Crown Atlanta – Rising to the COVID-19 Challenge

Posted December 18, 2020 at 12:25 pm




As the year 2020 winds down amid a surge of coronavirus cases nationwide, hospitality laundries that service hard-hit hotels are coping as best they can. Along the way, some are finding surprising sources of strength among their own staff.

“I think we’ve identified leaders within our organization  whose performances have surpassed our expectations,” says Pablo Lucchesi, managing partner of Crown Linen LLC, which operates five hospitality laundries in Florida, and one in the suburban Atlanta community of Fairburn, GA. “So, it has helped  us to identify people that have  risen to the occasion. And they are doing really well. So that helped.”

Lucchesi added that staff at its Georgia plant, it’s sixth and newest facility that opened in August 2019, have seized the opportunity posed by COVID-related downturn to enhance efficiencies across the board. “We have been able to realize that we can operate with less  resources – to run a very lean operation,” Lucchesi said during a recent interview with Textile Services Weekly.

Crown’s other plants –  all located in the Sunshine State – are based in Bradenton, Fort Myers, Haines City, Miami and Orlando. Like the Fairburn facility, each of these is engaged exclusively in processing customer-owned goods (COG) for hotel clients. These textiles include sheets, towels, bathrobes and other hospitality items. Lucchesi added that each of the group’s facilities has its strengths. This has helped them get through a difficult year. “All the facilities have a ‘sweet spot’ in terms of operations,” he said, noting that while volume has declined substantially, profit margins generally have improved as the plants have concentrated on cutting costs and improving efficiencies. That’s definitely true of the Fairburn plant, which Textile Services Weekly toured on Dec. 15.

Crown’s Fairburn plant opened seven months before the pandemic hit full force in March of 2020. In the midst of the current surge of COVID-19 cases, volume at Crown’s Fairburn plant remains at roughly 35%-40% of what it was before the pandemic. Lucchesi described the Atlanta market as a natural source of growth for his company’s Florida-based operation. However, metro Atlanta hotels have suffered from widespread cancellations of conferences and other business meetings. “This market has been hit pretty hard,” he said. “Volume  has remained flat since June at around 35%-40%. We are new to the market here, obviously, and we are not 100% sure of all the dynamics. However, this market has a lot of business travel, conferences and trade shows and that has been severely impacted.”

By contrast, Crown’s Florida operations, which rely more on leisure travel, have experienced a partial recovery in recent months. “We saw a big improvement through October,” Lucchesi said. “Every month was better than the previous one. November was really flat and we expect December to be quite busy, especially in central Florida and Miami though the end of the year.”

Beyond that assessment, Lucchesi hesitates to predict the near-term future of the hospitality business in the southeast U.S. “Don’t ask me what’s going to happen in the first quarter,” he said with a laugh. “I don’t know. Nobody knows. We’re trying to be very cautious in terms of our budgeting for next year. Very conservative.”

A few highlights from our tour of Crown’s Fairburn facility include:

A brand new 90,000-square-foot (8,361-square-meter) plant: The plant’s wash aisle and finishing department is fully outfitted with machinery from JENSEN. This includes two Senking tunnel washers, each with 12, 150 lb. (68 kg.) modules; five ironer lines for large and small pieces, plus a range of washer/extractors, seven 300 lb. (136 kg.) dryers, and several small-piece folders from “Alpha” i.e., machinery built to JENSEN’s specifications at a factory in China. Unfortunately, the COVID-19-related slowdown has cut throughput by 60% per week. Staff also was cut from 100 employees to a current total of 50 people. The plant currently is running  one shift, seven days a week in order to ensure a 24-hour turnaround for processing and delivery of customer goods.

A layout that meets the company’s needs: Lucchesi said Crown has settled on a design for its plants that works very well. This design was replicated at Fairburn as well as three other plants the company previously built in Florida. Speaking of the plant, Lucchesi commented that, “It’s designed exactly for what we need,” he said.

Water Savings: The plant is reusing roughly 45%-50% of its water with the help of a wastewater treatment and reuse system from Thermal Engineering of Arizona.

Enhanced safety protocols and practices: Crown’s Fairburn plant requires masks and social distancing for all staff. To date, a few employees have taken ill, but this hasn’t been linked to plant operations, and it hasn’t affected production, Lucchesi said. The plant has also beefed up its efforts to protect staff and customers by controlling microorganisms. In April, they began using Ecolab’s AdvaCare, an EPA-registered disinfecting detergent, which is confirmed to kill COVID-19 viruses and other harmful microbes. The plant, which processes only light-soil hotel textiles, also  sprays all its carts with an Ecolab sanitizer. They have added a liner sheet of plastic in each cart as well, along with a plastic cover. Finally, Crown Linen is in the process of certifying its plants to TRSA’s Hygienically Clean standard for hospitality laundries. For more on Crown’s Fairburn plant, watch for an upcoming article in Textile Services magazine.

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