How do you turn a fast-food joint into a full-service laundry?
For former truck driver Randy Stewart, it wasn’t as big a job as he thought when a good friend plucked him from the open road to run Keyway Supersudz on Clay Street.
“It was actually the easiest I’d done,” Stewart said of how his start in the laundry business began. “Before, we had to rewire and renovate the whole store.
“Here, we had a few small crews and just gutted the building. The tough part was re-grouting the floor and hauling out the greasy restaurant stuff.”
Keyway Supersudz opened two years ago this month in what had been a Wendy’s since the 1970s. When the restaurant moved farther east on Clay Street, Keyway moved in its 80 top-of-the-line washers and dryers. In all, 13 Keyway-branded laundries operate in Mississippi, Stewart said.
His prices start at $2.50 a load for small loads, a rate reflective of having the newest machinery in town. Drop-offs for wash-and-fold requests are done through a side door, near where food orders used to be taken.
“I wouldn’t really recommend putting comforters, long underwear and blankets in here, but you can fit them in here,” Stewart cautioned while showing the abilities of the 80-pound washer.
Stewart manages the location with two part-time workers who mind the 24-hour business for a customer base he says is about “80 percent regular”.
“I was a one-man show in here that first year,” Stewart said. “But I have two part-timers that help me. They really do a better job than me.
“I’d say we have this half of Vicksburg, anyway,” Stewart said. “We have a lot of people who work jobs at Grand Gulf, IP, the port. And we have people who live in Port Gibson, too.”
Machines at Keyway accept credit and debit cards, not in itself a new feature in the world of laundries. However, an ATM-like machine in the building allows customers to remotely activate the washer in which they’ve loaded their clothes.
“Customers choose and they really don’t have to touch a coin,” Stewart said.
Stewart expects to be busy this winter, as clothes get heavier.
“It’s better right now,” Stewart said. “It really falls off in the summer, because there’s no one needing to get clothes washed for school and things.”