Your Store - Money Makers: Arabi Laundromat

Ronald Caillouette, a career drycleaner was living the south Louisiana version of the American Dream until Hurricane Katrina crossed the Gulf coast causing catastrophic damage to St. Bernard Parish. His business – Arabi Cleaners – took on about 10 feet of water and was seemingly unsalvageable. Among all of Caillouette’s properties, he and his family chose to start working on the business before anything else.

"The storm destroyed my dry cleaning store, so I wanted to re-open as something that the community needed,” according to Caillouette. “I knew that people weren’t going to be dry cleaning things for a long time. But, I knew that people were going to need to do laundry.”

Caillouette said he had never set foot in a coin laundry until Hurricane Katrina. He started doing his homework and learned a lot about the industry in a short amount of time. He surveyed Laundromats in the New Orleans area and started making plans for his own store.

He made a choice to open up his own coin store, Arabi Laundromat and use local contractors and area companies to try and further rebuild the New Orleans area. His electrical, plumbing and building contractors mostly came from the greater metropolitan area. He also chose Pellerin Laundry Machinery Sales Company, a local Milnor laundry equipment distributor to design and install the machinery.

Arabi Laundromat operates in Arabi, Louisiana with 10 toploaders, 12 Milnor Visionex 20-pound frontloaders, 4 Milnor Visionex 40-pound frontloaders, 4 Milnor Classic 60-pound frontloaders, 10 Milnor stack dryers and 4 Milnor 75-pound dryers.

Contact us for more details on Milnor's full line of vended laundry machinery.