Business for Sale, Would I Buy It? | New Car Wash

In this edition of “Would I Buy This Business” we are looking at a brand new built car wash with real estate, newly established, hundred percent employee-run. So car washes are one of those classic businesses that people talk about when they’re looking at putting some of their money to work. I don’t know if you’ve seen Breaking Bad but they buy a car wash in that show, mostly to launder money through. And car washes are kind of their own animal. They’re usually sold by car wash specific business brokers. And their buyers who specialize in buying car washes. And sellers who specialize in starting up car washes to sell. And it’s one of those along with the laundromats and a few other businesses that seem like they have this mystique around them and they’re this special kind of business. They sell for a premium price because supposedly they’re like guaranteed money makers, you can never lose money with a car wash. I don’t know that maybe explains why this one they’re claiming 1.8 million in revenue with $776,000 in cash flow. Of course, it’s only been open for a month so those are all projections. The asking price is 9.995 million. It does say it includes the real estate. It doesn’t break out what the real estate is worth. So it’s really hard to kinda know what is real here and what’s projection and what you could actually expect. It does say which I think is interesting the car count for August 2024 is 16,240. I’d be surprised if this is the first car wash that this town has ever seen. And people been waiting years to be able to finally have a place to go wash their car. So the idea that a brand new car wash month one is pulling through 16,000 cars, or any car wash even a well-established carwash, that just seems like a whole lot of cars. So if I’m doing the math right in a 30-day month that’s about 500 cars running through. If it’s open 10 hours that’s 50 cars an hour. Or like one every minute. I mean that’s literally one car every minute and 15 seconds or something for 10 hours straight, every single day of the month, in a 30-day month. I mean I’ve seen busy car washes and I’ve seen slow car washes but that to me seems like a phenomenally busy car wash, open for a month in a town that presumably has other ways that you can also wash your car. So I don’t know how to have any faith in these numbers. I’d have to drive up and see it and see if I really saw a line of cars around the block endlessly waiting to get their car washed in this car wash. Their sales for the month of August when they had these 16,000 cars come through is 150,000. So what is that a little less than 10 bucks per car wash? I don’t know. I would be curious but I would be skeptical. And I just don’t know that these numbers are ones you could put a lot of faith in. So I would be interested in finding out more but I don’t think I’d be a buyer on this deal.

More about this series, CapForge’s owner and founder gives us a little behind-the-scenes on what a good or bad business would be. CapForge helps tons of clients either buy or sell business and Matt was a business broker before starting CapForge. Let’s look at some of these businesses up for sale and see if Matt would be interested in buying them.