Service based companies in the hospitality industry, particularly hotels and restaurants, utilize linen or textiles in one way or another. Though some purchase their own tablecloths, napkins, bar towels, and aprons, most opt for a rental service. The textile rental industry provides a valuable service in laundering and delivering your linens to you. Plus, by signing on for a rental service, you need not purchase and replace your own inventory - the textile company does this for you.

But for all of these benefits, we have numerous drawbacks. Few businesses are truly satisfied with their laundry and linen services. The quality of product is sometimes lacking, the deliveries may be inconsistent, the billing is extremely confusing, and surcharges can comprise up to 35% of the bill! Unit pricing jumps every few months, and billing errors are very rarely corrected because they are nearly impossible to catch. You may be wondering what can be done to get this expense in line? Has the time come for an overall review of your linen / textile rental program?

Your Options

The choices as we see them are to review the program yourself, or to hire an independent outside party to do the review for you. You could assign someone on staff at each of your units to be responsible for reviewing invoices line item by line item and identifying errors against contracted prices and terms. Going back to the vendor to actually recover money lost on billing errors is another story. And better pricing? This is another task in itself.

This is what ERE does every day for organizations of all sizes. We review invoices to uncover billing errors and go after your refunds. We study your inventory control and review existing methods of distribution and handling. We look at surcharges, fees, loss, and abuse. We handle all negotiations on your behalf – securing better unit pricing and more attractive contract terms. Our objective is to identify all possible opportunities to improve efficiency and lower your costs.

From Start to Finish

In most cases, the main goal of our client is to reduce costs, improve efficiency, or both. Or perhaps your organization is seeking a "big picture" snapshot of your true linen costs and options. Either way, this is what you can expect from our consulting study:

Depending on your requirements, we can focus on several areas including:

Since we're not affiliated with any suppliers, you can be sure our recommendations will be completely unbiased. Often times, consulting studies are undertaken and ultimately not acted upon because management simply doesn’t have time to oversee the changes. ERE is different from other consulting firms in that we stand behind our recommendations and work with your staff and vendors to implement the approved recommendations so you don’t have to.