The back-of-house spaces in a hotel can be chaotic, but having the right equipment for each job can make things go a lot smoother. For example, carts are necessary for moving anything from housekeeping supplies to furniture to dirty linens from one place to another, but knowing what kind of cart is needed for what purpose can be overwhelming. This is where Darien, Wis.-based Royal Basket Trucks comes in.
The company, founded in 1982, started as a manufacturer of material handling carts, some with sides of canvas and some made of vinyl for a range of industries, including hotels. By the turn of the millennium, the company was adapting as new types of hotels that catered to a broader range of travelers and new technology shifted the operations landscape. Keeping things moving behind the scenes in an ever-growing collection of hotel types became increasingly crucial to maintaining a positive employee and guest experience, said Cindy Lapidakis, Royal Basket Trucks’ VP of sales and marketing.
In early 2020, Royal Basket Trucks opened an 80,000-square-foot addition to its building that brought all operations under one roof and now helps the company meet larger orders while reducing lead times. The company builds everything to order—for example, laundry cart baskets can be lowered so the doors of industrial washing machines and dryers open over them—and Lapidakis said most products ship in seven to 10 business days.
As the company connected with more businesses, hoteliers would alert the Royal Basket Trucks team to problems that needed solutions. “‘We've got a bottleneck here,’ or ‘This isn't as efficient,’ or ‘We're touching things too many times,’” she recalled clients saying. “‘We don't want this big housekeeping cart in our hallways—we want something smaller and we want a different way to sort and collect our linen and our terry.’ And so then we take other pieces of our portfolio and we put them together.”
Today, Royal Basket Trucks’ product portfolio has more than 60 different products in different sizes and styles, sales and marketing associate Nick Schrader said, which helps the company meet the needs of hoteliers in different environments. “Everything that we do is specific to the needs of each staff member.” The carts can be customized with logos and branding, Lapidakis added.
Carts as Solutions
A hotel cart—whether used for carrying laundry, housekeeping supplies or garbage and recycling—should be considered a solution to operational challenges, Schrader said: “We like to talk about it as improv[ing] your process efficiencies. That's something that's huge right now, especially with limited staff in hotels.” The company focuses on ergonomics and logistics for each unit, calculating what the end use will be and what kind of stress the end user will be under. “Are they going to be putting stress on their lower back? Is the cart height for a housekeeping cart at a comfortable hand position? Is it easy to push? Are they going to be putting stress on their body as they're servicing rooms? So that's something that's really grown in the industry is the focus on ergonomics because it is and it can be a very grueling job in some environments and some aspects of the business.”
Lapidakis agreed. “It's all about what is needed to do that job,” she said. “What are the tools necessary? Are there bottles of cleaning fluid? Do you have a microfiber program and you need a really efficient process so that your staff can reach in one section and grab clean microfiber out, and when they're done using it that dirty microfiber goes into a different section?”
Having different carts designed for specific uses maximizes efficiency and reduces the amount of people needed to keep things running. A housekeeper can divide linen from terry cloth and trash from recyclables at the room level so that other team members do not need to separate things once the cart is back of house again, Lapidakis explained. “The staff member who needs to take those used towels from a guest-facing environment back into operations can do so in an efficient manner without interrupting the experience of the guest [and] without having multiple touches [and] stops on the way.”
Lapidakis estimates that Royal Basket Trucks has five new hospitality-related product lines in the works that will be rolled out over the next two years.
Clicking with Clients
Lapidakis said the Royal Basket Trucks team shares its findings on safety, ergonomics efficiency with its clients. “If we can help people understand how to manage and make the process better for their employees, that may have a positive impact on their [workers'] comp situations,” she said. “That's what a partner does.” The company also attends major industry events to find new partners and learn what new demands are on the horizon. “The feedback that we get allows us to continue to improve and update our products to meet their needs, and it's a great way for them to meet us and understand more of who we are as a company and more of our capabilities,” Schrader said. Royal Basket Trucks will be attending the annual AAHOA conference and the upcoming Hospitality Show in Las Vegas, sponsored by the American Hotel & Lodging Association and Questex, the parent company of Hotel Management.
Logic in Logistics
The team has a range of divisions for different needs, Lapidakis said, including supply chain management, operations, customer service and sales support, the engineering team, the prototyping team and human resources. “We all collaborate so well,” she said. “And as a company, we're very focused on our strategies. Our key markets are differentiating initiatives. Everybody understands what makes us a brand that is recognized in the marketplace and everything that we do as a cohesive team supports that. And that's what makes us successful. It's the teamwork, it's the people and that's what makes the process fun.”