lot of Quiznos closed down in Dallas area. ha ha.. all those dreams of Franchises.. they closed down. after changing owners. many times.. have u seen the fast food industry .. I am seeing too many new burger( smash burger, 5 guys burger) too many new pizza.. and burritto.( free bird.. Chipotle. etc) . I think the US population is the same.. so someone;s gotta give.. many businesses are going belly up if they cant keep up with the trend and times..
yep, these types of businesses like dry cleaners, house cleaning service, etc, are very unsexy but they can give you an upper-middle class lifestyle. some of the comfortably well-off people i know own liquor stores, hair salons, machine shops, and dry cleaners. and some of them have very little formal education. it's not as prestigous as being a doctor or engineer, but it pays the bills just as well.
Disagree that dry-cleaning is generally a good business at this point. Around Dallas, they are closing down as the middle class is getting more frugal. The thing with house cleaning, restaurants, pool cleaning, ... is that the one needs to build a big crew to make good money. The job is management/entrepreneurship. It is not the industry.
That's just NUTS! $100-$200k/yr to run the vacuum and mop the floor? Kids should forgo college and start house cleaning services. Sure you didn't exaggerate this? My mother-in-law pays $10/hr... and that's above minimum wage.
In South Florida, a 3000 sqft house cost $150 for a one-time clean. $75 for follow-ups. They are very thorough initially, but probably don't stay that way. Agency keeps the initial payment. The woman down the street has a fleet of skinned cars. She doesn't look to be doing too shabby. A neighbor has a pool cleaning business. He says that he pulls in $200k. He says that most of the profit is in repairs. If he can keep crews and customers, they feed him lots of repair work. Now he says that everyone is behind on their payments. A dry-cleaner friend in Dallas has a highly mortgaged house worth 1.5M (today's prices), but can't afford to buy a used car. The family works long hours to survive. He keeps cutting the hours on the sub-minimum wage people to fit the work and dreams of capitalizing on the closure of his competitors. Talked with the weed spraying guy doing another neighbors lawn. He is a pushy, up-seller. He says that he is pulling in enough to have an 800K house. Spends 3 days a week in FL. The rest with his family in GA. Business is not fair, equitable, nor efficient. It is about marketing a product which you can scale-up.
Hate to break the news to ya, but I started a commercial and residential cleaning service back in 1990 and was charging $35 an hour and getting it. If found anyone cleaning houses for $10 an hour as an independent (and they were any good) I would hire them in a minute. I wonder what the "Maids" minimun charge is these days. Had a few jobs for new construction, they'd pay hundreds of dollars a day to get the house prepped.
Isn't the best work where you can get overpaid? Understandable that professional people don't want to spend their free time cleaning house.. therein lies the "premium"... But $100/hr is ridiculous (unless you can get it, of course...)
Sure the economy is bad. It's funny though I am visiting and driving through Newport Beach, within 10 miles there is 200 billion of true worth. Beachfront home 19 million, with 8000 sf. Many of them. Reminds me reading how many made their fortunes during the Great Depression, Kennedy's come to mind.
Here in OC people are paying $20 hour, tax free, for house cleaning. Much better than working at Wallmart.
You probably live in a state where there are not many poor immigrants. I am in Houston and there are certain streets like westpark drive full of immigrants who stand on the sidewalk looking for work. You can get a big guy help you move furniture for whole day for $20 or do whatever work get done in your house for $25-30. I know people doing satellite dish install or plumbing for dirt cheap I mean so low that I can not believe this is America. Sometimes I question why don't some of these people go to school cuz some of them have green cards. Yesterday I went to this Guatemelean auto shop and tell him to install my car's electric mirror. I asked how much he said $5. It took him 20 minutes to do it. I got my hair cut for $3.99+ $1 tip One of my friends have a independent house cleaning lady cleaning his 1 bedroom apartment for 40 dollars. But she makes it super clean even the windows are washed. I feel sorry for people working in labour. Because anybody can do it even for free if you know how to talk to them beacuse most of them are uneducated and illiterate and easy to be deceived. What you are talking about is isolated to where you live. Probably NY or San Francisco or where unions are powerful. Gotta love houston.