Headquarters: Brooklyn Park

Inception: 1940

Family name: Rosen, Engler

What the company does: Dry cleaning

Type of ownership: S corp.

Principal owner: Derek Engler

Employees: 200

Family members in the business: 2

Family members on the board: No board

In 84 years in business, Pilgrim Dry Cleaners has weathered its share of ups and downs, but nothing quite like 2020, when everyone everywhere put away their dress clothes.

When offices shut down at the start of the pandemic, Pilgrim’s dry cleaning business fell off a cliff, with sales down 80%. “We had nothing to clean,” says CEO Derek Engler, third-generation owner of the business, which started in 1940.

The company, which has 27 locations across the Twin Cities, found a new path forward by taking on specialized laundry from dentists, chiropractors, and janitorial operations. Today, business-to-business services represent a quarter of Pilgrim’s laundry loads. Pilgrim also continued to offer pickup and delivery services to stay competitive in an era when many professionals spend at least part of their hybrid workweek in machine-washable casual clothes.

“We can’t just be stagnant, especially with the increased labor and supply costs that every business is experiencing,” says Bonnie Engler. She ran Pilgrim for 20 years before selling the business to son Derek Engler in January and staying on as president. It’s the second sale of the company from one generation to the next: Bonnie Engler bought it from her father, Don Rosen, who became a co-owner of Pilgrim in 1954 and the sole owner 30 years later.

A World War II veteran, Rosen started his career selling dry cleaning equipment for Vics manufacturing. Eventually, he went into business with Phil Haspel, who at the time had three different dry cleaning shop names: McLaughlin’s Pilgrim, Johnny on the Spot, and Pilgrim. Together, they consolidated under Pilgrim and grew it into a regional brand.

Bonnie Engler had planned to start her own diet and weight loss business, but when her father approached her with an offer to join an already-successful company, she made the “safer” choice. She started in entry-level roles at Pilgrim in the 1980s, helping with marketing and “whatever [my dad] wanted,” she recalls.

She eventually bought out her father and other siblings in 2004. It wasn’t easy for Rosen to “relinquish the throne,” she says, because he loved the business.

“He just was so generous and gave back to the community in every way, and he loved coming to work every day in his suit and tie and white shirt,” she says. Rosen died in 2015 at 94.

His legacy of philanthropy continues. Pilgrim is known for hosting the Coats for Kids drive, which Rosen would say he started after a woman came to Pilgrim’s front counter in 1986 asking if he had a spare child-size coat. Now in the 39th year of the drive, Pilgrim aims to distribute 10,000 coats annually to families in need.

“Pilgrim has always recruited and kept top talent in our industry.”

—Derek Engler, CEO, Pilgrim Dry Cleaners

When she became owner, Bonnie Engler was the only woman owner among the 17 members of the industry group Pilgrim belongs to.

Her first move was to create a more inviting atmosphere: clean white walls, plus candy and new pens on the front desk—what she describes as “small female touches” that elevated the customer experience.

“Both professionally and within the family, there were a lot of people that didn’t think she could run the business because she was a woman,” Derek Engler says. But during her tenure, his mom doubled sales and profitability. Much of that growth came from new stores and services, like a subscription program that includes pickup and folded laundry.

Of course, none of that matters without superior service, the Englers point out. “Pilgrim has always recruited and kept top talent in our industry,” Derek Engler says. “We have long tenured employees because of our commitment to great employee benefits and leading our industry in employee compensation.”

There were a few layoffs during the pandemic, but Pilgrim was one of the only dry cleaners in the country not to permanently close any retail stores, Derek Engler says. Many employees were reassigned and worked fewer hours.

Derek Engler already had more than a decade of management experience under his belt when the pandemic hit, having worked for the family business part time since 2002 and then joining full time in 2009 after studying entrepreneurship at the University of St. Thomas. His brothers, Ben and Louis Engler, worked the front counter in high school but weren’t interested in making the business a career. (Ben Engler works as a consultant at Deloitte in New York City, and Louis Engler is with Northwestern Mutual in the Twin Cities.)

Going to the dry cleaner as a kid with his mom and grandfather “are core memories I will have forever,” says Derek Engler, a father of four kids under 7. He’s already making a point to expose his kids to the business. “We’re a very close-knit family, and that was so important to my dad,” Bonnie Engler says. “And he’d be proud to see Derek in his position right now.”

Throughout his tenure, Derek Engler says he’s pushed for ways to set Pilgrim apart, like introducing pickup and delivery—initially working as the sole driver—and creating the commercial laundry division during the pandemic.

“I’ve always had the model ‘You grow or you go,’” he says. “I’m at a point in my career where I want to keep pushing the envelope and seeing what this thing can be in the next five to 10 years.”

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