments.

No more waiting in line

Using the expedited service, customers register using their credit card on a mobile app or at an in-store kiosk. Once they have an account, they can drop their garments in the 24-hour outdoor express drop bin or in one of the in-store bins. Once their garments are cleaned, they receive a text message letting them know which locker to pick up their items at using a four-digit code to unlock the locker.

Jonathan Reckles

The store can be accessed 24 hours a day and customers can get an access code to unlock the front door using the mobile app during night-time hours.

"They no longer have to wait in any line," Jonathan Reckles, director of marketing, told Kiosk Marketplace in a phone interview. "With the ongoing labor shortages, with the increase in supplies cost, this is potentially a way for us to make it more cost effective, and then at the same time it speeds up the process for the customers."

The Hopkins, Minnesota store has approximately 200 lockers, most of which are 13 inches by 52 inches — with some lockers having an extended area for longer garments.

Most customers use the outside express bin to drop off their clothes, Reckles said.

"When you walk in, you see basically four aisles of lockers," he said. "You choose where to go." The pickup lockers located in the lobby of the 3,000-square-foot store have keypads where the customer enters the code.

The next step in dry cleaner convenience

Customers enter the pickup code on a keypad.

Pickup lockers are not new for dry cleaners, Reckles said, but are not yet common. Similar lockers have served residential high rise buildings for around five years, but he is not aware of any store using lockers in place of employees.

For CD One Price Cleaners, the lockers mark the next step since the company introduced pickup and delivery in parts of Chicago, St. Louis and Minneapolis in 2017.

The company underwent a major expansion in 2020 in response to COVID-19, which will continue through next year.

"We were just exploring various ways to automate some of the functions in the store in order to streamline the process, reduce the amount of labor and speed up the experience for the customer," Reckles said.

"The next step for us is to roll out this locker functionality to residential buildings, but also to other locations that are convenient for customers," he said. "We could put lockers at train stops. We could put lockers in grocery stores. Anywhere where a customer happens to be going on a regular basis would be a good place for us to put a locker."

The company has always focused on three needs: simplicity, value and expedience, he said.

"This was just another way to continually improve our unique(ness)," he said. "This was in our roadmap well before COVID-19."

Home grown software

In 2019 they began building their own technology for pickup and delivery. The company offers next-day service and a $99-per-month service for pickup and delivery.

Off-the-shelf software for pickup and delivery does exist, Reckles said, but it did not meet the company's needs.

"One of the things we've learned (since 2017) is that there's no out-of-the-box software that we could use to build the laundry pickup and delivery business that we wanted to build using the existing technology out there," he said.

David Radzialowski, the director of growth and innovation, led the software project. The company contracted software developers to write the software.

"There's no technology that we could just purchase out of the box that would facilitate all of these differentiators compared to other dry cleaners," Reckles said. "We tested with multiple out-of-the-box softwares before we came to that realization."

Customers can register for the drop off and pickup service on an app or using an in-store kiosk.

There is also a driver app and a customer facing app. The driver uses his or her app to route their pickup and deliveries.

Positive customer response

No counter associates have been removed from the store on account of the pickup lockers, Reckles said, although the goal is to eventually remove counter staff.

The company is encouraging customers to use the lockers using email and social media.

"Most customers (95%) are excited and they think it's pretty cool," he said.

No customers have expressed the need to only pay with cash, he said.

The company will introduce Apple Pay acceptance next year.

"If it works well, we'll plan on rolling it out to our other stores," Reckles said.

Franchisees have the option to offer pickup and delivery, but are not required.

Photos courtesy of CD One Price Cleaners.