Car Wash Business Economics: Throughput, Memberships & Cost per Wash

What you'll build

What you will be able to do

Each lab ends with a concrete result that you build yourself and the checker confirms, cell by cell.

• Work out how many cars the tunnel can wash per hour, measure Saturday's utilisation hour by hour and count the peak hours.
• Measure the package mix, the revenue per package and the average ticket, then test what a small upsell from Basic to Deluxe is worth.
• Build the variable cost of one wash from its drivers – gallons, kWh, chemicals, labour hours and card fees – and find the margin on a single wash.
• Calculate the club's monthly recurring revenue, what each member visit really earns, the monthly margin per member and the average member lifetime value.
• Compare three ways to run the same month – today, a club push and a club-heavy wash – on washes, revenue, contribution and the share of recurring revenue.
• Measure how much a rain day cuts volume from two weeks of data, turn it into a rain-day factor and forecast the cars of the next six months from the expected rain days.
• Turn a tunnel upgrade into yearly cash flows, follow the cumulative cash to see the payback year and judge the investment with NPV and IRR.
• Complete a six-month dashboard – total washes, total revenue and revenue per wash – and chart single washes against member visits.