Just three weeks ago in late February, Capeway Cleaners had zero dry cleaning delivery customers on Martha’s Vineyard. Today, midway through March, owner Mike Baroni estimates they have 40 to 50 new Island delivery customers.
Capeway Cleaners is a Cape Cod business that offers laundry, dry cleaning, alterations, and a variety of other fabric-cleaning services — and now, convenient door-to-door delivery for Island residents. “We want to be the one-stop shop,” Baroni said in a conversation with the Times this week.
Capeway Cleaners can clean dress clothes, wedding dresses, heirloom pieces, sports equipment, tablecloths and napkins, linens, bedding, dog beds, horse blankets, removable couch covers, and car seats — pretty much any fabric item that they can pick up and load onto their delivery truck, they can clean. The full list of services is available on their website.
Capeway Cleaners offers an alternative to Islanders with the closure of Lapels in Vineyard Haven. Lapels was an on-Island dry-cleaning business that recently shut down due to a lack of Island housing for its new manager and accompanying family. The closure has been felt around the Island as a toll on the local community and economy.
Carolina Cooney, executive director at the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber of Commerce, said that though Lapels has closed, the business is for sale. It was recently discussed in a Vineyard Haven Business Association meeting that Lapels is for sale as a turnkey business for a new owner to come in and restart the on-Island dry-cleaning service. “It’s a great opportunity for somebody to come in and take over the business,” Cooney said.
Due to problems with the Island’s infrastructure, particularly the septic and sewage systems, Cooney suspected that Lapels actually outsourced its laundering and sent items off-Island to be washed. Cooney speculated this was the likely condition according to the current state of the Vineyard Haven zoning laws and state of the septic system, which is in need of upgrades. Cooney said that she is hopeful that evaluating and upgrading the septic across the Island will become higher on the Island’s priority list.
“It’s just another symptom of the housing issue, which is at the core of all these problems that are happening,” Cooney said about Lapels’ closure.
When asked about the possibility of more on-Island businesses shutting down, with corners of the economy being exported to off-Island businesses, Cooney said, “It’s a shame that has to be the case. We certainly want to encourage on-Island businesses.”
Where Lapels left off, Capeway Cleaners is stepping in, and perhaps offering a more convenient option than before. “It’s disappointing to customers that Lapels has closed,” Capeway’s Baroni acknowledged, “but the silver lining is that with the delivery, all they have to do is leave it outside.”
The Island delivery process is convenient and streamlined. Customers simply call to set up a delivery account, and from there can schedule delivery pickups online through the company website, capewaycleaners.com.
Customers choose a pickup location, such as their home or office building. From there, Capeway Cleaners sends a truck over on the ferry that spends the day making the rounds, either picking up or dropping off. Customers will receive their cleaned items in a garment bag at their selected drop-off location, along with a text alerting them that their items have been delivered.
As of now, Capeway Cleaners sends their truck over once a week, on Thursdays, making the turnaround time to receive items back seven days.
Delivery cost is $4.99, on top of the cleaning cost, which varies depending on the item. Dress shirts start at around $4 for cleaning, while dress pants go for $10. More complicated items, like wedding dresses, may be more expensive.
“We try to be reasonable,” Baroni said. “The prices are a little bit more for the Vineyard delivery, it’s maybe 8 percent more than on-Cape deliveries, and then there’s a $4.99 delivery charge. We come to you twice, but charge $4.99 for it. We definitely could have charged more, given the response. We don’t want to screw people over. We’re not trying to be greedy, we’re trying to be reasonable. We have to send a truck over on the ferry, and that gets costly, but we are trying to make it up in the number of stops and just volume basically, and that’s the goal. We think we could do 40 to 50 stops in a day. And about half are pickups, half are deliveries.”
Depending on how demand may rise, Capeway Cleaners anticipates adding a second or third day for Island delivery customers.
“As we grow, it might be a Monday through Thursday, or a Tuesday through Friday schedule; the lead time may lessen,” Baroni said. “We’re just trying to figure it out for our customers and our business.”
When asked about how they might navigate the crowded ferries for the summer season, Baroni said, “Summer season… [we’re] trying to figure it out now. We’ll make it work one way or another. We don’t have an agreement with the Steamship. We are just trying to figure out what the demand is going to be, and how we can do that efficiently.”
Baroni grew up in Dennis, and now resides in Sandwich along with his wife and two young children. Since opening the business five years ago, Capeway Cleaners has opened six locations, and delivers throughout the Cape and South Shore, from Yarmouth to Norwell — and now, Martha’s Vineyard.
Capeway provides services to residents, businesses, and government agencies, having secured service contracts with three State Police barracks on the Cape. They also provide restoration services for customers who have experienced water, mold, or fire damage.
While Baroni says he had always planned to expand the dry-cleaning services to delivery, it was COVID that “forced his hand” and pushed him to adapt and explore the delivery frontier, and to integrate text-message technology into delivery services, initially to on-Cape customers, and now to Island customers as well.
He said as a result of COVID, there was a solid two years where the business was down, initially as much as 85 percent in the early lockdown days. But integrating delivery, and honing in on quality and service, allowed them to make a comeback and stay in business. The business now employs 30 individuals, and cleans an estimated 300,000 pieces a year at their plant in Buzzards Bay.
“The customers have first of all been thrilled, and it’s been great working with them as we navigate through this to see what the best arrangement should be,” Baroni said. “This is new for us, so we’re trying to figure all that out. We would like to be a presence on the Vineyard for years to come, not just a temporary solution.”
This is great! The island’s housing problem is never going away and the more services ( and workers) we can bring over on the boat will alleviate much of the pressure for on island businesses.
I agree with Mr. Axel, and I would like to add, other states/Islands with auto/passenger ferry service are nearly 99% on time and reliable — come rain, sleet or snow. Many of us know what it is like to commute 3 to 4 hours a day to our workplace.
I realize this is a very sensitive topic, but this place is not for everyone, and it never has been. Just because you have a job here does not mean you have to live here. If all this affordable housing (there is no such thing here) conversation continues we are destined to implode. We are losing our identity… and our ‘lifeline’.
I have a feeling that part of the reason that Lapels had a difficult time continuing as a viable business is due to the high monthly rent at that location. Yes, the housing shortage certainly contributed to the closure.
The rents charged in this building have been known to be high for several years, causing other prior business to close after struggling to pay the rent and still make a profit. I hope someone will step in and buy Lapels, as long as they know what they’re getting into.