Portage Park, the Northwest Side neighborhood where Drive-By Laundry is based. Photo: Orestek / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
Brent Whistler has kept a file of business ideas for years. The one he finally acted on came to him on a sunny Saturday when he wanted to be outside and was stuck doing laundry instead.
That afternoon became Drive-By Laundry, a pickup and delivery service that launched in June 2013. Whistler, who was born in Wyoming and grew up in Denver, runs it from a laundromat in Portage Park and sends drivers across a wide stretch of the North and West sides, including much of the lakefront and Uptown.
A long road to the laundromat
His résumé before the business was varied. He served in the Peace Corps in Honduras from 2006 to 2008, then tried his first venture after coming home: selling Honduran arts and crafts. Retail proved hard, and he counts that effort as an education in how a business actually runs. He later did consulting work and held a job at Microsoft before starting Drive-By.
The service is built to be flexible. Drivers collect from single-family homes, apartments, condo buildings and hotels, and the delivery map keeps changing as new customers sign up. Whistler has argued that fixed storefront operations are boxed in by their own setup, while a delivery model can bend to fit the customer.
Adjusting the plan
The first year brought several course corrections. Whistler expected dry cleaning to be a large share of revenue and chose an eco-friendly cleaner that uses the GreenEarth process. It has not become a big earner, but he kept it on the menu. He has also added low-cost monthly plans to build a steadier base of repeat customers, which helps smooth out the work for himself and his single driver.
Covering that much ground with a two-person delivery crew is tiring, and the monthly plans are partly a way to make routes more predictable. Whistler’s broader lesson from the past year is a familiar one for new owners: the business rarely goes the way the plan said it would, and the job is to adapt when it doesn’t.
Marcus Hadley covers business, transit and real estate in Uptown.
