WHAT'S HAPPENING

River City Linen Service Aquires MHC Linen Services in Greensboro, North Carolina

River City Linen Service, LLC is proud to announce the aquisition of MHC Linen Services, LLC in Greensboro, NC. MHC has provided service to the hospitality and healthcare industry for over 20 years. River City is currently in the process of turning this plant into a fully automated laundry facility capable of 24 million pounds annually. We are excited to expand our service in to the North Carolina area.

River City Linen Service was featured in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Local linen service didn't wash out
River City Linen grew beyond dry-cleaning and persevered in tough times

Monday, Mar 10, 2008

By Lisa Antonelli Bacon - Special Correspondent

Leaving a 2001 meeting with the general manager of the Sheraton Richmond West, Thomas P. Wren Jr. didn't know whether to celebrate or regurgitate.

Wren and business partner J. Everett "Bud" Johnson had just signed a contract with the West Broad Street hotel to launder more than a million pounds of linen in the following year. The new client would mean a half-million dollars in revenue to the small dry-cleaning business, which traces its roots to 1961, that the men had bought two years earlier.

There was just one problem: They were in the dry-cleaning business, not linen laundering.

The two are quite different. Dry-cleaning linen would be like brushing your teeth with dishwasher soap -- not very effective, and potentially harmful.

"I thought, 'What next?'" said Wren, president of the company, which he and Johnson renamed River City Linen Service.

They rushed off and bought three washers. "They weren't much bigger that those you put in your basement," Wren said. "Bud and I had no idea what we were doing."

Four months later, the three washers were chugging along smoothly when Sept. 11 jammed a stick into the spokes of the travel industry. Hotel occupancy across the nation dropped dramatically, affecting other areas of the hospitality industry, from restaurants to food distributors to truck drivers and linen-service providers.

River City Linen was forced to cut its staff by 80 percent.

Wren, Johnson and Lee E. Harris, the company's vice president of operations, absorbed duties, from delivering clean and pressed linens to picking up soiled ones. "We were even loading and unloading washers," Harris said.

So the executives decided to expand. "We started looking for business beyond Richmond's borders," Wren said.

The company's first big break came in the spring 2002, when Historic Powhatan Resort in Williamsburg signed on, tripling the workload as well as revenue.

For the next year, the partners toiled with the soiled seven days a week. During that time, Wren said, the dry-cleaning side of the business provided survival cash as hotel occupancy rates began inching upward.

River City Linen executives were bone-tired, wondering how much longer they could keep up the pace.

"We were sitting around here one night, the three of us, trying to console each other and figure out what to do," Wren said. "It was really a matter of 'do we close or do we decide to make it work,' and what we would have to do to do it."

They decided to make it work.

"Bud is the kind of man who does not give up, even if it costs him millions," Wren said of Johnson, the company's financial backer.

"We decided we needed to have the capacity to grow so that we could go to a substantial prospective account and sell our services. So instead of closing, we spent more money," Wren said.

The company bought more equipment in 2003 to serve its growing client list.

The partners directed their expansion efforts toward the Northern Virginia and Washington market. The company quickly outgrew its capacity at the plant in Scott's Addition, so the partners bought more machines to significantly increase its capabilities.

"We ditched everything we had in the beginning, except for the towel folder," Wren said, "and put up a fully modernized plant, and its growth is an ongoing process."

Late last year, River City Linen clinched two big accounts that increased revenue 40 percent.

One of the new accounts is actually the company's first, Sheraton Richmond West. The hotel had canceled its account with River City Linen years ago as part of a consolidation of services with the Richmond Marriott, which then shared the same owners.

Dan Wilke, the Sheraton's general manager, is satisfied he made the right decision to return to River City Linen. "I've operated hotels where we had our own laundries," said Wilke, noting that he has seen many such facilities and was impressed with the cleanliness of River City Linen's plant. "The organization, the amount of equipment they have, and the room for expansion was all very impressive."

Wren and Harris said the past seven years have been filled with highs and lows. "It can be terribly frustrating and exhilarating all at once," Wren said.

The lowest point? "Wondering if 'today' is your last day," he said.

The highest? "Knowing it isn't."

RIVER CITY LINEN SERVICES
3406 West Leigh Street
Richmond, Virginia 23230
Phone: 804-204-1706
Fax: 804-204-1708