Laundry Consultant Bob Natale Interview About Test Kits

Bob Natale, a veteran in the laundry industry since 1980, leverages his chemistry background to advance chemical analysis techniques. His journey from the textile industry to various critical roles in laundry management has cemented his reputation as a meticulous and trusted advisor. Natale emphasizes the critical role of laundry test kits and thorough water analysis, using tools like the Taylor laundry chemical test kit to ensure accurate chemical dosing and optimal wash processes. His expertise not only aids in precise decision-making but also enhances client trust, particularly in the competitive New York metropolitan area, where accurate chemical analysis can make or break a business.


(00:02:22) "Optimizing Laundry Processes with Chemical Test Kits"
(00:07:29) Optimizing Laundry Processes Through Chemical Analysis
(00:11:59) Optimal pH Levels in Healthcare Linen
(00:20:06) Enhancing Proposals with Detailed Titration Analyses
(00:23:42) Chemical Industry Mentorship: Bob and Jerry

To contact Bob concerning questions, comments, or consulting work please reach him at natalebob@outlook.com

To work with Jerry, please reach out to Jerry@hospitalitycleaning101.com

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Jerry Bauer
Hospitality Cleaning 101 | Bauer Consulting
Jerry@hospitalitycleaning101.com

Transcript

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00:00:10 - Jerry Bauer
Hello, everyone. This is Jerry with cleaning processes with Jerry today. I have a special guest, and he has been here one other time. He's a repeat visitor to our podcast, and I, besides being the second most downloaded podcast that I have to share, he's also a friend, a mentor, and an advisor in many different capacities when it comes to laundries. He had seen a recent LinkedIn post. We started communing back and forth. Of course, we talk on the phone once a week as well, but he agreed to come back on the it's been a couple weeks since we've done a podcast that we're coming out of the summer. Coming up the Labor Day very shortly. I hope to get this podcast out before Labor Day and then hopefully get in a routine where we get two per month. Please, if you like this podcast, please share it with your friends. Please like it on wherever you might be getting it from. Being Apple, even online. Love to hear any suggestions, tips, even if you disagree. At the end of the show, I'll have my contact information as well as Bob's. So please sit back, listen for 20 minutes, and we'd love to have some feedback. Thank you.

00:01:34 - BoB Natale
Good. Jerry, yourself, great.

00:01:36 - Jerry Bauer
Thanks for joining me on such short notice. You saw this last week. I had written actually two different things on LinkedIn. A lot of people ask questions about test kits for laundries because I was being, in a nice way. I believe, somewhat critical that I didn't see people using test kits and laundries and really quite honest, couldn't figure out how they were doing their job in certain regards. So I know that you're an expert in the field. I had met you after I had been doing this in the industry for 25 years. Not that I thought I knew everything, but you taught me a whole lot more. So, Bob, can you go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself?

00:02:22 - BoB Natale
Well, I started myself. I started in this industry in 1980 after being in the textile industry for two years upon my graduation from college. And I had the advantage of graduating with a degree in chemistry. So it kind of facilitated that part of the job and just combining what I was learning in the laundry industry. At the time that I became a plant manager, I was in operations roughly half my career and a little less than half my career. And chemicals as a chemical representative for several companies, including the one we mutually worked for for over 20 years, and made it up to as far as regional manager for one chemical company, covering many states, many situations. And you know, Jerry, when you cover the New York metropolitan area, you have to be on point, because there's a lot of competition and a lot of very knowledgeable customers. So in order to gain credibility, you're always being interviewed by them until you really gain their trust and you have to be spot on in what you recommend and achieve results. So in my travels, I've used this laundry test kit as an integral part when I was in the chemical industry to evaluate and also to just make sure that the formulas I put in, the chemical doses I put in, and the instructions I gave setting up a customer's washroom were spot on. And that actually begins even before you get someone as a customer, you go in and do it. I believe we've talked about this before. You go in and do a detailed analysis of a person's plant in order to see what you can do before you make promises. And that includes a complete water profile, because water is so integral in the wash process, and it can spot many things that are being done wrong. And in doing this, you need to use a tool such as a universal laundry chemical test kit. The most notable one that I, that I know of is Taylor. Taylor makes one, and they utilize different components for chemical titration of wash formulas, for and for water analysis. Hardness, total alkalinity, chlorine, bleach concentration, iron, either. Things that can really impede your wash process and guide you in the right direction. Not only on how you set your formulas up, but what products that you choose.

00:04:44 - Jerry Bauer
It's very important on picking the products you want to suggest to a new potential new customer. You have to analyze anything, a diagnosis, before you can make suggestions. It's just like going to a doctor. If a doctor's giving out advice without an exam, you both have malpractice. It's totally wrong.

00:05:09 - BoB Natale
And sometimes even your knowledge of the industry and your experience, there's something that you could miss because you don't know what's in a person's water supply. You don't know if there's iron in a person's hot water tank or in their piping. But these chemical tests, if you follow them and report it back to the customer, you may be able to give them guidance on what to do, what to fix, and proper formula construction, proper products. I mean, if a customer is being unrealistic, which sometimes they are, and they're not giving you good conditions to work, you have to let them know. I hate to say this because everyone's so sales driven all the time, but sometimes it's better to walk away rather than get yourself into a situation where you're going to be installing all these pumps, spending all this time, and the customer is not going to pay the bill and get you kicked out anyway, right?

00:06:06 - Jerry Bauer
Now, do you ever look at the competitors service report to find out what they might have done an analysis on?

00:06:14 - BoB Natale
I consulted and helped the customer reach a decision. They had to change chemical companies because a chemical company came in and said nothing was wrong. And the tunnel washing application, which is another art within itself that takes a while to learn. And I found out that they were putting in chlorine bleach on one, on the beginning of their wash zone, and they misappropriated where to put in the generic anti core hydrogen peroxide that they were using as a generic anti core, and another end that they were putting it in at the end of the wash zone with the counterflow, it was negating the chlorine. If they did the titration accurately, they would have come up with a very low or no chlorine activity level in the wash zone, which would have alerted them that they made a mistake. But instead, it looked like they fudged the titration, which nobody ever does that. Right.

00:07:08 - Jerry Bauer
Right.

00:07:09 - BoB Natale
They had to fudge the titration, and they report to the customer that everything, everything was, was good to go. And I said, this is why you have stains. I checked your, your chlorine level. They're reporting 200 parts per million. I'm recording 20. And that's a big difference. You're getting no bleaching activity.

00:07:29 - Jerry Bauer
Right.

00:07:29 - BoB Natale
And I said they did not do the titration. Right. Didn't set your tunnel up. Right. So the chemical analysis, looking at their titration and doing my titration help a client of mine make a decision to switch chemical companies. Now they're getting excellent results and kept them in business.

00:07:46 - Jerry Bauer
Do you have a go to test that you do the very first time that you go in?

00:07:52 - BoB Natale
Okay.

00:07:53 - Jerry Bauer
No matter what, I guess I'm asking the question, but answering it also, I guess, frequently, it depends on where it's at in its cycle.

00:08:01 - BoB Natale
Well, my machine, first of all, first of all, I do a complete water profile on incoming hot and cold water, which includes hardness, alkalinity, any chlorine in the water temperature. I do that for both sources, iron, because that'll tell me if we can use a combo product such as an alkali detergent combination or sour salt combination. It'll tell you if you need a rust removing sour, it'll tell you in what order. If you have chlorine, say you have chlorine in the water. And you have iron in the water. You have to have an extended sour bath, where you put the anti chlorine. The last bath to remove any residual chlorine. Followed by a rust removing sour. And followed by the last step, your softener. If you have. If you had a combo product and no. A combination sour softener and non rust removing, and no anti chloride. You're going to get chlorine carryover. And you're going to be keeping adding sour sour. And the softener comes with it. And you're going to be waterproofing the fabric. And you're going to get an iron fabric softener complex, which is going to render the fabric waterproof. So it tells you a lot. If you know what you're looking for. And you do the test properly and accurately, just take your time and do the test right.

00:09:19 - Jerry Bauer
So after the water, the best thing would be then to check the actual linen itself.

00:09:25 - BoB Natale
And imagine check fabric test. You could start with a fabric test on the linen, which is universal indicator, which will give you the ph. A bleach carryover test, which is utilizing orthotal beam. And an iron one and two test, which will let you know if. If there's any iron present on the fabric. If it's universally spread your area, it's soluble iron. If it's freckled, it's particulate iron, which is another animal. But you can advise your customer that they're going to have to get some kind of filtration. Or you can go back to the source. One time, I had a source of iron that we didn't know where it was coming from. Whether we thought it was coming from the hot water tank. The customer drained the hot water tank. And it wasn't the hot water tank. They had a guy climb in there. So what we did was we filled a washer full of cold water first, dumped it, caught the sample, no iron. Hot water. Filled the washer, dumped it, sampled it, no iron. Steamed the water up, dumped it, iron. So it came from their steam lines. And I was able to pinpoint that for the customer, guide them in the right direction and save them from losing customers, damaging linen. Because, as you know, iron and bleached, or rapidly accelerate bleach. They were having staining issues and localized damage. It was particulate iron as localized, damaged pinholes to their linen.

00:10:51 - Jerry Bauer
Quite honestly, I've been able to acquire many of accounts. Because many competitors don't know that where they have an iron problem and they add more bleach, which only makes the.

00:11:03 - BoB Natale
Problem worse or so, which does nothing or detergent. When you have an iron problem, plain and simple. When you have a soluble iron problem, you have to add water treatment that sequesters the iron and renders it neutral, so it'll be inert and do no damage. But if you have particulate iron, it has to be either filtered or trace it to the source and eliminate the source of the iron, plain and simple. There's no other way around it. Sometimes customers don't want to hear that, and people are actually scared to tell their customers the truth. That's where this credibility thing plays in. And that's where you have to stand your ground, because as you know, the chemical company will get blamed for everything.

00:11:47 - Jerry Bauer
Right now, in your analysis also, do you check, I assume you. One of the first things you do is check the ph, especially if it's in healthcare.

00:11:59 - BoB Natale
Well, the final ph is with universal indicator, right? And on different things, you want different phs, except for specialty linen, like if they have wound care linen, which has to be relatively neutral at seven ph, that's a separate formula to itself. PH in healthcare should range between six and 6.0, which will be a yellow, yellow, orange color. Universal indicator. Now, table. And going through an iron, I like to run closer to neutral, like a 6.75. It runs through the iron to better, right, have a yellow, yellow with a little green circle around it. You can back your sour off a little bit and it'll run through the iron. Or a little better on, on the. On the. Slightly going towards neutral side. But you have to remember that that's okay for tablecloths, but napkins, you have to bring it to the 6.5 ph. Because napkins are actually. That's why your customer, again, you can advise them to separate their loads of napkins from tablecloths, because the napkins are actually touching a customer's mouth. And that has to be 6.5, because you could have someone with sensitive skin that you know, that might affect. So I always like to run napkins at 6.5. And table linen, it can. It can be down a half an ounce on your weight, on the sour, if you want to. Might run a little better for the iron, or if you're having problems. If not, I'll run table in an all night and day at around 6.5.

00:13:33 - Jerry Bauer
Now, you mentioned, and this technically doesn't have anything to do with test kits, but you brought up a very good point. Do you have a lot of problems with people sorting linen, where you asked them to add an extra step? In other words, let's say they're just doing all their table lending together.

00:13:54 - BoB Natale
Well, again, when you go in and do an analysis, it's up to you to find the key points. What is the present company not only doing wrong, that's what we tend to focus on, but what is the present company doing right? And, like, what does the customer want to keep? And if cost comes into play, you may want to separate napkins from tablecloths. Some people put a, a general food and beverage formula in. Some people put an apron and barm up formula in. Well, aprons now are spun polyester. They have to be washed differently. Bar mops are 100% cotton and actually dirtier. You can save a customer money by doing such things as separating items. But bear in mind, if they don't have the supervision to pick the right formula, you may be creating another problem. So you have to get to know the personality of the plant and by going in and checking on things. I had a nursing home once. They ran their heavy soil nursing home on their heavy soil formula, which was heavy soil nursing home, which could be diapers, pads, towels and washcloths. And they told me my formula came out great when I did the demo, but I was ten minutes longer than their existing formula. I said, yes, when you run your existing Formula one time, but you're running that Formula two to three times, right. So I'm saving you money. I'm saving you time, I'm saving you labor. Right now, the greatest expense to a commercial laundry by far is labor with the raises in minimum wage. And, and secondly, energy. Energy is creeping up to be a very, very big expense, more than it ever has been. So I always went by the adage that if you do things right the first time, you will save a customer money. Also cost of goods. If you're washing something two or three times without using it, everything has a, has a due date as it has an expiration date on it. You're accelerating that expiration date for goods. You're spending a lot of money with no revenue or nothing in return, and it's just a very expensive waste of time. So I always tell my customers and potential customers I'm going to do the job the way I know how to do it. Right. So we, we do the linen one time? Yes. Is there going to be rewash? Yes. If I wash to get all the stains out, I'm going to be able to be severely costing you a lot of money. I'm going to be rapidly accelerating 90% to 95% of your goods shelf life. So I'm going to do it by industry standards, which is around a five, depending on the soil factor, five to 10% rewash rate. And also teach them that permanent stains have to be called and pulled out of the system. So there's no merry go round of goods.

00:16:53 - Jerry Bauer
Right.

00:16:54 - BoB Natale
Merry go round. So this chemical test kit can guide you on all these and substantiate your claims that you're making on a presentation by saying this is why you're having trouble. I titrated this load that your competitor was doing. I found these results. These are my benchmarks. Allow me to demo. This is where you can slide a demo in using my products and my quantities. When I give you a proposal, it'll be an actual proposal based on my products, products that I used in your plant, quantities I use in your plant. And you'll get the exact cost of what it's going to cost you to straighten out your washer. And then that test kit will help.

00:17:36 - Jerry Bauer
I didn't mean to interrupt you on that. When you're doing a. Maybe I'm just speaking for myself, but when you're doing the proposal, because you tell them you're going to come back with the proposal or have it outlined, I'm sure, and this is old school, but neither one of us are the new kids on the block where I do a little with the old tensile cell where you kind of show them the. Well, you're going through so many hours here versus the hours here. Because if proposals frequently you send them a ten page proposal, they're going to the last page, they want to see the price. And then the other nine pages frequently is marketing material where in pencil cell and show the end user, this is what you're doing. This is your results you're getting. Now I have the kit in front of me now we're going to do a proposal with all that down the road. But does this make sense to you? And let them take that information and have them add their two cent on it, because talking about labor is the number one issue for everybody today, no matter what industry.

00:18:52 - BoB Natale
While I'm doing the titration during the proposal, I usually have an exit meeting with the people and I go over with them what I found. And I said, I'm going to be giving this to you in written proposal format. But I did find a that your bleaching ph was out of line, your alkalinity, your break was low or high, depending on what the problem is. I saw no suds in your brake, no suds regeneration in your bleach that's why you might be having oil stains. And what I would then do, supplemental to the proposal, I would bring with me hyped up titration reports with notes at the bottom. And during the proposal, I will refresh their memory by telling them what I found. And I said, here are the titrations to back up my claim. What I saw that day, just so you know, I'm not just making up stuff to disparage your competitor. I actually saw this. But here's the one thing. If a customer, one time I got my titration kit out in my scoop, and I took titrations, and I had the customer tell me I never saw my present chemical company do this.

00:20:06 - Jerry Bauer
Right.

00:20:06 - BoB Natale
It just adds credibility to your statement.

00:20:10 - Jerry Bauer
Correct.

00:20:11 - BoB Natale
And then it can be a great icebreaker by saying, what are you doing? And you explain it to them, and you explain to them why you're doing it, and then you explain to them, because they have no idea. You explain to them what the results mean. And you're looking for these benchmarks. You're looking for proper formula balance, you're looking for proper rinsing. You're looking for, you told me you had a problem with this formula. I'm trying to see whether it's your. The way you're separating your soil, the way you're loading your washer. If I get the 10:00, 11:00, and 01:00 drop right, is the formula set up properly for spun poly or cotton? You know what exactly. The problem is whether your formula is a good generic formula, but it's not the right application, because you have ten grains of water hardness, or you have so many parts per million of iron, or you have so much calculinity that you're not adding enough sour, or you have soluble iron, you're not adding a rust removing sour. So it's precipitating out on the other end and it's turning brown, or your ph is too high, you don't have enough rinses, or the water levels aren't right in your machines. Whatever the case may be, this substantiates your claim. And it's like you're not just mudslinging at the competitor just to get the business and they see the diligence that you're putting in your work, and then you could slide in the fact that a titration of your most used formulas is required on a monthly basis by my company in order to double check. And we do it on various machines on our, on our service call to make sure that there isn't something wrong with the water levels on a machine. Just because you put, you know, a seven inch water level on one machine doesn't mean it's actually seven inches on another. You could have problem with potentiometer that judges the water level. This will bear it out. If you calibrate your pumps and you're putting in the same amounts and you get a higher titration of one than the another, something is wrong. You have to look and see what's wrong because you should get around the same neighborhood, you should get around the same titrations on everything, and you want to put a consistent quality out there for your customer. And this is how you do it.

00:22:27 - Jerry Bauer
Right. Well, Bob, we're coming up to about a half hour here. Give me a couple minutes of how people who have questions, concerns, because I know you do a lot of consulting work. I both have used you in the past and use you in the future. Tell us how people can get a hold of you and, and things like that.

00:22:48 - BoB Natale
Well, my main source is through email. Nataliebob@outlook.com. that's n as in Nancy, a. Apple. T. Tom, a. Apple, L. Leo E. Edward, Natalie, Bob B o B. And I will reply and we'll set up a virtual meeting and we can go over whatever issues that they have and you want to go over.

00:23:10 - Jerry Bauer
Sounds great. And also, I always do show notes on all this. I'll put all that information, I will put your LinkedIn address so if persons are LinkedIn, they can directly come in contact with you there. I hope to have this recording up.

00:23:26 - BoB Natale
And in a week, if you don't mind, they could also get to me through you.

00:23:31 - Jerry Bauer
No problem. That'll work. So, Bob, again, it's always my pleasure. I talk to you at least once a week. That's not going to change. Now. You're my go to guy.

00:23:42 - BoB Natale
One other note is that I also act as the help desk. As you know, for several companies, when they run into trouble that they can't figure out. Correct, they call me and, and I can offer my services. So we'll go over all that if and when someone needs my services. And as always, Jerry, thank you for all your support, your kind words. And as you know, we'll always be friends and we'll, we'll go through this crazy journey together, this laundry and chemical business.

00:24:10 - Jerry Bauer
Thank you. You have a great day.

00:24:12 - BoB Natale
Thank you for joining Jerry. Today he shared some insightful information about the chemical and cleaning industry with his long time friend Bob. If you liked his information, please like it. And share it with others. If you ever have any questions about his show or would like to be a guest, please reach out on one of his channels. Finally, check out his latest blog post and get additional information at hospitality Cleaning 101 or his YouTube YouTube channel, cleaning processes with Jerry. And so long. For now.