In 2022, Voyage Miami — a platform dedicated to spotlighting inspiring entrepreneurs and professionals across South Florida — sat down with Aaron Cardelino to hear the story behind WASFO. What follows is that conversation, expanded with Aaron's reflections on the journey from corporate executive to business owner, and back again.
Where It All Began
The story of WASFO does not start with a business plan or a market analysis. It starts with family.
When my in-laws decided to move from Venezuela to Miami to be closer to my wife and me — we were getting married and starting a family — we saw an opportunity to build something together. My wife and I were both in Corporate America, but we had always wanted to explore the entrepreneurial world. This felt like the right moment to create a business that could sustain two families and give us something we could truly own.
We spent months researching. We were looking for something with real growth potential, something that served a genuine need, and something that could be systematized and scaled. During that research, we came across a laundromat in Kendall that had been owned and operated for 40 years by a Venezuelan man who was ready to retire. He wanted to leave it in good hands. We bought it.
That is where Wash & Fold Coin Laundry — and eventually WASFO — began.
Building the Brand Before Building the Business
In the early months, we made a decision that would define everything that came after: we committed to building a real brand, not just running a laundromat.
Most laundromats are commodity businesses. They compete on location and price. We wanted something different — a recognized brand with documented processes, a consistent customer experience, and a model that could be replicated across multiple locations. That meant investing in identity, in systems, and in the customer relationship before the revenue justified it.
It also meant confronting an uncomfortable truth early: the traditional laundromat model had a hard ceiling. Research from the Laundromat Association showed that customers are typically willing to drive no more than three miles for laundry service. That constraint defined our market — and we knew we had to break it.
"Within the first months, the team made the important decision to develop a brand to stand out from the competition — with the goal of establishing a well-recognized brand and processes, so the recipe could be replicated and expand the business into numerous locations."
— Aaron CardelinoThe Pivot That Changed Everything
After the first year, it became clear that our ambitions were bigger than a single Kendall location could support. We needed a way to reach customers beyond the three-mile radius — and we needed to do it without the capital investment of opening a second physical location immediately.
That is when the pickup and delivery vertical came to life.
Pickup and delivery changed the entire geometry of the business. Suddenly, we were not limited by geography. We could serve customers as far as we were willing to drive. The market expanded from a few thousand households to over one million potential customers across Miami-Dade County. And with that scale came a new category of customer: commercial accounts.
Hotels. Airbnb properties. Spas. Gyms. Restaurants. These were businesses that needed reliable, high-volume laundry service and were willing to pay for consistency and professionalism. We built the systems to serve them — and WASFO Laundry Solutions was born as a separate entity to house this expanded model.
What the Business Became
At its peak, WASFO operated two locations, employed more than 20 people, ran two delivery vans across Miami-Dade, and served both residential and commercial customers through a branded app. The app — built on CleanCloud's platform — allowed customers to place orders in multiple languages, track their laundry in real time, and pay seamlessly. In a city as multicultural as Miami, that multilingual capability was not a nice-to-have. It was a competitive advantage.
The Challenges Nobody Talks About
Building WASFO while maintaining a career in Corporate America — where I traveled regularly for work — was one of the hardest things I have done. My wife left her position at an advertising agency to run the operations day-to-day, closing the store at 10 pm. We were building something real, but the cost was real too.
"Owning a company is twice the work as being a corporate employee, but the big difference is that you are working for your dreams instead of someone else's dreams."
— Aaron Cardelino, Voyage MiamiTwo challenges stood out above the rest. The first was hiring — particularly drivers. The reliability of the pickup and delivery model depended entirely on having dependable people behind the wheel. Finding them, training them, and keeping them was a constant operational challenge. There were holidays and family events where we had to step in personally to make sure the service ran.
The second was space. As the business grew, the original Kendall location reached 100% capacity. Finding the right facility to expand — at the right price, in the right location — required patience and financial discipline that tested us repeatedly.
Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses
One of the turning points in WASFO's trajectory was my acceptance into the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program, completed through Babson College. The program is highly selective and designed for business owners who are ready to scale — not just survive.
The frameworks and strategic thinking I brought back from that program changed how I ran the business. It sharpened our growth strategy, clarified our positioning, and gave me tools to think about the business the way an investor would — not just the way an operator does. The changes we applied after completing the program contributed directly to the company's eventual success and exit.
A highly competitive program for high-growth small business owners. Completing it was, in Aaron's words, "one of the best things that happened to the company."
The Future of the Chores Economy
When Voyage Miami asked about the next 5–10 years, Aaron's answer was direct: the trend of outsourcing everyday chores is accelerating, and laundry is next.
UberEats and DoorDash normalized outsourcing cooking. Uber and Lyft normalized outsourcing driving. Instacart normalized outsourcing grocery shopping. The same consumer behavior — the willingness to pay for time back — is now moving into laundry and dry cleaning. WASFO was built to be the brand that captures that shift in South Florida and beyond.
What This Chapter Taught Me
Building and exiting WASFO gave me something that no corporate role ever could: the experience of being fully responsible for an outcome. Not responsible for a region, or a quota, or a team — responsible for the entire thing. The payroll. The customer experience. The brand. The exit.
That experience changed how I think about every business problem I face today. When I look at a market opportunity at Generac, I do not just see a sales target. I see an ecosystem to build — the channel infrastructure, the service network, the compliance framework, the pricing architecture. All the pieces that need to be in place for an opportunity to become a sustainable business.
That is the entrepreneurial mindset applied to corporate business development. And it is, I believe, the most valuable thing WASFO gave me.