Eco-friendly, upscale laundry meets Indian restaurant in unusual new Upstate business

Jay Desai’s friends and family laughed at him when he told them he wanted to open a laundromat with an upscale cafe in an environmentally friendly design.

The two ideas seemed at cross purposes. Laundries are often austere places where people dread going, slogging piles of dirty clothes and pushing them around in carts, washer to dryer. They are usually not a place to eat American-Indian fusion food and drink coffee made of beans from a local farm that pays a living wage.

But then Desai told his cousin, a heart surgeon in Florida, about it, and now they are a little more than a month away from opening Green Laundry Lounge in Greer.

The list of features that set this place apart from a traditional laundry runs long, besides the coffee and type of food.

The menu is being planned by James Beard Award-nominated chef David Porras of Oak Hill Cafe, a farm-to-table restaurant in Travelers Rest.

Beer and wine. Pastries. An outdoor patio. Loaner iPads.

Eco-friendly washers that take payments from smartphones. Biodegradable soap.

Paper and plastic cups made of high-quality recycled materials.

And if you don’t want to wash clothes yourself, a wash-and-fold service is available. Also, a dry cleaner that does not use harsh chemicals.

Some have compared the concept to Tesla or Apple for laundry, Desai said.

“I am a big Apple fan, an admirer of what Steve Jobs did,” he said. “He was well known for redefining technology.”

Desai thought about what he could do to help himself as an entrepreneur and the community at the same time. He’s been working on the idea since 2017.

“The idea is to have the best,” he said.

A design engineer, Desai moved to Greenville from New Jersey, first in 2008, then again in 2009 and permanently in 2012. He said he could see the evolution of Greenville’s downtown and believed it would be a good place to raise his family.

Desai works part-time for CSS Inc., a civil engineering firm.

He believes the laundry will become a destination, an experience, not just some place to manage dirty clothing.

He also believes it is an idea that will spread. There are laundry/cafes in other parts of the country, but Desai believes none with an environmental focus.

People are not laughing at his idea anymore but are coming to him to be part of the project, he said.

“The community needs a better place to do laundry and, more importantly, quality time with friends and family, and Green Laundry Lounge will help do that,” he said.

He’s already looking for two more locations in the greater Greenville area, and possibly other cities in South Carolina, but he doesn’t want to rush the first one.

“We want to make sure we kick off properly, not something half-baked,” he said.