WCA’s Self Serve Panel Discussion at Car Wash Show 2016 lucrative position, we’re attracting a lot of...let’s say, “not great” employees. Do you have any advice? Kristy Babb: I think this is Larry’s favorite topic. Larry Baker: I’ve been blessed. I’ve got an incredible crew of six guys, and four of them have been there about eight years each. I pay them up a little bit -- not a great deal, but enough. Three of them are brothers. Al’s been with me for 13 years, Jo-
thing like the cameras where you go into a server and you can see them all and I’m starting to use tools like that. Is there anything to help manage what’s going on there better? Especially when I have problems. Because I can send my mechanic out to handle that and I can try to prioritize from a central location. Anyone else trying to do something like that? Audience Member: I just started using an app
PANEL MEMBER: Yes, all my carwashes have them in all the bays, too. Rick Nelson: So what are your percentages in the bays? PANEL MEMBER: Depends on the location. I have one location where all the revenue from credit cards is about 15 percent, but then I have one site where it’s 75 percent from credit cards. Audience Member: Does it show up on a customer statement as one transaction if they wash their car and then go and use the vacuums? PANEL MEMBER: No. On the vacuum sit’s a separate swipe and in the bays it’s a separate swipe. Audience Member: Yes -- but the actual transaction, does it group them together? PANEL MEMBER: No. Every swipe is its own transaction. Audience Member: I have a suggestion for the gentleman looking for a service and maintenance app -- there is an app out there for the android system from a company called Wash Systems that lets you schedule repairs and maintenance. Wash Systems, John Booth -- he’s got an ad out in one of the carwash magazines. I thought it was pretty neat. We’re going to be utilizing it at our wash. Audience Member: I have a question about the vacuums. There’s some express washes in my town with the free vacs, and I think I’m feeling the pressure to go to free vacs, too. Has anyone out there done that? Do you see any benefit to that?
ey’s been there 11, and Ernie, 8, Samuel, 7, and then I have two younger guys that I hired to replace a fellow that went into banking. (Chuckles.) I’ve been really fortunate. I try to make sure that I show them respect, that I ask for their ideas just like you’d do with anything you want to teach. We’ve been very fortunate. Larry Nelson: Do any of them want to move up North where it’s nice and cool? No hot weather to worry about. Our employees are primarily for the tunnel side, and we find it incredibly hard to find ones with work ethic. We touched on this a bit yesterday -- I think it’s a national problem. We hire primarily 18-25 year olds and if you find one that has been mentored or taught by their parents or somebody on how to work -- then I say, do your best to keep hold of them. PANEL MEMBER: I try to find retired guys that want to get out of the house for the afternoon or something. That’s worked out pretty well for me. Audience Member: I have a question about employees, too. I have six locations of self serve and I’m trying to find a way to manage things better. I use the Checklist app and that’s sort of working. Is anyone else using any sort of digital or a networking app that I can see remotely on a computer -something like Excel where I can see a spreadsheet and manage remotely. Are there any apps or some-
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called WunderList. So you can go in and you can say, “This needs to be fixed, this needs to be fixed, this needs to be done.” And you can assign it out to people and they check off when it’s completely. It’s really helpful to us. It’s really intuitive. Audience Member: I have a question about cash, I guess. Is anyone going cashless with their vacs? Have they seen an improvement that way? And is anyone out there just doing tokens? And maybe doing that cashless -- dispensing tokens only by credit card? Larry Baker: I haven’t done that, but a friend of mine who recently sold his wash put Cryptopay swipers on his vacuums and then bumped the price up a little bit -- I forget exactly how he did it, but he was quite happy with it. The discount fee kind of ate into his revenue, so that’s why he bumped the price up slightly. He thought it was a pretty good idea. And he adapted the thing so he could put the swiper right on the vacuum itself. Audience Member: I have one site with six vacuums and I accept credit cards on all the vacuums -- along with cash. And about 20 percent of the revenue comes from credit cards. One swipe is four minutes for a dollar. I had to mark it up for the credit card fees. Rick Nelson: And you have them in your bays, too?
Audience Member: I’ve got a self serve next to my full-service/exterior express and because of the competition, we put some free vacuums in for the tunnel and I gave up on the little bit of revenue from my self serve bays. But it actually ended up increasing my volume in my bays. They have a five minute time limit on the self serve ones, but the tunnel ones are running constantly. Audience Member: We had a similar situation and we did basically the same thing. We took our vacuums and we put a power switch on ‘em. So you go there, you turn the switch during business hours, you push it four times, and it fires up. Then when the guys leave, we turn the switch back and then it works just like it was. Four pulses, which equals a dollar, for a start. So you still can make revenue, but you can go home. Audience Member: I wonder about people gating their self serve car wash -- where you pay to get in, you get everything you want -- vacs, everything -- once that fee is paid. Is anybody doing that? The article in the magazine seemed like it was very successful. Larry Baker: I haven’t done it, but I’ve read about it like you have. It’s kind of scary for me. I just didn’t like the concept as well. Going back to the conversation about vacuums -- we put in new coin acceptors that would take a token, so for our tun{continued }