Free pizza, an aviary and visits from Santa: Welcome to the world’s largest laundromat

Free pizza, donuts and a gift from Santa: Does this sound like a trip to the laundromat?

The World’s Largest Laundromat — located in Berwyn, Illinois, a city of roughly 57,000 people near Chicago — lives up to its name with 140 washers and 170 dryers.

The 14,000-square-foot business, the size of about three NBA basketball courts, is run by Tom Benson and his sons, Eric and Mark. The father and sons have made a lasting impact on the community through perks not seen at your typical laundromat.

“I feel like our customers are very loyal to us,” Eric Benson, 51, told The Independent. “They appreciate what we’re doing.”

He added: “Families are just stuck here for two hours…But we said, well, ‘What if we try to make that time not quite so painful?’”

In the winter, one employee dresses up as Santa Claus, taking pictures with kids and giving away presents.

“We get about 500 kids every year,” Eric said. “If you’ve ever looked at those Santas at the mall, you spend 50, 60 bucks real quick. It’s crazy. But this is just free for not even just customers, anyone who walks in.”

In the summer, a local library staffer comes into the laundromat once a week to work with kids on their literacy skills.

“In this neighborhood, there’s a lot of concern that the kids, especially of the very recently arrived families, they spend nine months working on their English in school, and then they go home for three months, and no one speaks English, so they try to keep them up to speed,” Eric said.

Pizza night on Wednesdays is always a hit. “We order about 25 pizzas in, and any customer there gets free dinner,” Eric said.

The laundromat, which is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, also offers free coffee and donuts for a morning pick-me-up.

There’s even a bird aviary — part of a research project studying the finch population — inside. The Bensons are big animal lovers: Tom loves to play with his dog “Josie” in his free time, and Mark, who is also a supervisor at Brookfield Zoo Chicago, has two teenage cats along with his three teenage kids.

The laundromat has seen a total of up to 250 people in the store at once, including kids. Some customers love the experience so much, they make the 30-minute drive from the Windy City just to do laundry.

“We get a lot of customers from inside Chicago who probably drive past 10 or 12 other laundromats to get to us, but they heard about us from somebody else, or they found us on the internet or they just ended up here once, and that’s what they do for laundry now,” Eric said.

The laundromat has been owned by Tom for decades after first opening in the 1960s. Tom, an 81-year-old former business broker, was originally trying to sell the place for a client and ended up buying it in 1999.

The laundromat was deemed the world’s largest under the previous owner following a contest held by the Coin Laundry Association, now known as CLA, in the 1980s. The previous owner then changed the business’ name from the “World’s Quality Laundromat” to the “World’s Largest Laundromat,” and it’s stuck ever since.

In August 2004, while Tom and his wife were abroad, a fire destroyed his business, which operated as both a laundromat and dry cleaners at the time. When he reopened in January 2006, Tom decided to ditch the dry cleaning business and make the store into a full-fledged laundromat, as he believed it would be more profitable.

“Having made that decision, a lot of things came from that. We did decide to have a vending area and a children’s play area, and put in booths for people to use, which is much nicer than the standard that you would find in most laundromats,” Tom told The Independent.

He said that people in the laundromat business have come from as far as South Korea to take pictures of his place.

The laundromat has one of the largest clean energy installations in Illinois, according to Berwyn’s tourism site. Its hot water system is run by 36 solar thermal panels, which Tom estimates saves him up to $25,000 a year.

Another perk that may be overlooked is the abundance of free parking spots available to customers, which can be especially helpful during the weekend rush.

Not only do customers keep coming back, but the laundromat employees are in it for the long haul. The Bensons have 22 people on staff, with the average employee working there for 12 years and some for more than 20 years.

“When you have that much continuity in your staff, your staff ends up knowing more about your business than you do, because they see it every day,” Tom said.

Tom recalled a story about one of his longtime employees that he said “brings tears to my eyes.”

When a family from Houston, Texas, moved to the area about 10 years ago, one of his workers helped the pregnant wife learn how to use the machines in the laundromat. The family ended up forming a bond with the worker, and since they knew no one else in the area, they chose her to be the godmother at the baby’s baptism.

The laundromat continues to serve the community where it sees a need, including by sponsoring Berwyn’s annual Independence Day fireworks show.

“The city of Berwyn had canceled the annual fireworks probably 15, 20 years ago…they couldn’t afford it. We kind of stepped in and said, ‘Well, why don’t you let us do that for you.’ We call it our gift to the community,” Eric said.