What is your style – Express Exterior, Flex Serve, or Full Service? All three have pros and cons, but I often hear the question, “What is the best style of car wash to build” to which I answer, “What kind of car wash do YOU want to OPERATE and MANAGE”. Selecting your wash style encompasses more than just market demographics and competitive landscape; it also involves defining your investment strategy and management preferences. In the next few paragraphs I am going to focus on the Flex Serve style and how it's principles can control customer sharing, put labor where margin makes sense, and balance volume and staffing as traffic dictates. If your passion is Flex Serve then I hope you find this article helpful.
A Simplistic Flex Serve Definition:
Although there are hundreds of variations, the typical flex serve is the combination of Express Exterior and Full Service offerings on one property. The foundation of this style is an Express Exterior conveyorized tunnel with automated gated entry that requires no manual prepping and produces a clean, shiny, and completely dry car with no labor. Optional exterior services such as tire shining and bug removal are performed online via computer-controlled equipment. Customers select a base wash package at the automated computer attendant and then add additional aftercare services normally taking approximately 15-minutes or less. All wash customers stay in the vehicle through the wash. Exterior only customers immediately exit, often passing vended vacuum stations. Customers that purchased offline services follow directional signage to an aftercare center where they turn over their car to an attendant and wait in a lobby while their vehicle is prepared. This selling opportunity for higher end detailing services will be discussed later when I talk about putting labor where margin makes sense.
As with Express Exterior, Flex Serve also demands slightly longer tunnel lengths to accommodate automated equipment that replaces traditional prep and finish attendants common to Full Serve washes. In addition, unlike a Full Serve wash offering a low price exterior only option, the value proposition of a Flex Serve to a customer is both low price and short wait time. That requirement demands an equipment package and stack configuration that can deliver a 5-minute or less customer wait time during peak operation on the site’s busiest day. Do not interpret this as meaning a Flex Serve operation necessarily demands an enormous tunnel length. Many operators are successfully converting or adding Express Exterior lanes to older Full Serve locations. Equipment, wash material, drying systems, and detergent advancements permit greater cleaning and drying within more condensed conveyor lengths, which an operator should examine with their equipment manufacturer.
Customer sharing:
It is a fact, regardless what your business is; you will always share your customers with your competitors. Whether you are a restaurant, doctor, or carwash, there are times when even your most loyal customer will go elsewhere for either faster service, more specialized service, more convenient hours or location, or a lower price. The problem facing many Full Serve washes today is that rising labor costs are forcing reduced hours of operation to peak times on ideal weather days when it makes sense to be open. For a customer, this raises the cost of the wash, the wait time when open, and forces them to fit their schedule to the wash. Customers are increasingly supplementing their Full Serve regiment with the growing number of in-bay automatics and Express Exterior tunnels opening every day.
The Flex Serve location style combats customer sharing by offering multiple specialties or services on the same property. When executed correctly, it can offer a diverse population of customers with different preferences, a wash where they feel in control of both the time and money they are investing to get a clean car. If it sounds almost too good to be true, it is not. There is one major catch – management. This is where I want to reiterate my opening statement: what kind of car wash do YOU want to OPERATE and MANAGE? In Express Exterior, the wash process is automated with relatively straightforward management and training for a very limited number of staff. In Full Serve, training is relatively straightforward, but management of a large number of manual laborers is difficult and often strenuous. In Flex Serve, the wash process is automated, identical to an Express Exterior, but training and management is both difficult and complex.
Putting labor where margin makes sense:
Now, you have customers flowing into your wash, attracted by a low price, high quality, and fast exterior service. This base wash price averages between $3 to $7 dollars, is roughly equivalent to a value priced lunch in the market, and is less than an exterior only option at a Full Serve in the region. As with an Express Exterior, customers can select higher wash packages at the automated attendant, with tire shining, wheel cleaning, triple foam, and other extra exterior services delivered by automated equipment online. Since there is no labor variable the wash can remain open even when the weather is not ideal and remains open for a greater number of hours. Increased hours of operation, shorter wait times, and lower price points have proven to increase customer wash frequency and spread that volume more evenly throughout the week.
Here is where the Flex Model breaks away from the Express Exterior. In Express, the customer has no interior option and exit into free vacuum bays for self-serve interior cleaning. In Flex, the customer can exit directly, normally past vended vacuums, or add quick interior and exterior services, requiring 15 minutes or less to complete. If space permits, additional detailing options can be offered that demand greater than 15 minutes. This is not the same as Full Serve where the object is to get every customer to purchase as many extra services as possible. A properly executed Flex Serve carefully manages and adjusts aftercare service pricing to maintain controlled flow through the property, hence, putting labor where margin makes sense. There are differing opinions as to the exact mix and ratio, but a good rule of thumb to start your planning with is that you want 30% of all exterior customers to purchase aftercare services with 25% or less of gross revenue going to labor cost.
To understand how the 30/25 rule of thumb works, let’s start with a typical interior vacuum and window cleaning with some very rough and hypothetical numbers to show the relationship. If for example, a very thorough interior cleaning takes 2 employees 15 minutes to complete, and in your market the labor rate is $7.50 per hour, your labor cost for the service would be $3.75. If you divide your labor cost by .25, the maximum labor cost as a percentage of sales you are willing to charge, the minimum retail price of the service would be $15. This interior service charge is in addition to the cost of the exterior wash selected, meaning if the customer added the interior service to a $5 exterior wash, the total amount, collected by the automated attendant, would be $20. Normally, three detailing packages are offered, all adhering to the 30/25 rule.
Maintaining the 30% conversion in reality is, of course, never as easy as it is here on paper, and will often take time for the site to mature and for customers to learn that they are getting a premium value for their money. One mechanism to increase awareness is to discount the base aftercare service for an introductory period while holding the other packages to the 30/25 rule. The opposite holds true if conversion begins to exceed 30%, you will raise the retail pricing for aftercare services, steadily reducing your labor cost below 25%.
Aftercare: Balancing Site Flow and Working “Lean”
Designing a Flex Serve aftercare center is a book unto itself and calculating the numbers can make your head spin. The outline below is very basic. If you are serious about building
a Flex Serve, you should contact your equipment manufacturer who can assist in making the calculations and design your site layout correctly. The basic concept revolves around teams of employees working in cells that can easily scale up and down for changing volume requirements and service levels. The first issue is determining the base number of cells needed, directly related to the anticipated average traffic flow. For example, if your analysis has determined you will operate 60 hours per week and anticipate washing 10,000 cars per month, the average cars processed per hour would be 38-40. You have planned pricing to convert 30% to aftercare services that take an average of 15 minutes each. If you do the math, an average of 12 customers will purchase aftercare services per hour. Since a typical cell with 2-attendants is designed to process four 15-minute services every hour, you would need three cells to process the 12 interior services. If space is limited, another alternative is to design 4-attendant cells with four vacuum drops, four air supply lines, and supplies available for all attendants. Although 4-attendant cells can cut both processing time and cell requirements in half, there is a greater training and management component to keep the 4-attendants working in unison. Most operators will, at minimum, double the number of required cells to scale up during peak operating times. In this scenario, the site would need at least six 2-attendant cells or three 4-attendant cells and a staffing plan to shift permanent team members to vacant cells supplemented with temporary staff as traffic concentration changes. I will describe staffing considerations in the next section.
Once you have established the number of cells you need, how can you maximize their efficiency. Every second you can save your team members through careful design will increase the quality of your service and ability for team members to identify and propose additional services to waiting customers. The first rule is that every cell always contains all supplies, with no employee needing to walk more than half the distance of the vehicle to get them. The second rule is that every cell can perform every service with no employee needing to walk more than half the distance of the vehicle to complete it. For the first rule, I like to use a Japanese “Lean” manufacturing concept called “Kanban”. The actual term means “signal”, and the process assists in maintaining an orderly and efficient flow of materials throughout the entire aftercare center. Every item, whether it is an applicator, chemical, or towel are organized in a supply lane that leads directly to the customer waiting area. All supplies are available at each cell and have a visible “signal” alerting the need to replenish them. For example, a colored board is installed between stacked towels at a height of 4 towels. Team members simply use towels as needed, when only 3 remain, the board is visible and signals the need to replenish them. There are infinite variations on setting up your signal and replenishment system but the principle of keeping constant supplies with absolutely no disruption to the workflow is vital in a Flex Serve aftercare center.
The second rule is to place all equipment in each cell. All vacuuming, air supply, chemical dispensing, and detailing equipment must be available to all Team Members simultaneously. This can be accomplished using carts and benches, or by delivering air and vacuum lines to each cell and dispensing chemicals from ceiling mounted storage troughs with drop down applicators.
Balancing site flow: Managing Teams, and Higher End Services
The final aspect of the Flex Serve I want to address in this article is staffing. I have referred to staff working in the aftercare center as “Team Members” and nothing is more critical to the overall success of this wash style. You will normally staff with a core team to handle 90% of the average calculated aftercare volume. Each member of the core team must be cross-trained to perform all aftercare services and two to four members work as a team in each cell. Shifts are staggered throughout the day to begin and end so that the greatest concentration of staff occurs at the peak hour of each day similar in fashion to a bell curve. As volume increases, additional cells become active as appropriate for the season and day of the week. When volume exceeds the labor available with the core staff, a temporary employee is paired with one team member in an empty cell to increase production capacity. Many new locations design aftercare cells with equipment, vacuum, and airdrops, to accommodate 4-attendants. The improved flexibility allows the manager to increase production efficiency and utilize available cell space to perform involved detailing services that exceed 15 minutes. The ability of the manager to cultivate a team mentality and train core members on how to identify and present higher end detailing opportunities to waiting customers is the final aspect of maximizing the profit potential available at a Flex Serve style car wash.
In Summary:
The Flex Serve style of car washing is an exciting design that maximizes profit opportunities at an automatic car wash. It capitalizes on equipment advancements in automated prepping and extra service application to create an environment that satisfies a wider group of customers needs. Is it the best style of car wash to build – it depends on what kind of car wash YOU want to OPERATE and MANAGE.
Anthony Analetto has over 26 years experience in the car wash business and is the President of SONNY'S The Car Wash Factory's Equipment Division. Before coming to SONNY'S Anthony was the director of operations for a 74 location national car wash chain. Anthony can be reached at 800-327-8723 x 104 or at aanaletto@sonnysdirect.com
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