WhatsApp Price List and Ordering for Laundries and Dry Cleaners
Every laundry in the region answers the same message several times a day.
“How much for a thobe?” Then: “and a suit?” Then: “do you collect from Al Barsha?” Then: “can I get it by Thursday?” Four messages, answered by a person, to book work worth a small amount of money.
It is not that the questions are unreasonable. It is that they have the same answers every time, and nobody has ever written them down where a customer can find them.
A laundry price list with WhatsApp ordering publishes the answers once, and then takes the booking — garment by garment, with a pickup slot and a delivery slot attached.
Why Is a Laundry Price List Awkward to Publish?
Because your price is not per item. It is per item per service.
A shirt washed and pressed, a shirt dry cleaned, a shirt pressed only, and a shirt on express — four different prices for the same garment. Multiply that across thirty garment types and you have a grid, not a list.
The free WhatsApp Business catalogue has no options field. A variant is a whole separate product linked by a shared group ID, as Meta’s own documentation explains. So:
- 30 garments across 4 services = 120 catalogue entries
- Add express as a fifth = 150
- Against a catalogue described as holding up to 500 items
And there is still no field for a pickup address, no delivery fee, no minimum order and no scheduling. Which is why most laundries end up sending a photograph of a laminated price list that has been out of date since the last increase. We compared the approaches in WhatsApp Business catalog versus a digital menu.
What Does a Laundry Catalogue Actually Need?
Garment and service as separate choices
One product per garment — thobe, abaya, shirt, suit, curtain, duvet — with the service as a required choice carrying its own price. Wash and fold, wash and press, dry clean, press only. Thirty products instead of a hundred and twenty, and a price change touches one line.
Express as a priced extra, not a conversation
Same-day and next-day cost you more to deliver, so charge for them on the item. A customer who selects express has agreed to the surcharge before they send, which is the entire argument you are currently having at the counter.
Quantities that behave like a laundry bag
Nobody brings one shirt. The customer sets six shirts, two thobes and a suit, and the total is calculated before the order is sent. That is a genuine improvement on counting items into a bag while somebody watches.
Two appointments, not one
This is the field that separates a laundry from every other retail catalogue. An order needs a pickup slot and a delivery slot, on different days, at an address that may not be the same.
Set the zones you cover, the fee for each, the slots you can genuinely service, and close them as they fill. Your route is the constraint on this business, not your machines — and a catalogue that lets customers book slots you cannot serve makes the route worse, not better.
Care notes and a stain field
“Stain on the left cuff.” “Do not starch.” “This is silk.” Captured on the order instead of mentioned at the door to whoever happens to be driving.
Orders Go Straight to Your WhatsApp
The catalogue takes the order. That is the point of it.
Your customer opens the link, adds six shirts on wash and press, two thobes on dry clean, picks express, chooses a Tuesday evening pickup and a Thursday morning delivery, enters the address and sends. It arrives as one structured message with every garment, service, quantity, note and slot written out, and a total.
That message is something your driver can work from. No POS integration, no merchant account, no payment gateway. You settle the money as you already do:
- Cash on delivery
- Card at the door, on your own machine
- A payment link you send after confirming
- On account for regular customers and buildings
Because the payment never runs through the catalogue, there is nothing to take a percentage of. On a laundry ticket a commission would be most of the margin. If orders currently live across chats and a paper book, taking orders on WhatsApp without losing track of them covers the operational side.
Publish the Price List Anyway
Some laundries resist this, on the theory that a published price list invites comparison.
It does. It also removes the single biggest reason people never become customers, which is that asking felt like effort. Most of your competitors are not publishing either, so the comparison happens against silence — and silence loses.
There is also a general obligation worth knowing about. Under the UAE consumer framework, suppliers must supply goods and services at the declared price and provide a dated invoice stating the trade name, address, type of service, price and quantity. A clear, current price list is the easy way to be on the right side of that rather than improvising at the counter. Confirm your own position — MENO is a catalogue platform, not a compliance service.
The Big Jobs Are Where the Money Is
Shirts pay the rent. Curtains, carpets, duvets, sofa covers and winter coats pay for everything else, and most laundries never advertise them properly.
Part of the reason is that these jobs are awkward to price in a message. A curtain is priced by size or by panel, a carpet by area, a duvet by tog or size. So the customer asks, you ask for measurements, they guess, and the quote turns into three exchanges for a job they may not book.
Put them in the catalogue with size bands as variations and a note field for measurements. The customer picks the band, sees a real price and books — or does not, without costing you fifteen minutes.
Then put them where people see them. Most of your customers have no idea you clean carpets, because the only place it is written down is a sign behind the counter they stopped reading two years ago.
Your Best Customers Are Weekly, and You Are Not Treating Them That Way
Laundry is one of the most repeatable businesses there is. The same household, the same bag, the same day of the week, for years.
Which makes it strange how little most laundries do with that. The customer messages every week as though it were the first time, you reply as though it were the first time, and neither of you has a record of what they usually send.
Once orders arrive structured, the history is readable. You know who orders what, how often and on which day. A regular can rebuild last week’s order in thirty seconds instead of listing it again. And a customer who has not ordered in three weeks is visible, which right now they are not — they simply stop, and you find out months later.
Buildings and Corporate Accounts
The other half of a good laundry business is the accounts nobody talks about: a residential tower, a salon, a small hotel, a restaurant sending linen every day.
These want three things — agreed pricing, a repeatable order and an invoice. They do not want to negotiate per collection.
Give each account its own link with its own prices, because you set a different price for the same item on each account without duplicating the product. The daily collection stops depending on anyone remembering what was agreed two years ago.
More Than One Branch?
You build each garment and service once into a master catalogue and assign it to whichever branches offer it. A branch without dry cleaning simply does not show that service.
Pricing, delivery zones, fees and slots are set per branch, because the shop serving apartment towers and the one serving villas do not have the same route or the same economics.
Each branch keeps its own QR code, hours, tax setup and analytics, and staff see only their own. The QR side runs on QRHUB, which builds QR business profiles used across the region.
You Can See What People Check and Do Not Book
A counter tells you what came in. It tells you nothing about the person who opened your price list, looked at suits and left.
A catalogue reports scans, visits, which garments and services were opened, which were booked, and which link brought the customer in. Heavy traffic on a service you rarely book usually means the price is out of line locally, and that is worth knowing in a week rather than a year.
Slot data is the other useful half. If everyone wants Thursday evening and you have no capacity then, that is a staffing decision you can now make on evidence.
What Does It Cost?
Most vendors will not tell you without a phone call. Here is the number.
- $29 per month, or $290 for the year
- One outlet included, more added at a fixed monthly rate each
- 0% commission on every order, permanently
- Every feature on every plan. No premium tier.
- 30 days free, no credit card
You can check the current plan and everything included in it before committing.
Prices are current at the time of writing and are billed in USD.
How Do You Get Started?
Your price list is already written down somewhere. This is mostly typing it once.
- Add your garment types as products
- Add wash, press, dry clean and express as priced service choices
- Add a care note and stain field to the order
- Set collection zones, fees and the pickup and delivery slots you can service
- Set up your building and corporate accounts with their own prices
- Generate your branded QR code for the shopfront, the receipt and the garment tag
Put the code on the hanger tag. The customer looking at a freshly pressed shirt in their wardrobe is the easiest booking you will ever get.
Write the Answers Down Once
The cost of running a laundry is not the detergent. It is the hours spent answering four questions that have the same four answers every single time.
Publish them. Take the booking. Drive the route.
Let the price list do the talking.