ICA Show MARK: And you are always able to print out a sales receipt. You’re able to say -- “See, this is what you’re charged, right on there, but it’s the bank holding that amount there in parentheses.” But, it’s not that difficult. I mean, you really only have this problem if you count up. If you count down, you’re fine.
Mix it up: Best practices for chemical mixing AUDIENCE: Can I change the topic? KRISTY: Sure! Please. AUDIENCE: What are the best practices you guys have for making sure your chemical mixes are proper? Is it just a hydrominder color or are you guys actually titrating yoru chemicals to -- is it experience? What is it to make sure you’re not doing too much but you’re at least doing enough to put out a good wash? TERRY: I typically ask the distributor what he recommends -- and I’ve been doing this for a long time -- so I kind of know. With a self serve you need to have a good show in the bay. You want your customer to have a good perceived value: Your foam brush needs to be foamy and have a good color to it. If the triple foam isn’t right, you make minor adjustments. I do not titrate my chemicals, other than my touchless automatic, and then my chemist -- my chemical guy -- does that. But the rest of it is just feel. In Arizona in the wintertime, I’ve got good meter tips on all my chemicals because it gets chilly. Yeah -- it does get cold. It’s less viscous so it doesn’t pull through the hydrominder as well. Now, this time of year, it’s warming up, I may start tapering down. It’s just over the years having experience for us.
LARRY: Our stand is elevated, so we use 5-gallon pails and they tuck underneath and out of the way. SYDNEY: I have touchless automatics at both of my locations, so I have the big 55-gallon drums for everything except the polishes -- I do 15-gallon drums for the polishes. MARK: I use 5’s for everything except my high-pressure, there’s 30’s for that. TERRY: I have a mix of both. I have a local blender that does my soap for me, so he’ll bring me the 55’s, and then I import my triple foams and my hot wax and my Rain-X, and that’s going to be in a concentrated 5. So it depends also on the space in the equipment room at each location.
Credit card acceptors on the vacuums
AUDIENCE: Yes, that’s what’s happening. We’ve gotten five new carwashes -- well, 5 new sets of those free vacuums within the last 4 years.
TERRY: We don’t do credit card on our vacuums.
AUDIENCE: See, we have one free vacuum that’s anywhere near us, but we’ve got a 60-year-old carwash and we’re just trying to get some business in and thinking about it for marketing purposes.
MARK: Yeah, I do on ours, and it’s still the same $10 threshold. You have to press stop. There’s a lot of expense in the equipment to do that. We just kind of did it because when we built a new facility we just had the attitude that we were going to put credit cards on everything. So every piece of equipment on our lot has credit cards on it. I don’t know. It’s like...this day in age...I mean, the younger generation. My wife and I have five kids and not one of them has a nickel in their pocket, but they each carry around a debit card.
Are water softeners worth the trouble? AUDIENCE: Does everybody use a water softener -- or is that just us?
AUDIENCE: Are free vacuums influencing the self serve market at all?
MARK: No, we turned all of ours off and we still ended up with good RO water. Yes, it’s a little bit harder to make foamier chemicals with harder water than it is with soft water. But as long as you keep an eye on your RO -- and yes, you’ll ruin your RO membranes, you’ll ruin them in 2.5 years, some in 1.5 years -- so it’s $150 or $200 versus a bag of salt a day for 365 days? Or you could even have your RO membranes cleaned for $40 and get another 3 or so years out of ‘em. The only places where I keep any spot-free or any RO working is in my touchless automatic carwash where I use soft water.
KRISTY: That’s an excellent segue into our next question! Free vacuums: Who’s doing them? Do they work?
AUDIENCE: Question for the panel: Is your preference for the 55-gallon drums or for smaller quantities that are a more higher concentrate -- in your bays in particular?
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• SUMMER 2017 •
AUDIENCE: Do you have a lot of free vacuums in your area? See, we don’t have any in our area right now.
AUDIENCE: Is running a credit card on the vacuum worth it and do you have spend a minimum on the vacuum?
Just give it away: Free vacuums and the self serve market
Chemicals in 55-gallon drums or smaller, higherconcentrate?
are just so many express washes in Phoenix, Arizona. Every one of my car washes is surrounded by a carwash that’s a mile on either side of it that’s $3 with free vacuums. So, if you’re an express -- we did it to try to compete with the express washes. Mind you, we’re a $6 basic wash -- but we will hand dry your car. And we do give you that little token, you can buy a towel or an Armor All. But we still get a tremendous amount of self serve business. There’s still a segment of our society that wants to do it themself. At least for right now. If that’s gonna phase away, I don’t know. But for right now, they still want to vacuum their car themselves, too. Our vacuum revenue has come down, but it’s not bad. Like he did -- he put in free vacuums, so you make no money now, right? Yeah. We don’t want to go to free vacuums. We won’t have any revenue then.
JERRY: I have free vacuums at two of my exterior expresses and it’s just killed the vacuums at my self serves. It just killed them. There isn’t a self serve wash in our area that’s gone to free vacuums. There is one that’s gone to giving out a token if you buy the most expensive rollover wash he’s got, but other than that… We’re thinking about a remodel where we might put free vacuums in with our self serve also. AUDIENCE: We have free vacuums with our express wash, but we give them a different token. It only works on our vacuums. It doesn’t work anywhere else -- our bays or our accessories. I don’t think we’ve lost that much income or from our self service customers that are using the vacuums. It’s worked out okay. I was against it for quite a while. I think it helped our express washes and brought in some income there. AUDIENCE: We were forced to do it. I mean, there
KRISTY: So free vacuums for the marketing purposes. Hmm. I see we have a question over there.
Fencing in to branch out: Gated self serves AUDIENCE: I was wondering if anyone here has tried the gated self serve concept? *Crickets* KRISTY: Anyone? Anyone out in the audience have a gated self serve? *Crickets* SYDNEY: Well, I talked to a guy last night who was telling me about his. He was ready to tear his self serve down, but he sort of thought about it again and then put a gate around it and for a one-time $10 fee you can drive in and wash and vacuum and do whatever you want to do and it’s a huge, thriving business now. Umm. I’ve never heard of the concept. It’s not something we’ve done in the Utah market at all, but it was an interesting concept. KRISTY: Well, I just wanted to thank all of you for being here today. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t take the time to make a plug for Western Carwash Association right now. We realize and understand that self serve operators have a unique business and we really do our best to try to provide an avenue for education for you. Part of your membership with the WCA is we provide self serve education specific to you through our webinars, through our newsletter, through our road shows. We always include self serve. I would encourage you all to please take a look at the Association if you’re not already members. We’d love to have you as part of the WCA family. And thank you, also, to our panelists today. Thank you.