Buying a car wash. How much do I charge?

[Jordanblackwell]

Hi folks, I’m new here. I’m talking with a self-serve car wash owner about buying his business. There’s a lot I need to figure out, but one thing is I’m not sure how much I should charge.

The owner charges $2/ 6 min and 23 seconds. He said that he knows that’s probably the cheapest in town. He hasn’t updated prices/time length in nearly a decade.

How do I determine a fair price? Should I decrease time, or increase price? Or both? I figure a big draw for self serve car washes is that they are cheap, so I obviously don’t want to lose customers by charging more. But surely I can update prices by a bit. Any thoughts or advice would be hugely appreciated. Thanks!

 

[HeyVern]

There are several recent threads on prices if you search the forum.

 

[Earl Weiss]

See what your competition is charging and determine if you think their operations are on par with what you are buying. If they are just be slightly less expensive.

 

[Greg Pack]

Once everything is working correctly I'd go down on time. It seems like the standard SS cycle time is four minutes so slowly work your way in that direction.

 

[Randy]

Where are you located? Do you have any competition close by? If so what do they charge? The old BS way of thinking that if I'm the lowest priced and give the most time will bring in more customers is a totally wrong way of thinking. 6 minutes and 23 seconds is absolutely unheard of. It should more like $2 for 4 or 3:30 minutes. I'm $2.75 for 3:30 minutes, no one ever complains. Your going to have to start slowly cutting back on the time and raise the price to start.

 

[Bigmatthew86]

I bought a wash 2 years ago in May. It was 1.25 for 4 minutes & some change & vacuums were .75 for 5 minutes. I did the usual replacing hoses, guns, decals, cleaned the place up, & got everything working. I’m now $3 for 3 minutes on the bays & $1 for 2:30 on the vacuums. Business only increased & money did as well. Also add a way to accept credit cards at least in the bays. Let people see you working to make the place better & just adjust the prices when you have. A cheeseburger is 3 bucks now.

 

[Waxman]

The Baconator at Wendys is $12!

Not a combo; that's just the burger...

 

[HeyVern]

The Baconator at Wendys is $12!

Not a combo; that's just the burger...

They're pretty good though.

 

[OurTown]

The Baconator at Wendys is $12!

Not a combo; that's just the burger...

I had to look that up since it seemed high to me.
$7.89 here.

 

[I.B. Washincars]

Bacon...they never did charge what it was worth.

 

[Waxman]

this is the one i got

 

[OurTown]

this is the one i got

That looks like a Door Dash price.

 

[Chuck Ivey]

Door Dash price here is $11.86.