The story of Gadue’s Dry Cleaning stretches back decades. It’s one defined equally by slow but steady growth and by the wonderfully enduring bonds of family. All throughout, our care for our customers, employees, and the environment has steered us true.
Our Story
It was back in 1975 that Bob and Betty Gadue first lit the modest spark that would evolve into the complex company Gadue’s is today. The couple took over a failing One Hour Martinizing franchise on North Avenue in Burlington, Vermont, and earned but $60,000 in their initial year. It was Bob at the counter and running the office, and Charlie—the only other full-time employee at the time—doing the dry cleaning and pressing.
The company was quick to expand, however, as word got around and the tireless energies of Bob, Betty, and Charlie began paying off. Two years in, however, came tragedy: Just 45 years old, the father of five children ages six to 19, Bob was diagnosed with kidney cancer and forced into retirement. Betty—aided by family and friends—assumed management and operation of the company. Bob died in March 1979, mourned intensely not just by his family and friends but also by Gadue’s clients who’d come to know him so well.
Fate continued to intertwine the Gadue’s business and family all the more closely. The year of Bob’s death, his oldest son, Mark, filled in for his mother at the dry cleaner on an afternoon shift. A freshly graduated history major, Mark, along with his fiancée Marjorie Biaforie, soon took over ownership of the company. The two set about growing Gadue’s to new heights.
And grow it did: new buildings were acquired, the employee roster burgeoned, and outmoded facilities were upgraded. In 2002, Gadue’s headquarters moved to Creek Farm in Colchester, and the company unveiled a new 8,000 square foot production facility equipped with the best cleaning and pressing machinery on the market.
It was around this time that Mark and Marjorie’s daughter, Aline, who’d helped her dad handle orders as a youngster, returned as a college graduate to help out. Before long she was co-managing Gadue’s alongside Mark; today she’s president of the company.
Our Commitments
As a third generation takes the Gadue’s helm, we’re reminded of the lasting concerns that have guided our family business across the decades. Gadue’s has grown from a tiny Mom and Pop shop to one of the country’s most progressive dry cleaning outfits only by unfailing devotion to its customers, employees, and the environment. The honest hard work that Bob and Betty put in in the mid-1970s lives on in the modern Gadue’s commitment to quality service, environmental responsibility, and community commitment.
