From being in the Metropolitan area, you know the Giants are a fan favorite for this Sunday’s Superbowl.
Did you also know we are also a fan favorite from our friends over at (201) Magazine? We are excited to learn that we are one of the Editors Picks for Best of Bergen 2012! Thank you 201! Here’s what Heather Zwain had to say about our services.
It was five years ago yesterday, that George Hallak passed away. He was the brother of our father, Joseph Hallak, Senior. George spent his entire life in the dry cleaning business – beginning in the Bronx, and then moving to Teaneck, NJ. He sold his business in 2001 and we had the pleasure of having our Uncle George as part of the Hallak Cleaners team for the last five years of his life. Everyone who worked at his side loved him, and his contagious smile and constant exuberance are greatly missed by all who had the privilege and pleasure of knowing him.
John-Claude and Joseph, Jr.
In Loving Memory of George Hallak
As a member of Leading Cleaners Internationale, Hallak Cleaners is proud to offer the unique and powerful Safe Cleaning Guarantee which applies to every garment entrusted to our care.
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Read about our recycling initiative to help the Making Headway Foundation
John-Claude Hallak knows the proper way to press trousers, coax a spot from a wedding gown, or restore a carpet to its original glory. He is a second-generation dry cleaner; his parents, Joseph and Marie-Louise, opened Hallak Cleaners on the Upper East Side in 1966. (His mother, widowed in 1992, is the president.) Mr. Hallak, 54, who has a master’s degree in economics from Rutgers University, joined the company in 1982; he and his younger brother, Joseph, 49, are both vice presidents. He lives in Basking Ridge, N.J., with his wife, Michelle, and their 16-year-old twin sons.
Destined to clean: I was doomed to be in the family business. I remember being about 8 and asking my father if I could go to work with him on a Saturday and him telling me, ‘If you come with me, I’ll give you a dollar, but if you stay home and help your mother, I’ll give you $5.’ And I took the dollar. My first real job was to make pants hangers by putting those sticky pieces of cardboard on the bottom of wire hangers; it was work you could probably teach a rhesus monkey to do.
Aspirations: It was always assumed that I’d be the first one in the family to go to college and live the American dream. I wanted to be a lawyer. I worked weekends and summers at the store. I was a politics and history junkie, so it was a big thrill for me to clean Theodore H. White’s carpets.
Dressing like Dad: I emulated my father, always wore a shirt and tie. Even in the 100-degree heat pressing pants in the summer in the store’s basement, I never took that tie off. You physically removed the damp clothes from the machine; there were these big vents called ‘sniffers,’ but you could still smell the chemicals. It never bothered me. I guess it’s genetic.
The family business: My father was thinking of selling in 1980. He was such a perfectionist, the Felix Unger of dry cleaning, but he was tired. So my younger brother, Joseph, dropped out of Seton Hall to keep the business going. After I graduated, I worked nine months for an equity firm. Then my father and brother asked me to join them. I said yes, with two conditions: that we move our production facility out of New York City and expand it, and that they let me introduce automation and computerization.
Thinking big: By 1983 we had a facility in Hackensack. Now it’s 13,000 square feet and employs 60 people. But 80 percent of our clientele is in New York City. People who spend $10,000 a month on dry cleaning are not the norm, but we have them. I had a client who spent $150,000 a year. He even sent us his underwear. There was a template on how his boxer shorts should be folded.
American Drycleaner, January 2011. (Read Full Article Here)
CHICAGO – While the competition for Best Plant Design was stiff in spite of a recessionary building bust, American Drycleaner is pleased to announce that Hallak Cleaners in Hackensack, N.J., is the Grand Prize winner in its 50th annual Plant Design Awards.
Hallak’s New Jersey production plant got a comprehensive overhaul to expand capacity last year, earning the family-owned operation top honors. Incredibly, the operation’s only production facility – serving six routes in New York and New Jersey and a thriving storefront in Manhattan – never shut down during the four-month project.
“We never stopped working,” says vice president Joe Hallak. “Sometimes, we’d be here until 5:00 in the morning. I’m not saying it wasn’t painful to do, but the pain of not having the revenue would have been worse.”
Taking Special Honors in this year’s awards are Siena Cleaners in Giddings, Texas (Outstanding Reconstruction), and Down to Earth Dry Cleaners in Laramie, Wyo. (Outstanding New Build).
Six plants took Merit Awards this year: Dubin Cleaners & Laundry, Farmington Hills, Mich.; Encore Cleaners, Scottsdale, Ariz.; Image Cleaners, Plano, Texas; J. Carl Cleaners, Carrollton, Ga.; Sunset Cleaners, Lutz, Fla.; and Weldon Cleaners; Overland Park, Kan.
Congratulations to the winners! Watch for more details on each operation in the days to come and the January issue of American Drycleaner.
For more than 50 years, two generations of the Hallak family have been dedicated to delivering a level of quality and service in the world of professional fabric care that is singular. To say that we are passionate about drycleaning would be an understatement.
We spare no expense in providing you with extraordinary service and delivering to you a level of quality that is unsurpassed … anywhere. Whether you entrust us with a couture suit, an elaborate gown, casual clothing, or linens and drapes, be assured that your fabrics will receive the utmost care.
You will find that we offer a truly comprehensive array of services. While many of these specialities are outsourced by the vast majority of cleaners, at Hallak, they are performed by our own dedicated artisans in our state-of-the-art facility. Furthermore, all of our services are backed by our unique Safe Cleaning Guarantee.
We look forward to the privilege of serving you in ALL of your fabric care needs!
John-Claude Hallak
Joseph Hallak, Jr.
