When the bar runs out of clean towels on a Friday, laundry has become somebody’s second job. We collect the towels your restaurant owns, wash them at our own facility and bring them back folded. Your quote confirms which items we take.
Picture 4 p.m. on a Friday. The bar has a short stack of clean towels left. The rest are in a bag by the dish pit, or at a prep cook’s place because they offered to run a load after Wednesday’s close. Behind the line, aprons from Tuesday still hang on a hook, too stained to put on.
Nobody owns the job, so it lands on whoever stays late. When that favor stops, the fix is another case of towels from the supply store, and the bag by the dish pit keeps filling.
What changes the week is a pickup day the whole crew can plan around. Used towels go in one bag at close, the bag leaves on a set day, and clean stock comes back folded.
Renting is a fair choice for some kitchens. Here is how to tell which model fits yours.
A linen rental company owns the bar towels, aprons and napkins, drops a set count on its route and bills you per piece.
It can suit you better if you would rather not buy stock at all, if towels leave the building faster than you can replace them, or if you want worn and stained pieces swapped as part of the price.
Owning can come out cheaper when you already have towels and aprons you like, your volume holds steady from week to week and few pieces go missing. You buy the stock once and pay only for the washing.
Freshly Folded washes what you own and has no rental towels or linen of its own.
Our commercial towel service page walks through the same rent-or-own choice for every kind of business, from salons to hotels.
Most restaurant laundry falls into five groups. For each one, here is what we will ask. Which items we take, and how heavy grease loads are handled, is confirmed in your quote before anything is collected.
How many the bar goes through on a busy night, and what they wipe: spilled beer and syrup, glassware, the sanitizer bucket.
Whether any drain fryer baskets or soak up oil spills. Those are the ones we ask about most closely, for the reason set out below.
Bib or waist, the fabric, and whether the stains are mostly food, oil or both.
Fabric and care labels, any embroidered names or logos, and whether they need pressing. Pressing and dry cleaning are separate services with their own price.
Sizes, fabric and how they should come back. Washed and folded is a different job from pressed and table-ready, so say which you need, and give the date if the linen is for an event.
Not sure where something fits? Text a photo to (619) 389-3206. If uniforms and workwear make up most of what your business sends, start with our commercial laundry service.
“Normal laundering procedures may not remove all of the oil from the cloth. If these oil-containing towels are dried in the clothes dryer, left in a pile while still warm, or stored in a warm area, they may begin to smoke and catch fire.”
The warning covers cloth kitchen towels used to wipe or drain large amounts of vegetable cooking oil. That is why the quote asks how your kitchen uses its towels before anything goes near our dryers. Bar towels that wiped up beer and lime juice are a different load from towels that lined a tray of fried food.
The agencies’ advice for cloths used on vegetable oil spills is to throw them away, packed loosely in a trash container that sits somewhere ventilated and away from the stove. Until your quote says how grease-heavy towels are handled, keep them out of the pickup bag.
Towels used with oven cleaner, degreaser or other chemicals, and anything that picked up broken glass, need a conversation before they go in any bag.
Under the California Retail Food Code’s linen rules, wet wiping cloths are laundered daily and cloth napkins between each use. Soiled linen waits in clean, nonabsorbent receptacles or clean, washable laundry bags. San Diego County’s food inspectors check more than 8,100 restaurants against that code, and the grade card they issue goes by the public entrance.
Those rules stay with your restaurant. A laundry pickup doesn’t take them over or show that you meet them. It changes where the washing happens, and it means every wet towel used today can go in tonight’s bag.
At the end of the night, used towels go into one washable bag or lidded bin away from food prep, instead of a pile by the dish pit. Aprons and linen get their own bag if your quote handles them separately, and grease-heavy towels stay out.
Tell us where the bag waits and who hands it over: the back door by the walk-in, the office, a host before opening. We pick up Monday to Friday, 7am to 5pm, and Saturday, 8am to noon, so a dinner restaurant can hand over in the morning before prep or in the lull between lunch and dinner. Tell us how often you need pickup; the quote confirms the schedule.
A Freshly Folded driver takes the bag to our own facility, where our own team washes it on commercial Maytag and Speed Queen machines. Every load gets ArtiClean ozone and the detergent you pick: Tide, Gain, All Free & Clear, Seventh Generation or Persil. Nothing goes to a subcontractor.
Clean towels come back folded on the return day your quote sets. Standard wash-and-fold orders are ordinarily back the next business day, and restaurant volume gets its own confirmed day before the first pickup.
The aim is a Friday where the bar starts service with a full stack, nobody carries a bag home, and a clean apron is on the shelf when someone needs one.
Liz and Steve Carlin own and run Freshly Folded and have 28 years in laundry and garment care between them. Read more about Freshly Folded.
Your quote sets the price from the items, the weekly volume and how often we collect. The household rates on our pricing page are not restaurant prices, though the business terms listed there are the same ones below.
Which of the five item groups you send, and how the kitchen and bar use them.
Pounds a week. One weighed bag multiplied by the bags you fill is enough to start.
Pickups a week, and the days that work around your service.
Your address and the handoff spot. You can check your area on our service areas page.
Short answers for owners, managers and chefs weighing a pickup service.
Ask about your restaurantNo. We launder stock your restaurant already owns and bring it back. There is no rental stock on our side to supply or swap out, so you buy the pieces once and pay us for the washing.
Tell us about them before the first pickup, and your quote will confirm which restaurant items we take and how grease-heavy towels are handled. Towels that soaked up a lot of cooking oil can catch fire when heated, even after washing, so keep them out of the bag until then.
Your quote sets the price from three things: the items you send, how much you send each week and how often we collect. A bag weight, a count of bags per week and your address cover most of what we need.
No. Restaurant accounts run without a contract, and Net-30 billing is available after your third month. The quote confirms your account terms.
Standard wash-and-fold orders are ordinarily back the next business day. For restaurant volume, we confirm your return day in the quote before the first pickup, so you can plan towel stock around it.
Pickups run Monday to Friday, 7am to 5pm, and Saturday, 8am to noon. A dinner restaurant can hand the bag over before prep or between lunch and dinner. Tell us how often you need pickup, and the quote confirms the schedule.
New customers
On your first order. Next-day pickup and delivery across San Diego County.
$49.99 minimum order. $5.99 per pickup. First order only.
Prefer to book in the app?
