It seems like a highly fragmented business. There is a tremendous amount of employee turnover and it depends on very low labor cost. Very little opportunity for automation.

Even if you managed to professionalize the industry you are still dealing with small local competitors willing to be scrappier and skirt rules to outcompete, for a time. Low/no barriers to entry mean a revolving door of competitors mis-pricing their product, putting you out of business while they go out of business.

You may be able to roll up in a city or region, but I would be amazed if a single car wash threw off over $1MM/yr in revenue with anything over a 20% margin. A whole lot of not worth it. And if you don’t own the land it’s a slippery slope.

I would avoid.

 

The key is the subscription part IMO.

1st guy was pointing out the issues with a low barrier to entry, highly fragmented space that’s extremely competitive and has low opps for value add.

2nd guy is pointing out that with the rise of subscription services, all of a sudden, roll up strategies offer value in that you can get actual “scale” benefits from a roll up of a city or town, lock-in w/ customers that creates a moat against competitors, efficiency savings from marketing spend against a measurable CLTV, etc.

 

Would need to be super geographically targeted as well. If you rolled up a county or region's carwashes, you'd be able to help eliminate pricing pressure from the undercutting smaller players by buying them out. Then establishing a brand which cements your leading position not only to random passerbys but more importantly to all residents in said targeted area will help with organic customer acquisition as well as increase recurring customer revenue. Opens up possibilities of offering rewards or promotions to those who visit x-branded carwash locations. Just a spewing of my thoughts here but I think you would really need to be selective about where you choose to employ such a strategy

 

Agreed. Check out my post below regarding digital versus brick-and-mortar real estate. I believe car washes like self storage are premeditated acts that are destination locations. Random acts do not occur with these two industries or a slim amount. It's like getting hair cut... simple and harmless but to work up the courage to go is always delayed by laziness. I don't believe people actively hunt for car washes and it's more borne of last resort (my car is so messy I can't get a date).... while some demographics (blue collar) worship their cars and treat it with a lot of respect. I believe those customers heavily rely on the top rated car washes and would go out of their way for a 5-star experience. 

 

Depends on the region. Automation % is very different in various geographies. Would not believe in a strategy that does not focus on automation unless you are in Asia. If your strategy takes into account the machines and potentially even benefits from this trend, could be interesting. Best way for a quick supplementary DD is to look at some of the equipment manufacturers because there are only a handful meaningful players and they will have all the data on fragmentation etc. PM me, if you want

 

A family member of mine has a car wash business. His grandkids can go to any college they want. He plays golf everyday and living life. He also has a 4th grade education too. Know your market.... Good luck!

Greed is Good!
 
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I see car washes as decent cash flowing businesses if you can find ones that check the right boxes which are newer equipment, mostly automated, good car traffic, etc. I've heard there are some peculiarities to car washes to watch out for such a land ownership rights but that goes for any asset.

Although there are PE firms out there rolling up car washes, the Mister Carwash is a good example, I see it being a tougher strategy for an individual to implement. You would need a heavy ops effort to acquire multiple car washes in a region, coordinate S&M efforts, make sure you have appropriate staffing, a subscription model, a mobile app (pretty sure some of these chains have apps now) not to mention at least a few million in capital.

If you're looking for a cash flowing side hustle, I'm sure you could buy an established car wash, make some minor tweaks to it, increase margins slightly and have it be a 20% CoC type of asset. I think it would be harder to do a Mister Carwash type of play, even on a smaller scale, I don't think the synergies become apparent unless you put a lot of effort into it. Just my opinion though.

 

Do you guys believe that car washes are solely reliant on drive-by traffic? I personally believe it's location and SEO driven now. People google where the closest decent car wash is and will go there (premeditated). Most "car wash" experts say that drive-by traffic for the random car wash is vital... I don't believe it. How many of you guys randomly decide to get a car wash when you see one? I can't imagine that happening...

 

I don't believe that's sustainable. The point of organic SEO growth is to rank at the first page of Google search. I don't think customers who are searching "car wash near me" are going to default to a PPC ad. I would assume that they bypass that and focus on their original search option. I think PPC are good supplements to organic SEO. It's like building a team based off a strong farm system as opposed to building a team via free agency. A combo is always better. 

 

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