Cornell Laundry plans to sell their local Ithaca business to Ames Linen in Cortland, N.Y. within the next few weeks, after serving customers in Central N.Y. for 69 years.
Cornell Laundry currently serves and holds contracts with 95 percent of restaurants in the Ithaca Area. John Gorsky, the owner of Cornell Laundry, says that they’re trying to make the transition as smooth as possible.
“The deal with Ames Linen is that we’re in negotiation and hopefully getting close to consummating that. They are more similar to what we are, which is a privately owned business,” said Gorsky.
However, this is not this first time Gorsky has tried to sell the Laundry business. In September of 2014, AmeriPride, based out of Minnetonka, M.n. placed the highest bid on Cornell Laundry in the initial selling.
The deal fell through two weeks prior to official signing because, according to Gorsky, AmeriPride would not provide service to Cornell University, one of the biggest business Cornell Laundry serves, seven days a week.
“They were only interested in our drivers and not interested in any other employees. Our drivers seem to be our front line of communication with our customers,” said Grosky.
However, a previous employee of Cornell Laundry, who wished to stay anonymous, stated that there were other reasons the deal with AmeriPride fell through.
“A main reason was that none of the drivers were on board to work with AmeriPride…the deal they offered was mediocre at best. That I know is a fact. For anyone to come in and buy the business they need the drivers, but the deal they offered gave everyone a pay-cut,” said the employee who worked at Cornell Laundry for over 10 years.
The fall-out of this deal caused a lot of ripple effects, and the previous Cornell Laundry employee fears that customers were led to believe the business was going to be around for a while.
“When the initial sale fell through with AmeriPride, the employees of Cornell Laundry were told that Cornell laundry was staying open. We were all led to believe that it was going to be [open] for a period of time, whether that was a year or so on,” said the previous employee.
However, Gorsky says that with every new contract signed, a letter is sent out explaining this transition. Whether it was before or after the signing was unclear.
“We’re not trying to deceive any customers. We’re upfront. Linen business is all about contracts, [customers] get protected with price and we get protected that they’re our customer for X amount of years, so it’s a win-win situation for everybody,” said Gorsky.
Gorsky is optimistic that the deal with Ames Linen will go through, and doesn’t want customers to worry because it’s only a partial selling. He said he will keep The Mall Dry Cleaner.
“Until it’s signed on the dotted line I don’t want to be too optimistic about it,” said Gorsky.
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