Casino suppliers feel the sting of COVID-19, too

It’s not just the casinos that have been missing tourists.

Supply companies — those who work behind the scenes making sure Las Vegas resort-casinos are stocked up on food, clothes, fresh laundry and more — have also been hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Alex Dixon, a member of the Nevada COVID-19 Task Force and president of the western region for PureStar, which provides laundry services and linen management for the hospitality industry, discussed how the pandemic has impacted the company.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What does PureStar do?

We operate seven plants that are spread throughout, some in North Las Vegas. We do all the supply, all the laundry and linen services to the major hotels, in the timeshares. Some of those clients are still running restaurants, and we do all the cleaning supply there. We’re an essential service to make sure those restaurants are still open. The security, or other uniform personnel, they still need clean uniforms in order to do the work.

The bulk of our business is the housekeeping, and the rooms and the pool towels. Normally we’re very busy at this time, but it’s just the opposite. We still have to keep some mission-critical employees on to make sure we can provide those essential services.

How has the pandemic impacted operations?

It’s just been extremely tough. In the laundry business, we run on pretty thin margins, even before all of this was going. Now, there’s more added cost, more added pressure to make sure that we can provide the critical service that’s needed.

Unfortunately, we had furloughs with the vast majority of our employees. We had about 1,100 workers, and we furloughed a little over a thousand employees — well over 90 percent — as a result of this COVID epidemic. There’s only a handful of us still here, we’re really down to a skeleton crew. With the reopenings of the majority of our plants, we have begun to bring employees back in line with our increased operations. Our goal as a company dictates to bring as many of our team members back. That’s the goal.

We’re always thinking about our front line — how do we make sure they get through the unemployment, which has been a challenge for everyone. It’s just the system is not set up to take the level of volume that they’re seeing.

We just want to make sure that we have a great business, so that when we open back up, as Vegas ramps back up, we’re able to bring as many of our team numbers back because we miss them desperately. And we just can’t wait to get back to normal operations.

What do ramp-up plans look like?

Right now, we’re very fortunate with the limited amount of services that we are providing, we have the ability to deep clean our plants.

We typically operate 20 hours a day, and we do preventive maintenance in that downtime of four hours. Today, operations are very limited. We’re down to generally one shift, five days a week at one of our plants. So anywhere from four to six hours a day. This is a one-time lifetime opportunity to do some of the deep cleaning.

As our hotel partners are seeing increased demand, we are ramping up our facilities and bringing back employees to meet the demand. The majority of our plants are now operational and our employees are excited to return to work. Their safety and well-being remains our top priority and they are adhering to all of the additional safety precautions we have implemented. We are seeing very positive signs following the reopening of restaurants in the Vegas area and are focused on providing the same level of quality service that our customers have come to rely on.

We actually anticipate being potentially very busy even before things fully open back up because properties, they’ll need to deep clean on their property, and that’s including laundering a lot of things, as you can imagine. I think there’ll be a spike for us.

I think as we ramp back up, that will translate into continued business, and growth with new customers. I’m optimistic we’re going to come back as a city in the long term stronger, and in the short term it’s going to require some diligence. I think we have to be extremely cautious, highly communicative between customers and suppliers and regulators, but we’re going to get through this.

Who knows what the future brings? We’re hoping that Las Vegas folks want to go on a vacation after being cooped up. We hope that there’s a lot of people who want to come out and support the local hospitality industry. But we’re preparing for the worst, hoping for the best.

What are your thoughts on tourism’s return to Las Vegas?

We love serving, and being a part of the broader hospitality industry and we can’t wait to continue to serve our clients and the millions of guests that come here because they expect clean linen, and towels, and napkins, and bar equipment and everything else that we provide.

Sometimes you forget that our employees are essential because it is an expectation that you walk into a hotel room, and walk into a restaurant with clean tablecloths, or your napkins, or your towels in the room.

Do you think there are any permanent impacts from this pandemic on your business?

Some of the hyperfocus on the health and welfare of employees, those things will be permanent.

In terms of the volume, there’s just so many unknowns. I do know we’re going to come out on the other side of this stronger. This is forcing us to really identify what our needs versus wants are, and really understanding the value.

Our customers already shared with us how grateful they are that we can be a business they can depend on. You can imagine, if you are keeping your restaurant open in the midst of this pandemic, sometimes you don’t even think about, “OK, yeah, these rags that I get delivered every week are just going to keep coming.” In some ways, it makes you realize and appreciate what seems like basic services. I think we have earned both kudos and loyalty among our customers.

Contact Bailey Schulz at bschulz@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0233. Follow @bailey_schulz on Twitter.