Looks like a razor
That’s rough. It’s just a loss leader to them. They will grind that machine into the ground and make no money off of it. People will not care about quality because who complains about anything free ( people do, but there is not an argument to be made). Plus, there is no incentive to offer the highest quality. People who truly care will still pay for a good wash. Those who only want it free are probably not regular, quality demanding customers anyway.
The Costco washes boggle my mind. 150' tunnels with the entire Macneil equipment catalog inside. No vacuums on site at all. They give the "kitchen sink" wash for $7.99 which is the only wash available. And they are lined up open to close. Most do 30k cars per month.
Maybe the big tunnel chains actually can discourage the Costco Model. Premier wash for $8. Purchase 5 of them in a month and you are at $40. Around me, $45 is a monthly subscription for a top wash and you can get 31 of them a month if you want.
They're probably netting close to $5 per wash 150K/month and it sounds great on the surface but when you're Costco I'm not sure it's worth the relative hassle. Average store sales for costco is around $690,000.00 per day
If my car wash sales were $690,000 per day, I wouldn’t be interested in trying to sell groceries or anything else!
Tick Tock guy must have failed his business class. Costco release said they gave up margin - not lost money. (Meaning they could have had a bigger profit margin. ) https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/costco-rotisserie-chicken-cheap/
I was more focused on gross sales, car wash is a drop in the bucket for them was my main takeaway.
