Elements of a Car Wash Business Plan
As a pit cleaning service that services the entire East Coast, we’re proud to operate with so many car wash owners. It takes grit and gall to fight for your space off a highway or byway to call your own. Small business ownership can be one of the most empowering occupations you could choose for yourself.
But let’s be real, it can also be one of the scariest. Most car wash owners we know scoff at the idea of calling owning a car wash “passive income.” Once the snowball starts rolling, your car wash business could have you working longer hours than any 9-5 desk job. Although it’s much more rewarding to be in business for yourself, the stress that comes with shouldering the weight of an entire company should not be engaged with lightly.
That’s where a car wash business plan can come in. Many companies and startups don’t break ground without it but they can be valuable even if you haven’t done one before for your already established car wash. A business plan, like any plan of action, works like a road map. It tells you where you are and determines the direction that your business will need to be going over the next 3-5 years for optimal success.
In this tutorial, we’ll walk through a step-by-step guide to brainstorming a business plan for your car wash. If you answer the questions that we include in this tutorial, you’ll have the basic information that you can then use to write your car wash business plan.
It should be noted, however, that Pit Crew is a car wash waste removal company and not a car wash business consulting company. Our helpful tips are not intended to be your only source for advice. For additional resources, jump down to the end of this article.
How Long Should Your Business Plan Be?
For the full story on what your business will be up to, the traditional business plan format goes into as much detail as you can realistically convey about your business… short of consulting a crystal ball of course. For this type of business plan, you should plan to invest a lot of your time in writing out dozens of pages with detailed research or information that you wouldn’t necessarily pull off the top of your head.
As a shorter alternative, you can use the lean startup plan or the Business Model Canvas. All formats take the same points from the traditional business plan format but they summarize them into only a handful of pages.
Without understanding this longer format business plan, however, it is much harder to grasp what a shorter and more direct business plan format is leaving out. A long-in-the-tooth business plan might take much longer than you would otherwise want it to but the payoff can be worth it both for peace of mind for you and for your financial backers. That’s why you should consider going longer if you can. Even if you have to trim the final result, starting with a longer business plan can be an opportunity for your best, most in-depth analysis of your car wash business venture.
Writing an Executive Summary
The executive summary for your car wash business plan should be a summary description of what the entirety of the business plan will talk about. If it is easier for you to start big picture and work down into the nitty gritties, start here. Otherwise, it may be wise to write the other portions of your business plan and come back to the summary when you have a better overview of the whole plan.
The Body of Your Car Wash Business Plan
Here’s a sample list of questions you can ask yourself and/or your business partner in preparation for writing the body of your business plan:
- What/will you do? (i.e. wash cars)
- How/will you do it? (tunnel wash, IBA, conveyor, touchless)
- Where is your car wash site?
- Who will be visiting your car wash? (mostly fancy pants corvette owners or mostly rusted sedans driven by broke college kids)
- Who is the owner of your car wash?
- Who are the other members of the leadership team?
- What company and personal beliefs motivate your car wash business?
- What are some unique attributes of your company?
- What are your company values?
- What is your mission statement?
- What is the legal structure of your business? (C or S corporation, LLC or sole proprietorship, general or limited partnership)
- Which of these unique attributes will make your car wash successful?
- Broadly speaking, what does success look like for your car wash?
- How will you connect your company’s unique advantages to your path to success?
- What are your financial projections? (see our article on calculating expected cash flow)
- Do you require funding and, if so, how much and what will it be used for?
Because you will be using this information to summarize your car wash business, it is okay if you uncover an excess of information from these questions.
What to Do With This Information
We hope that your answers to the above questions prime the pump for writing your business plan. The next step is to sort your information into the sections. If you’ve allowed yourself the chance to ruminate on everything you write down, you might see patterns that force you to sort your business plan accordingly. Otherwise you can use the sections of either the traditional business plan to guide your business plan’s outline.
Sections in a Traditional Business Plan
- Executive summary
- Company description
- Market analysis
- Organization and management
- Service or product line
- Marketing and sales
- Funding request
- Financial projections
- Appendix
Additional Information
Pit Crew hopes you find this tutorial helpful in writing out your car wash business plan. When you plan to become a business owner to a car wash, it is important to consider these steps to help guide you in building a successful company. If you have these questions answered, congratulations because you’re one step closer to becoming a car wash owner!
Sources:
https://www.sba.gov/business-guide/plan-your-business/write-your-business-plan
