How Much Are Laundromat Utilities?

By Jason Taken, business broker · HedgeStone Business Advisors · Updated 2026-09-04 · 7 min read

The Short Answer

About 20% of revenue at the median. On a $335,000 store, roughly $67,000 a year across water, sewer, gas, and electricity.

What Makes Up the Bill

The ranking is not universal. A store with electric dryers in a high-rate state has a very different profile from a gas-dryer store in a low-rate one, which is why every underwriting starts from the actual bills.

Why Statewide Averages Do Not Work

Electricity does have a published state benchmark: the EIA's State Electricity Profiles report all-sector average retail prices, with a 12.94 cents/kWh U.S. figure for 2024 and wide state variation around it.

Water and sewer have no equivalent. They are set by the serving utility — sometimes a city, sometimes a district, sometimes a private operator — and two stores ten miles apart can face different rate structures, different sewer calculations, different meter charges, and different seasonal averaging rules.

What to pull for a specific address:

• the serving utility's current commercial rate schedule
• the meter-size charge and the volumetric rate blocks
• exactly how sewer is calculated, including any multiplier of metered water
• seasonal averaging, surcharges, and taxes
• backflow requirements and any connection or impact fees
• whether the meter and service line belong to the landlord or the tenant, and whether other premises share the service

Diagnosing a High Ratio

A store at 28% instead of 20% is telling you something. On $300,000 of revenue that gap is $24,000 a year, which is roughly $84,000 of value at a 3.5x multiple. Finding the cause is worth real money.

That last row is the one buyers miss. A high utility ratio can mean costs are high, or it can mean the denominator — revenue — is smaller than the seller says. The cross-check that separates the two is comparing metered consumption against manufacturer per-cycle usage for the installed models. See water bill analysis.

Can Efficiency Fix It?

Partly, and less automatically than equipment marketing suggests. ENERGY STAR reports that certified commercial washers are on average 9% more energy efficient and use about 45% less water than standard models — a real effect that applies to qualifying models, not to every machine in a retool.

Model any saving from your own cycle volume and your own tariffs. A percentage from a brochure applied to a store nobody has measured is not a projection.

Why Is Sewer Usually the Larger Half?

Because it is generally not measured. Most utilities bill sewer as a multiple of metered water, on the reasoning that what came in must have gone out, and the sewer rate per unit is frequently higher than the water rate itself.

Two consequences follow, and they are the most useful things to understand about this bill. Waste is charged twice — a leaking inlet valve costs you the water and the sewer treatment of water that never got dirty, which is what makes leak detection the highest-return maintenance task in the building. And any water that does not enter the sewer is still billed as though it did, unless the jurisdiction offers a deduct meter and you have applied for one.

There is a third point that matters when comparing stores. Because the sewer basis is set locally, two stores with identical machines and identical consumption can have materially different bills. That is a rate structure difference, and no amount of efficiency changes it.

How Do You Work Out Your Own Number?

Take a full billing period, divide total utility cost by machine starts for the same period, and you have cost per cycle across the store. Split it by machine size if your payment data allows, because a large front-loader and a small top-loader differ substantially.

Then repeat it monthly. A single figure tells you what a cycle costs; a series tells you when something has changed — and a rising cost per cycle with a stable machine mix is almost always a leak, a failing valve or a running toilet.

Six questions to the utility cost nothing and frequently find money: how is sewer computed at this address, is a deduct meter available, is there a rate classification we might qualify for, when were rates last revised and is an increase already approved, is this meter shared with another unit, and is the service size adequate.

What Should You Ask Before Buying?

Six questions, to the utility rather than to the seller, because the seller frequently cannot answer them accurately and the answers are available to anyone who calls.

What is the current rate schedule, and when was it last revised? A utility that has raised rates each of the last several years is telling you something about the next several.

Are any increases already approved or filed? An approved but unimplemented increase is a known future cost appearing nowhere in the store's historical bills.

How is sewer computed at this address? As a multiple of metered water, on measured discharge, or otherwise — this single answer determines what any efficiency measure is worth.

Is a deduct meter or an alternative rate classification available? Occasionally a reduction is sitting unclaimed.

Is this meter shared with any other tenant? More common in older strip centres than buyers expect, and it corrupts every calculation you would otherwise run.

What is the service size, and is it adequate? Relevant before adding machines, since upsizing is a permitted capital project.

What Should You Do Next?

Ask any seller for 24-36 months of original utility bills, not a summary. Then compute the ratio yourself, compare it to the 20% median, and get the explanation for any gap in writing before you agree a price.

The Next Step

This page is general information about laundromat transactions, not legal, tax, or investment advice, and not a guarantee of sale price, timing, or financing approval. Verify current rules with your own CPA, attorney, lender, and the relevant state or municipal agency before acting.