Innovation and Capital Improvement

[thoffmanjr]

See movie link below: In my opinion Gary Baright of Foam & Wash Car Wash in Wappingers Falls, NY is the best self service car wash operator on the planet. Haven't seen anyone out innovate their self service business like the Baright's have. PLC control, 4 price points (Spend more, save more), credit card count up, gift card dispenser, 5 booms in the bay (High pressure, Foam Brush, Wheel Brush, Air Dryer & Foam Gun), waterproof IP67 rated LED lighting, custom twin bill acceptor "coin box", custom signage, designed his own self service vacuum system. Overall really nice guy willing to share too.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dnmw9mcwa2q6wvt/Baright.MOV?dl=0

 

[Earl Weiss]

Looks like 4 Booms plus compressed air? $1.00 to start?

 

[thoffmanjr]

Looks like 4 Booms plus compressed air? $1.00 to start?

Yes... $1 for 1 minute start. Compressed air? Only at the self service vacuums. The yellow hose in the self service bay is a triple wax foam gun. It is hanging with a tooling helper and running on Unistrut from the bay wall toward the center of the bay. This is a cleaver idea Gary came up with when you don't have room for another boom. The customer can easily pull the hose over the car... almost as good as a 360 boom.

 

[MEP001]

It's certainly a nice looking bay, but I don't understand innovating the equipment room to the extent that it adds thousands of dollars to the cost, makes servicing more difficult and complicated, and/or makes things less reliable, especially when the customer will never see a difference. I've recently gutted the PLC controls of two car washes, one because units were failing, the other because the software is no longer available for changing the time or coins to start and 75¢ for 4 minutes wasn't paying the bills. Between the two we threw out some $40,000 worth of PLCs and relays that are now being operated by about $5000 in rotary switches and Dixmor timers.

 

[thoffmanjr]

Regarding installing PLC’s in SS you really need to know what you’re doing. The point was to enhance the customer experience and get more revenue per visit. We also differentiate our location from others. Using the Dixmor LED 9 multifunction timer allowed multiple price point to get more initial starting money or to get more along the way as the customer added money. You need a PLC to keep track of the coins and currency being deposited for the Dixmor and for perfect cash control. We use VFD’s to control the speed of the pump so we can offer a Pressure Boost feature. On High Pressure rinse or soap the customer can select 1,000 psi or 1,400 psi. We also use the pump to deliver other low pressure features. Spot Free benefits because we can deliver it at 400 psi instead of 180 psi from traditional systems. 400 is a much better experience. Are far as reliability I know Gary has said he has to open the enclosure once in a while to make sure the PLC is still in there it’s so reliable. After saying all that I would say 99 times out of 100 people should stay away from doing this. It is expensive and risky if you’re not experienced. The self service business is also very, very risky. Our customers are a dying breed and Gary makes every effort not to give up on them and is succeeding.

 

[robert roman]

It looks great. Improvements have certainly created a distinct personality and great revenue model; sell as “service” instead of just time. I’ve been harping about this for years. My question is why don’t good ideas like this one come from the self-serve OEM’s?

For example, I know operators that have experienced success with pay-one-price, and yet you don’t see OEM’s promoting the idea or selling a product for it. At least I’m not aware of one.

 

[Doug P.]

Thank you for the link Thoffmanjr. It's motivating to see examples of locations that are in the 1%. As you said not every idea is suitable for every location/operator but we have copied some of these ideas from innovative operators and keep trying to improve.

Doug P.