Car Wash of the Stars Serves
Non-Celebs With Equal Care
By Jim and Elaine Norland

Owner Marvin Kalin with his management team. Rear, from the left: Eberardo Gonzales, Kathi Hill, Marvin Kalin, and Glen Rogers. Front, from the left: Isaac Gonzales and Juan Flores.

The wash may have the title of "The Car Wash of the Stars," but Santa Palm Car Wash, at 8787 Santa Monica Blvd. in West Hollywood, CA, delivers the same measure of personal care to every vehicle that enters its 180-foot tunnel. Entertainment industry celebrities are frequent customers, but less celebrated drivers and cars also get the "Rolls Royce treatment" at Santa Palm, says general manager Glen Rogers.

Santa Palm claims to clean more Rolls Royces each month than any other car wash in the world. It also cleans thousands of other prestige-marque cars such as Ferraris and Lamborghinis, BMWs, Mercedes, and Jaguars each month, Rogers reports. The wash has a hallway graced with over 200 autographed pictures of celebrity customers.

Santa Palm was built more than 40 years ago, in the era of iron-and-sheet-metal car wash construction, and much of its equipment is equally venerable. Both structure and machinery, as well as the grounds on its half-acre site, are well maintained to assure a welcoming presence and a smooth-running wash.

The customer waiting area at Santa Palm is an outdoor patio-like area furnished with residential-style casual furniture. There's no vending or sales counter other than a soda-and-water vending machine. A hamburger stand is on the corner.

All that may sound a little "retro," but Santa Palm keeps pace with modern needs and changing markets.
It has changed its car washing methods from time to time to evolve into the present combination of pre-rinse, foaming arch, shaker curtains, hand washing, reclaim- and then fresh-water rinse before power drying and finishing touches.

The wash recently took out its gas pumps and thus improved its contact time between service writer and customers as well as speeding up the incoming traffic flow. Few customers wanted gas, and regulations were becoming prohibitive, Rogers says, so removing the pumps made sense.

The wash does a sizable detail volume, too, accounting for an average of $40,000 a month in revenue or better. Isaac Gonzales manages the detail operation.

The "Hand Wash Plus" sign beckons passing traffic.

Santa Palm's wash prices aren't the cheapest in the neighborhood. The regular wash is $11.99, "and a little bit farther up the street, you could probably get a car wash on a special or coupon for $6.99," says Rogers. At Santa Palm, drivers can choose wash packages ranging up to $21.99, but whether getting the basic or "works" package, they'll likely have a $2 coupon that will reduce their net cost to, say, $9.99 for the regular wash.

The coupons are Santa Palm's main marketing tool, and are handed out in a nearby Pavilion store. Rogers doesn't use direct mail or other promotions, and has found that the $2 discount coupon works well among the wash's customers and preserves profitability far better than hugely-discounted wash-wax offers of the past.

A lot of washes - "and we used to be among them" - put out offers for a $6.95 wash and wax, and that created a mindset among many customers that that should be the price. They came in figuring that's what they were going to pay, Rogers says. With the $2 coupons, the service writer gets a chance to upgrade the sale and the customer is always mindful that he or she is saving $2 on the deal, he explains.

One can save in other ways at Santa Palm. The wash sells 10-wash books at substantial savings. For example, 10 regular washes, which would cost $119.90 if paid one by one, can be bought by the book at $104.95. Punch cards also reward returning customers. The tenth punch qualifies the holder for a free 11th wash at whatever level package was purchased previously.

No matter what the price or deal, steady, caring employees can make the difference at any service business. Santa Palm's average labor force of 40 to 50 workers is comprised largely of employees who've been there for at least five years. "I would say half of them have probably been with us closer to ten years," says Rogers. All employees wear uniforms, Santa Palm providing shirts, hats and aprons to go with the employees' own dark pants.

How does Santa Palm keep such steady employees? "We treat them like people," says Rogers. "Nobody's yelling and screaming at them. We pay them when they work, and if they work overtime, we pay them overtime.

An example of the advertising boards created by Car Wash Ads.

"They can come to us with any problem or issue they're dealing with," he adds. We understand they have families and they feel the same pressures we feel. If they run into a little financial problem, we can even front them some money."

Rogers feels strongly about the exploitation of car wash workers by some operators, recently publicized in a "Dateline NBC" program. But the program "has really helped us," Rogers says, because it gives him an opportunity to tell customers - particularly if they complain about prices - that "We're not a part of that. We pay our help."

Managers at Santa Palm have each been with the wash for an average of 23 years, Rogers says. He has been at Santa Palm since 1980, and was named general manager of the year by the Western Car Wash Association in 1999.

"We have four managers around here, including myself, an assistant manager, and the detail manager.

There's always somebody here for customers to talk to, and they seem to appreciate it a lot."
While the Santa Palm structure is old, it gets cleaned and painted regularly, the wash employees handling all such maintenance and upkeep as well as that of the equipment. "Most of our equipment is not new," says Rogers, "it's just well maintained."

A gardener comes in regularly to keep up the landscaping. Where the gas pumps once stood, small palm trees now add to the inviting look of the wash.

One factor in Santa Palm's neat appearance is the presence of Car Wash Ads. The 17-by-44-inch advertising boards, with space for four advertisers per board, are produced and serviced by Car Wash Ads.

"Many of our customers see this as a way of advertising their own businesses," Rogers explains. "We have limited ourselves to four boards because I need to be able to see what's going on in the wash. If I put too much in the customers' waiting area, I can't see as well.

"Apart from that, I would love to put in more boards, because I think the customers really love it. I see them go through those ads, and sometimes customers will call me on the phone and ask for the number of a business they've seen there."

Most customers, however, take one of the advertisers' business cards from the Car Wash Ads displays, says Victor Lanfranco, founder and president of the company.

His company, established 13 years ago, has advertising boards in 340 car washes in an area from the Mexico/California border to the Bay Area, including San Francisco and Sacramento. Car wash operators have absolute approval power for any advertisers that are included on their boards.
Lanfranco developed the approach after seeing car wash owners - including one who had spent $5 million on a good-looking wash - suffering from the clutter of menus, posters and other advertising they had been pressured to display. Participating wash owners sign an exclusive agreement with Car Wash Ads that regulates any advertising on their premises.

The ads are all professionally produced and mounted in plexiglass and powder-coated metal frames. "The type of ads we have are mostly professional, but there is nothing to compete with anything the car wash might be doing, and nothing in bad taste," says Lanfranco. He turned down a $400,000 check from a tobacco company that wanted to use the boards to promote their products, advertising that is prohibited now in many outdoor venues. To see examples of these ad boards, operators can visit www.carwashads.com on the web.

Each ad board has business card holders that dispense just one card at a time, to prevent any littering. Boards are checked for appearance and needs (such as more business cards) every week by four full-time drivers. Their vehicles are fitted with GPS systems to enable management to verify that boards are being serviced as promised, and that "car wash owners are happy. They don't want filthy or broken boards," Lanfranco notes.

Car wash owners are paid according to the number of boards they have in their wash, and those with adequate space often ask Lanfranco for more boards. Car Wash Ads has paid car wash owners nearly $10 million in the past 13 years. For the car wash owner, "We're good for one nice family vacation a year," says Lanfranco. "You can take the family to Hawaii and it's on us."

When vacant space appears on a board, as happens from time to time, Lanfranco places messages promoting the merits of professional car washing, pointing out the costs in time, water, and other resources a car owner spends if he or she washes at home.

Divisions of Car Wash Ads include a full-service graphics shop and a print shop, so car wash owners and the advertising clients can, if they wish, get design and printing services at a discount.

At Santa Palm Car Wash, the system works beautifully, and complements a wash that thrives on giving everyone "star" treatment in a clean, attractive and well-maintained setting.

Jim and Elaine Norland are regular contributors to Auto Laundry News.