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Car Wash Contemplations Consider these five new and improved reasons to hook up to a car wash By Renée M. Covino
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ave thoughts of adding a car wash to your operation been lathering in your mind lately? If you’ve looked into the possibility once or twice before, there is now new and improved reasons to look again — and perhaps this time, go for the hook-up, professionally speaking. The car wash business is cleaning up lately, driven by low gas prices; more erratic and warmer weather patterns (inspiring more frequent car washes); technological improvements; consumer environmental awareness; more efficient purchasing systems; and the increasing value consumers place on their vehicles. “The car wash, if operated properly, can be the most lucrative operation of the c-store business,” said Kevin Collette, vice president of sales, CTO (Compact Tunnel Organization) for Sonny’s Enterprise in Tamarac, Fla., which has been focusing on the convenience store market, having recognizing deeper potential in the channel to offer a professional car wash experience. “The profits car washes are generating, as well as the incremental growth at the pumps and inside the store, are all very appealing to the convenience/gas channel,” he continued. Plus, the channel is experiencing how easy it is to manage a high-volume, professional-level car wash requiring few employees and few vendors, according to Collette.
86 Convenience Store News | OCTOBER 2016 | WWW.CSNEWS.COM
While there are multiple factors contributing to today’s high-quality and profitable car wash programs in the convenience/gas channel, these five are at the top of the roster: More Sophisticated Site Evaluations & Education The first step for any successful c-store car wash business is a site evaluation — and the good news is that these evaluations are getting more sophisticated and detailed. The location should be analyzed by traffic count, demographics (including income per family), cars per family, and the degree of car wash competition in the surrounding area, advised Collette. “It’s not good enough today to just correlate the car wash to the gallons of fuel pumped,” he cautioned. “It does not give the retailer a true perspective of the business.” Collette’s bottom line is that c-store operators create a very detailed profit and loss statement that serves as a true means of managing the business. “Look at other professional car washes in the area. Watch how they market and, in general, compete with them,” he stated. A site evaluation and return-oninvestment (ROI) calculation are indeed critical in the determination phase, agreed Laura Edgmond, marketing specialist with Grimes, Iowa-based Ryko Solutions Inc., which now operates under the umbrella of National Carwash Solutions (NCS), along with the MacNeil and
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