Money Laundering, rings a bell ?
Hard to do since most of these are credit card only now.
They are popping up because it is good, mostly passive income if you are in the right area.
Why are there suddenly so many car washes?
31–40 of 615 posts
Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely. I can think of a few storage units that are in prime real estate locations that make no sense--like right across the street from Oracle Park in San Francisco. Has to be some of the most expensive real estate in the entire city/state and it's being used for storage units...
Could that land have toxic soil, and therefore not be zoned for anything else?
When in doubted the answer is always "because something is utterly fucked in that zone" and done by humans.
Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?
#33Ouch, just remembered I've missed my regular yearly car wash. Don't tell I should do such a unnecessary and time consuming thing more often.
Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?
#34Not joking, Ivy League graduates who might have went into finance, have started raising capital and funding small cash returning businesses. It is now seen as a legitimate career path, sometimes called a "search fund". An HBS graduate might aspire to buy and run a blue collar business as a way to understand the market. There are private equity funds that might aquire 50 of these businesses at 2-5M each, roll them int…
Yeah, "Entrepreneurship through acquisition (ETA)", is something I've seen a lot of MBAs study and prioritize. Is it really entrepreneurship though? Seems like "Buy, squeeze, rinse, and repeat" - which is killing businesses rather than creating them.
Its not that much different from raising 10M (with nothing but an idea) to build some generic type of software that already has a market. A big secret, raising huge amounts of capital to be an "Entrepreneur", isnt really Entrepreneurship, its being placed into a management position of executing on an already existing (usually proven) idea.
VCs certainly see it this way, and so do the pedigreed people they fund. The only people thinking its different, are the ones on the outside looking in.
Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?
#35Year after Year, I kept thinking this was a fad and would crash. But years go by, and now they are calling it a 'boom'. 14 billion dollar market. For Car Washes? Isn't this an indicator that economy is fine, people are fine, since they can spend this type of money on car washes? How can something this worthless be booming, if people are struggling.
My local car was has a $20/month subscription for unlimited washes. These aren't exactly luxury services--they're priced similar to a Netflix plan. If you have a car, it's worth it if you value our time at all.
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Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?
#36In my city you're not allowed to wash your car in your driveway I guess it's too hard on the storm drains to have soap and dirt and stuff going down them Or maybe city council is just in some kind of racket with car wash owners or something But either way, that's why we have so many car washes here... And it sucks ass
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Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?
#37Because every year we're more so too lazy/busy for physical work. Not judging that, just observing.
Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
The show was written in eary 2000s - I seriously doubt many people pay cash anymore
But people don't have to pay cash, the "pretend people" pay cash.
I won't claim this isn't happening somewhere, but the newer automated car washes near me are card only. They don't accept cash at all.
Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?
#39[flagged]
Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?
#40I would have assumed its from the rise of gig workers using private cars. Uber/Lyft need to keep cars pretty clean to not be dinged stars, and even package and food delivery can create more mess which may require cleaning (but mostly taxi service I think). I skimmed the article and don’t see mention of that?
But if I can avoid buying a car because Uber, then number of washes goes down or is at least balanced.