Free pizza, donuts and a gift from Santa: Does this sound like a trip to the laundromat? The World’s Largest Laundromat — located in Berwyn, Illinois, a city of roughly 57,000 people near Chicago — lives up to its name with 140 washers and 170 dryers. The 14,000-square-foot business, the size of about three NBA basketball courts, is run by Tom Benson and his sons, Eric and Mark.
The father and sons have made a lasting impact on the community through perks not seen at your typical laundromat. But this is just free for not even just customers, anyone who walks in.” In the summer, a local library staffer comes into the laundromat once a week to work with kids on their literacy skills. Pizza night on Wednesdays is always a hit.
The laundromat, which is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, also offers free coffee and donuts for a morning pick-me-up. There’s even a bird aviary — part of a research project studying the finch population — inside. The Bensons are big animal lovers: Tom loves to play with his dog “Josie” in his free time, and Mark, who is also a supervisor at Brookfield Zoo Chicago, has two teenage cats along with his three teenage kids.
The laundromat has seen a total of up to 250 people in the store at once, including kids. Some customers love the experience so much, they make the 30-minute drive from the Windy City just to do laundry. The laundromat has been owned by Tom for decades after first opening in the 1960s.
Tom, an 81-year-old former business broker, was originally trying to sell the place for a client and ended up buying it in 1999. The laundromat was deemed the world’s largest under the previous owner following a contest held by the Coin Laundry Association, now known as CLA, in the 1980s. The previous owner then changed the business’ name from the “World’s Quality Laundromat” to the “World’s Largest Laundromat,” and it’s stuck ever since.
In August 2004, while Tom and his wife were abroad, a fire destroyed his business, which operated as both a laundromat and dry cleaners at the time. When he reopened in January 2006, Tom decided to ditch the dry cleaning business and make the store into a full-fledged laundromat, as he believed it would be more profitable. We did decide to have a vending area and a children's play area, and put in booths for people to use, which is much nicer than the standard that you would find in most laundromats,” Tom told The Independent.
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