Unchanged Values: The Values That Still Define CITY

Some companies reinvent who they are every few years. CITY Laundering Co is not one of them. For more than a century, through world wars, recessions, waves of new technology, and generational change, one thing has stayed remarkably steady: the values that shape how the work gets done and how customers are treated.

“Since 1906, we’ve really had the same goals here,” says Colin Wetlaufer, President of the CITY Laundering Company. “We want to put the customer first in all things. We want to operate with incredible urgency, and we want to have a commitment to each other.”

Those three ideas, putting the customer first, operating with urgency, and staying committed to one another, are simple enough to fit on a single line. Their staying power is the point.

“Those values, while maybe not stated that way in 1906, are really unchanged,” Colin says. “We like to think of them as our founder-led values, and that’s who we are today and how we differentiate ourselves in the market.”

Customer first, in all things

Putting the customer first sounds like something every company says. At CITY Laundering Co, the phrase carries a specific weight because it comes with the word “all.” Customer first in all things means the customer is not just a priority when it is convenient or when a large account is on the line. It is the lens the company looks through for the routine decisions too: how a route driver handles a small request, how a billing question gets answered, and how a problem gets owned rather than passed along.

When that standard is applied consistently, customers stop having to wonder what kind of service they will get on any given week. They come to expect that CITY will show up, follow through, and treat their business as if it matters, because to CITY, it does. That reliability is the quiet payoff of a value that has been in place since the company’s earliest days.

Incredible urgency

The second value, incredible urgency, is where CITY’s culture becomes visible. In the laundry and uniform business, timing is everything. A missed delivery, a delayed fix, or a slow answer does not just create an inconvenience; it can interrupt a customer’s own operation and cost them time they cannot get back.

Urgency, in Colin’s framing, is not about rushing for its own sake. It is about respecting the customer’s time and removing friction quickly. It is the difference between “we’ll get to it” and “we’re on it.” That bias toward action is part of what customers feel even when they cannot quite name it, and it is a big part of how the team moves day to day.

A commitment to each other

The third value turns inward. A commitment to each other acknowledges something that is easy to forget in a customer-facing business: the experience a customer receives is only as strong as the team standing behind it.

People who trust their coworkers, who cover for one another and share what they know, deliver better and more consistent service than people who operate in isolation. CITY’s founder-led culture treats that internal commitment as a competitive advantage rather than a soft benefit. When the team takes care of each other, the customer feels the results.

Values that carry across generations

One reason these values have lasted is that they were never tied to a single person, a single product, or a single era. They describe a way of working that any new employee can step into and any long-tenured team member can keep alive. A driver hired this year and a manager who has been with the company for decades can point to the same three ideas and mean the same thing by them.

That shared language matters more as the company grows. Values only shape behavior when everyone understands them the same way. By keeping the list short and the meaning clear, CITY makes it possible for customer first, urgency, and commitment to each other to guide thousands of small decisions a week without anyone needing to reach for a handbook.

It also shapes who thrives at CITY. People who genuinely put customers first, who move with urgency, and who invest in their teammates tend to feel at home here. Those who do not tend to notice the mismatch quickly. In that way, the values do more than describe the company. They help build and protect the culture year after year.

Founder-led, and hard to copy

What ties the three values together is the phrase Colin keeps returning to: founder-led. It is a reminder that these are not slogans handed down by a committee or borrowed from a passing trend. They trace back to the people who built the company, and they have been carried forward, largely intact, for well over a hundred years.

That continuity is difficult for competitors to copy. A company can match a price or buy new equipment, but it cannot manufacture a century of consistent values overnight. For CITY Laundering Co, that history is not just a nice story to tell. It is the foundation the business still stands on, and the reason customers and employees alike know what to expect.

It is also why the values still feel current rather than nostalgic. Customers are not asked to care that a value is old. They experience it as fast responses, dependable service, and a team that clearly works well together. The long history simply helps explain why those things stay so consistent.

More than a hundred years in, the goals have not changed. At CITY, that is exactly the point.