Purchasing my first wash

[Jpwatson]

I recently went under contract to purchase my first car wash. The owner has owned it a long time but is calling it quits. I am closing on it May 27th. I was looking for input on where to allocate improvements. The wash itself is on a great corner in our college town but has been neglected the past decade. Here are some of the items that I want to tackle first: budget $20,000-$30,000 but can finance more if needed

Paint building, currently an old yellow(don’t know why he picked it). This use to be a very nice red brick building. I don’t think I’ll be able to get that look back. -My thoughts are to paint it gray with a blue stripe wrapping around it and paint the metal roof to blue.
Equipment: two razors new in 2015 with select wash pos. One has 13k and the other has 7k. 4 self bays, 1 hasn’t been operational for sometime and 6 vacuums. All items except vacuums have cryptopay already. -my thoughts new decals on vacuums, change hoses and vacuum toppers to blue and add cryptopay. New signage in the bays.
Front street sign: the sign is the original from 1980 and hasn’t worked in decades. -my thoughts: new panels and change out to an LED kit inside.
Concrete: main area is decent but the left side of the building has large dips and cracks. This side is mostly only usd for the city’s trash truck coming to my dumpster. My thoughts: bid to tear out and replace was $32,000. That’s to much but I can patch the areas with asphalt for the time being for a few hundred.

Items that I have been looking into are new POS that also has an app ability. I think the idea of being able to push coupons, free birthday washes, discount wash pop ups on slow days, etc could increase traffic a lot.
Vending machines. There are some currently but are old, faded and only a few work. There are two large vending machines that are broke down. I will look into cost of repairing. Another item would be a pet washing station. There is room to have it be a building on the side next to the main road or I could put it in the bay that is currently down. Possible glass both sides 3/4 the way up to let the wet dog smell out. Could add decals to the windows advertising pet washing.

Where do you think I should put my dollars for the best return? Thank you in advance.

 

[Waxman]

Get everything working properly first. Fix the broken bay and the vending machines. Patch the parking lot and paint the building. Fix the sign by the road.

 

[water guy]

Get everything working properly first. Fix the broken bay and the vending machines. Patch the parking lot and paint the building. Fix the sign by the road.

And Roll up Your Sleeves.

 

[Jeff_L]

Yep, don't spend big yet, just put the elbow grease into getting everything running right and consistent. Spend the few bucks on the paystation, meter box, vacuum, etc to just get them running. Even if your longterm goal is to replace them. Right now, you need to start servicing the current customer base better and get new customers in.

It's easy to drop a lot of coin on things like a sign, paint, concrete, etc, however you really don't want all those new people coming in until your wash just plain works.

 

[bert79]

I just finished a very similar project. Paint the building white and put a small sign on the building itself. This is not very costly and customers will see that changes are happening. Do this after you make sure all the equipment is working like it should. The roadsign will be expensive (and the building is a sign itself — it screams “car wash”) so dont worry about that until u have cash flow. Just my two cents. Also, read everything on this forum and ask questions.

 

[DavidM]

All good advice so far. I would focus on getting those automatics turning out a great car. 20,000 washes combined in 4 years isn't good. If the location is truly a good one, you need to find out why people aren't using the Razors.
New paystations with an app aren't going to significantly increase your car count. If the current paystations look rough, you can rehab them inexpensively.


I agree with everyone else... before paint and signage, I would make sure everything works. If you dress it up and bring in a new customer but something doesn't work or their car doesn't get clean, they are going to think "new paint, same old wash"

You are on the right track so far. Get ready to work hard! It can be rewarding.

David

 

[mac]

All good advice so far. The thing that jumps out at me is the low wash count on the automatics. That is really low, and add in the fact that one has been down for a while, and you have your work cut out.

 

[Jpwatson]

Thank you all for your responses. Yes, the low wash count was alarming but I believe this to be from the appearance of the building and people not thinking you could get a clean car from such a dirty place.
With regards to the Paystations what would be some ways to clean those up. 2 automatics are Unitec select wash II and the 4 hand bays are old 8 position dials. What would you all recommend for those? Would be decals be enough?

 

[Jpwatson]

All good advice so far. I would focus on getting those automatics turning out a great car. 20,000 washes combined in 4 years isn't good. If the location is truly a good one, you need to find out why people aren't using the Razors.
New paystations with an app aren't going to significantly increase your car count. If the current paystations look rough, you can rehab them inexpensively.


I agree with everyone else... before paint and signage, I would make sure everything works. If you dress it up and bring in a new customer but something doesn't work or their car doesn't get clean, they are going to think "new paint, same old wash"

You are on the right track so far. Get ready to work hard! It can be rewarding.

David

How would I go about rehabbing the paystations?

 

[Randy]

How would I go about rehabbing the paystations?

Clean and polish the stainless steel front. Replace the face panel, all the decals, if nessary replace the push buttons. Do he same thing to the coin box face plates, clean and polish, replace the decals.

 

[mjwalsh]

Clean and polish the stainless steel front. Replace the face panel, all the decals, if nessary replace the push buttons. Do he same thing to the coin box face plates, clean and polish, replace the decals.

I agree with Randy also suggesting including the self service coin box interface. One of the better things we did was to do a makeover of our old membranes (over 5 years ago) changing them to a more durable & attractive stainless push button-menu style. As long as the GinSan boards & the MicroCoin QLs don't give us unnecessary grief we are happy campers.

 

[Jpwatson]

I just finished a very similar project. Paint the building white and put a small sign on the building itself. This is not very costly and customers will see that changes are happening. Do this after you make sure all the equipment is working like it should. The roadsign will be expensive (and the building is a sign itself — it screams “car wash”) so dont worry about that until u have cash flow. Just my two cents. Also, read everything on this forum and ask questions.

Any particular reason to paint it white?

 

[bert79]

Any particular reason to paint it white?

Not really, I said that because it worked well for us. We started with a brown, drab cinder block, non-functioning car wash. Ours had been out of commission for 7 years. We decided to paint it bright white with bright white frp panels in the bays. We wanted people to notice it again. They noticed it right away after the paint went up. Bright white says clean (it also shows dirt, obviously). It has worked very well for us. We have had a lot of compliments.

 

[PEI]

White works well because it says clean during the day and can be used at night to make the building glow, becoming it's own sign. You can even used colored led strips to make the walls change colors.

 

[Damoni88]

1st thing I did was got everything working.
2nd and i feel i very very important is install if not already installed LED LIGHTING, my carwashs look like a baseball field at night so customers feel safe. Install a good surveillance system that can get liscense plates. Work on changing out decals and overlays and get the place looking fresh. Advertise new owner. I have done all these things and has worked very well for me $$$$$$. Good luck to you!!

 

[Jpwatson]

1st thing I did was got everything working.
2nd and i feel i very very important is install if not already installed LED LIGHTING, my carwashs look like a baseball field at night so customers feel safe. Install a good surveillance system that can get liscense plates. Work on changing out decals and overlays and get the place looking fresh. Advertise new owner. I have done all these things and has worked very well for me $$$$$$. Good luck to you!!

On the LED lighting, are you referring to in bay or parking lot lightings? Currently there are 3 pole lights and 4 wall packs. I plan to switch the old single pole lights to dual LED to fan both directions and replace the wall packs. Do you have a suggestion on color? Currently they are 2700k (yellow) and I was going to move up to 4000k-5000k (hospital white) but don’t know if that’s too much. Do you recommend LED color lights in the bay also? For cameras is there a brand you recommend to DIY or is that an area to hirer a professional?

 

[Damoni88]

On the LED lighting, are you referring to in bay or parking lot lightings? Currently there are 3 pole lights and 4 wall packs. I plan to switch the old single pole lights to dual LED to fan both directions and replace the wall packs. Do you have a suggestion on color? Currently they are 2700k (yellow) and I was going to move up to 4000k-5000k (hospital white) but don’t know if that’s too much. Do you recommend LED color lights in the bay also? For cameras is there a brand you recommend to DIY or is that an area to hirer a professional?

Right now at all 3 of my locations i have bright white/ daylight. I also have 2 led lights on electric poles that the city installed i pay 75 per month for. I have my bays lit up and parking lot and vacuum area. Everything is led bright white. You will come out ahead in two ways with led LIGHTING everywhere, 1 you electric bill will be almost cut in 1/2 , 2 customers/cops (when patrolling) can really see your wash at night. Backstreet surveillance has a great deal going on and their tech support is top of the line. You can really DIY. 5 mega pixel is a great camera 8 is fantastic.

 

[Jeff_L]

I recommend bright white lighting.

 

[Jpwatson]

I agree with Randy also suggesting including the self service coin box interface. One of the better things we did was to do a makeover of our old membranes (over 5 years ago) changing them to a more durable & attractive stainless push button-menu style. As long as the GinSan boards & the MicroCoin QLs don't give us unnecessary grief we are happy campers.

Do you have a recommendation on interface for the self serve bays?

 

[Jpwatson]

Right now at all 3 of my locations i have bright white/ daylight. I also have 2 led lights on electric poles that the city installed i pay 75 per month for. I have my bays lit up and parking lot and vacuum area. Everything is led bright white. You will come out ahead in two ways with led LIGHTING everywhere, 1 you electric bill will be almost cut in 1/2 , 2 customers/cops (when patrolling) can really see your wash at night. Backstreet surveillance has a great deal going on and their tech support is top of the line. You can really DIY. 5 mega pixel is a great camera 8 is fantastic.

I was looking at backstreet and think there are some really good options there. They have a referral program where you can get 5% back on your system costs. If you want to message me you name, email and phone I’ll put that in as the referral for you.