The Internet Told Them Owning a Laundromat Was Easy Money. It Was Anything But.

Sure the quarters are flowing in. But watch out for the dog hairs and the drug dealers.

By John Keilman

Oct. 19, 2026 5:30 am ET

The labor of laundromats isn’t exactly a passive-income dream.

Three years ago, Atusa Parsa bought a laundromat in Fullerton, Calif., after social media convinced her it would be a great investment. She quickly learned there were many things the content didn’t cover—like how to evict the drug dealers in the bathroom.

“No matter how easy they make it look, the process is a little more involved,” said Parsa, who cleaned out her establishment with the help of police.

The once-humble laundromat has become a social-media supernova in recent years. Videos linger over the mounds of quarters and stacks of bills a store’s machines can generate, making the business look like a low-effort, high-reward way to pursue the American dream.

This vision of passive income has found a ready audience in an age of economic anxiety, when the traditional career ladder appears to be broken and the AI revolution looms. But Brian Wallace, chief executive of the Coin Laundry Association, said some influencers aren’t giving the full picture.

“We do kind of bristle at the thought that it’s somehow some magic business where you show up once a week and collect quarters and go home,” he said. “That’s not what we see among those that are successful.”

Carlos Ochoa, better known to his 2 million TikTok followers as Laundromat Money, is credited with kick-starting the online trend five years ago when he was the fledgling owner of a Visalia, Calif., laundromat.

He pulled out his phone and recorded himself dumping fat streams of quarters into collection buckets. Then he took fistfuls of bills from his change machines and ran them through a whirring cash counter. His five-day gross, he told viewers, was $1,419.

Ochoa posted the footage on TikTok, where it received more than 1 million views. He’s gone on to make dozens of similar videos with far higher view counts, but even he worries that aspiring entrepreneurs are getting the wrong idea. His laundromat, which includes a wash-and-fold business, is far from passive, he said.

“People are getting trapped into looking at all these videos that glamorize the industry and they forgo any other due diligence,” Ochoa said. He often goes into detail about his revenues and expenses—all while grabbing the cash, of course.

Wallace said there are about 30,000 laundromats in the U.S., a number that has remained flat though many are expanding. Buying a small location costs around $300,000, while larger, high-performing operations can go for up to $3 million, he said.

While corporations and private equity are taking an increased interest in the business, the vast majority of laundromats remain mom-and-pop enterprises. The average profit margin is 24%, Wallace said.

For most, collecting quarters isn’t enough to make a successful business. Francis Dayamba has added everything from a claw machine to an electric-vehicle charger since buying his Chicago laundromat three years ago. A video-gambling terminal didn’t work out so well; customers were winning so much the company that owned it took it back, he said.

“We have staff here from 7 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.,” Dayamba said. “In order to make the salaries make sense, it is imperative to have different sources of revenue.”

A lucky few profit from their online content. That includes Mark and Kathy Huntebrinker, who own a laundry service in St. Louis. Five years ago, they began filming themselves pulling thick, fluffy blankets of lint from screens the size of baking sheets, sometimes finding tiny treasures like coins or plastic toys.

“This is the most satisfying video I have ever watched,” one commenter wrote about a TikTok that has been viewed 24 million times.

Mark Huntebrinker said the clips can bring in $5,000 in a good month, enough to pay for family vacations. He holds monthly strategy sessions with other top laundromat content creators, and said the genre is undergoing a reboot.

“People I know are pivoting to be less flashy,” he said.

Nancy Connolly is already there. She hasn’t made a single cash-collection video since leaving a corporate financial-services career earlier this year to buy a laundromat in Charleston, S.C. Instead, she highlights the challenging aspects of the business: wiping dog hair out of a washer, for instance, or dealing with a customer smoking in the bathroom.

“I’m trying to be as authentic as I possibly can be on what’s going on behind the scenes, and what it actually looks like day-to-day to grow a business,” said Connolly, who also makes videos giving tips to other owners.

Another newcomer to the industry, Sam Cohen, makes videos about his misadventures after buying a laundromat in Old Bridge, N.J., hoping to entertain his small following.

They include the hassles of fixing a change machine, the reckless drivers he encounters during his pickup-and-delivery service and the endless struggle to find detergent bottles small enough to fit into his vending machine.

Cohen said the business has yet to break even, mostly due to unexpected repair costs. He has nonetheless found it a fun change from his previous gig as a software developer.

“The stress difference is amazing,” he said. “The problems are very simple and straightforward.”

Parsa, the owner who had to eject petty criminals, wishes she’d recorded some of the early craziness; her TikToks today focus on cash collection and cleaning. Still, she said she’s glad to have made her laundromat a no-drama establishment.

“It’s all worth it because I built this business and I’m proud of it,” she said.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5913934&forum_id=2#50196745)