Taking Care Of Dirty Laundry Jensen Beach's Triple A Linen Cleaning Up In Growing Economy
Taking Care Of Dirty Laundry Jensen Beach's Triple A Linen
Cleaning Up In Growing Economy
By: Amy Martinez Palm Beach Post Staff Writer, August, 2000
Every time you wipe your mouth on a napkin at Roxy's in West Palm Beach, Panama Hattie's in Palm Beach Gardens, or any one of 80 country clubs between Vero Beach and Boca Raton, chances are it was washed, ironed and folded at Triple A Linen in Jensen Beach.
Founded 13 years ago, Triple A Linen is growing into one of the area's biggest linen-rental services, with 67 employees, 350 clients and nearly $3 million in projected revenues this year.
It has all the bells and whistles of a big laundry: 12 washing machines able to clean up to 4,000 pounds of laundry an hour, four tilting dryers and a $40,000 computer system that measures chemicals within one-tenth of an ounce.
It will clean more than 8 million pounds of laundry this year, twice as much as three years ago, and it will do so entirely at its Jensen Beach plant, even as it expands to Orlando.
Owner Tom Bresson and his four partners say they're in the perfect place to serve a growing number of hotels and time-share resorts that no longer want to wash their own sheets and towels. Since May, they've signed contracts with three time shares in Orlando and now hope to make Miami their next market.
"There's such a boom in Orlando and Miami. Everywhere you look, there's a construction crane," said Bresson, 45. "And we're right in the middle of it."
A strong economy means more people are eating and sleeping out, but that's not necessarily what's driving growth at Triple A Linen . Rather, its growth has to do with an increasing number of restaurants and hotels turning outside for help with their dirty laundry. The strong economy, of course, means there's more of it.
"The trend today is to outsource. Companies feel they want to put all their resources and people into their core business," said Peter Corr, marketing director for the Textile Rental Services Association in Hallandale Beach. "With restaurants, for example, their objective is to delight customers with food dishes, not to be washing linens."
Bresson, who previously owned a baby-furniture store in Fort Pierce, started out in the laundry business 14 years ago, when he and his wife, Tracy, opened a coin-operated laundry in Port St. Lucie. He became discouraged by the laundry's limited reach - about a 3-mile radius - and opened Triple A Linen after only a year, catering to small restaurants.
He won his first big contract in 1992, with Harbor Ridge Yacht and Country Club in Palm City, and two years later was washing linens for the Chesterfield Hotel in Palm Beach and Vistana time-share resort on Hutchinson Island.
He has since added four partners with more than 90 years of experience among them: Steve Karlik, chief financial officer; James Telliard, who owned a linen rental business in Cleveland for 55 years before retiring to Jupiter; his son, Jeff Telliard, who handles sales; and Walter Kothe, a former engineer with White Plains Linen in New York.
The company's mainstay is renting out napkins and tablecloths to more than 250 restaurants and 80 country clubs in the area, but its future is in the hospitality industry, Bresson said. It recently added $500,000 in equipment to meet demand in Orlando and Miami, and it's in the process of buying the 30,000-square-foot plant where it leases space.
Its competitors are Atlanta-based National Linen, which has plants in Riviera Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Orlando, and various mom-and- pop laundries.
To win the three accounts in Orlando, Bresson said he alleviated concerns about the two-hour drive by offering a free trial run and 30- day service without a contract. He added two trucks to the company's fleet of five and delivered on his promise of a 24-hour turnaround, he said.
What's more, the company sold the resorts on its bundling system, which separates sheets and towels according to their size and ties them together in piles of 10.
"Just about every outfit out there throws sheets in carts and sends them out without separating them," said Karlik. "We have some extra labor costs in doing that, but it's a reputation we wanted to build."