Until they figure out how to operate a high-volume express wash with only one employee on site and rotating maintenance teams, car washes will need workers and managers.
Car wash performance and customer satisfaction depend on a strong relationship between the owner, management, and workers. If everyone works together with a common goal in mind, customers and employees will be happy.
A prime example is Culver’s, a family-owned restaurant chain famous for “butterburgers” and frozen custard. The company’s success is rooted in hiring good people and treating them like family, making customers feel like a welcome house guest, and having owners/operators work inside their stores.
And when you visit one of their stores, this is exactly what you find.
Unfortunately, this feel-good experience is absent from many support services, such as quick-service restaurants, convenience stores, gas stations, and car washes.
As for hands-on operators, arguably the highest percentage in the car wash space would come from independent operators who own one or two sites. Multi-location owners are much less likely to work a store on a daily basis because of logistics and other responsibilities, whereas owners of large networks may never step foot on a property.
The car wash industry has many organizational structures, cultures, and managerial relationships at work. And all car washes are not created equal.
I’ve worked with many car wash owners over the years and met their managers and workers, and almost all of them could put me to shame at every level. Fortunately, I wasn’t hired to tell these operators how to run their business or how to treat their customers, managers, or employees. Most were very successful and knew how to manage their affairs quite well.
The experience provided me with the opportunity to learn what industry best practices
really mean. For example, when I worked as a manager for one of the large car wash chains, the emphasis on training was urgency.
This means urgency to up-sell the customer as much as possible, urgency to get the job done as quickly as possible with least amount of labor, urgency to keep the line moving, and so forth. This type of system can work, but not when it’s cranked up to the nth degree.
Today, the top operators are systems-driven. They have standard operating procedures and checklists for employees to complete, and they measure, analyze, and monitor the metrics.
In full-service and flex, the best operators work in their stores, have clear accountability, and have a Culver-like attitude towards customers and employees. Authoritarian, command-and-control types; micro-managers; and hands-off types who rely on dashboards, cameras, and contractors are less successful and, thankfully, increasingly rare.
According to industry research, the retail side of the business has been on a downward trajectory for over a year. The most recent Rinsed quarterly research reports a 3 to 4 percent decline. Add a three-year plateau in average per-car revenue and an increasing number of washes offering low-dollar wash plan sign-ups, and things may get a little crunchy this year.
Operators must manage employees, inventory, costs, QA/QC, housekeeping, maintenance, customer service, and much more. Since it’s easier to manage these things in person, operators can gain a competitive advantage by working as much as possible in their stores.
Bob is an industry consultant with more than 25 years of experience and is a former operator of car wash, oil change, and detail businesses. He can be reached at (727) 723-9474 or bobr427@protonmail.com.