Before January: A Year-End Price Review and 2027 Planning Checklist for Laundry Pros

Most home laundry pros set their price once, when they start, and then never touch it — not because it is right, but because changing it feels risky. Meanwhile detergent costs more than it did, your calendar is fuller than it was, and the price is quietly paying you less every month. December is the one time of year you can fix that cleanly. Customers expect prices to be reviewed at the turn of the year, a change that starts January 1 needs no apology tour, and you have real numbers from a full year to decide with. Here is the review, in one sitting.

Pull your real numbers first

You need four numbers, all findable in an hour. Your price per pound today. Your real cost per order — detergent, scent, bags, stain treatment, utilities; if you have never added it up, work through it line by line the way our cost-per-order guide does, because the payout is not the profit. Your average pounds per week across the last three months. And your fullest days: which days of the week turned people away or ran you past dinner.

Those four numbers are your whole decision. Everything below is just reading them honestly.

The raise-or-hold test

Raise your price for January if any of these are true: you turned away work more than a couple of times this fall because your calendar was full; your cost per order rose but your price did not; or you have a waitlist, a referral backlog, or regulars who book the same slots every week without ever asking the price. A full calendar at the old price is the market telling you the price is low — that is not a guess, it is your own booking history.

Hold your price if your calendar still has open, unbooked days most weeks and you are actively trying to fill them. In that case the problem is volume, not price, and January’s job is marketing, not a rate card change. Either answer is a good answer. The only bad answer is another year of not looking.

If you raise: how much, and how it starts

Small, single steps are the ones that stick. For most home pros, a raise of 10 to 25 cents a pound is meaningful money across a year — on 200 pounds a week, 15 cents is about $30 a week, every week — without being a shock to anyone’s budget. Set the new price to start on orders booked from January 1, say that date in the announcement, and honor the old price on anything already booked for December. One change, one date, no tiers of exceptions to track.

Resist rounding your life away in the other direction, too: if your number lands at an awkward figure, that is fine. Prices like $1.85 a pound are normal in this business, and customers judge the total and the turnaround, not whether your rate is a round number.

The announcement: early, plain, once

Tell regulars in December, in one message, before the change — never let a customer discover a new price on an invoice. Keep it short and free of apology: “Starting January 1, my wash & fold rate moves from $1.75 to $1.90 a pound. Everything else stays the same — same turnaround, same care. Thank you for a great year.” Thank them, do not grovel. A long justification invites negotiation; a short, warm notice reads as a business being a business. In practice, pros who announce early and plainly lose almost nobody — the regulars who value you were never choosing you on 15 cents.

Your 2027 planning checklist

While the year is open on the table, finish the rest in the same sitting. Stock up on your core supplies during year-end sales if cash flow allows — you know your cost per order now, so you know what a case discount is worth. Put one machine-care week on the January calendar: lint traps deep-cleaned, hoses checked, the dryer vent cleared — the cheapest insurance a laundry business owns. Mark the days you will not work in 2027 before customers book around them. And set one January goal with a number on it — five new regulars, one new weekly route day, a supplies shelf that never runs dry — written where you will see it while the fresh-start customers are looking for exactly what you sell.

An hour in December, four numbers, one decision, one message. That is the whole year-end review — and it is the difference between starting 2027 at a price you chose and drifting into it at a price you inherited.