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Re:Why Are There Suddenly So Many Car Washes? by poulsbohemian on Monday March 18, 2024 @02:01AM (#39740834)
>The real business of car washes is real estate.

What I see in both car washes and the storage business suggested by one of the child posters is low-labor cash flow. I can't speak for all geographies, but locally what I observe is car washes are built on low-value land where these new heavily automated car washes have got to be a cash cow once they are paid off, especially with monthly subscriptions. I do unfortunately see a lot of storages built on what could be much higher value land, which does cause me to wonder what kind of financial engineering I'm not seeing on the surface.

Re:Why Are There Suddenly So Many Car Washes? by mikhailfranco on Tuesday March 19, 2024 @12:28PM (#39757449)
One pattern I have seen in the UK is temporary manual car washes operating in former gasoline stations.

Firstly, the location, visibility and site layout are obviously perfect.

Secondly, the old brown-field gas station has sludge-filled underground tanks that cost a lot to remove, and do a full environmental clean-up. There are long delays to wait for a deep-pocketed developer, or for the site value to rise. In the meantime, lease it out to a bunch of enterprising migrants (in UK, often E.Europeans).

Re:Why Are There Suddenly So Many Car Washes? by PaulHoule on Tuesday March 19, 2024 @07:34PM (#39761433)
There are stories about the UK being overrun with sketchy businesses like manual car washes and sweets shops

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/dec/26/more-than-90...

Re:Why Are There Suddenly So Many Car Washes? by pas on Tuesday March 19, 2024 @01:56PM (#39758489)
> much higher value land

getting a building permits for a car wash is much much much easier than for something higher value, and in absence of LVT ...