When I first starting working for what I consider a "renowned" local commercial real estate developer, I would come back to him with what I thought were good locations for a few banks and pharmacies that he represented. They would have good traffic counts, sometimes corner locations, and sometimes even had a high density of homes nearby. When we would start discussing the properties that I thought were good, he would ask me what is nearby? Are there any banks, pharmacies, fast food, or any other "shopping" district attributes, initially my answer would always be "no, but it has many other great attributes"! He would reply, "we really do not want to be the ones who create the shopping district, we just want to be in a good location where a shopping district already exists". With this said, I quickly learned that if a prospective location is not where people shop, eat, bank, or run other errands, then it is too risky. Now, I only look at locations that have 4 to 5 franchise stores nearby creating some type of "shopping district". If you are considering locations that aren't in one of these areas I would give you the big thumbs down on the location. I know that in some rare instances, there are very successful retail businesses in remote areas, but this is the exception to rule and is a very risky play. Always find a location (even in a rural area) that has some type of shopping district. Having other retail nearby including shopping centers is up there among the most important factors to consider when evaluating a proposed location. A modern, up-to-date strip center nearby will also be more advantageous than an older shopping center. A nearby shopping center will drive business to your car wash.

Neighborhood Play vs. Regional Play

Now that you know how important a shopping district is to your business let me discuss some other factors about shopping districts. Some shopping districts are what I call "Neighborhood Plays" and others I refer to as "Regional Plays". The best way to describe this is by describing two communities that are nearby in the east suburbs of Pittsburgh (one that I eventually built my wash in). The "neighborhood" shopping district has the following attributes, a traffic count of 14,000 cars a day, a rather large supermarket chain, a McDonald's, a Pizza Huts, a local restaurant, a national pharmacy, a large Pittsburgh bank branch, a Dollar General, a Subway, a Exxon gas station (with car wash), a Kinder Care and a few other local family owned businesses. The "regional" shopping district that is also nearby, has a four lane highway with a traffic count of 35,000 cars a day, a large regional mall, a Lowes, a Home Depot, a Target, a Sam's Club, four large shopping centers, many car dealerships, and pretty much every franchise, bank, pharmacy you can think of. Now, you might automatically think that the regional play is always going to provide a better location and in many cases this is true, but with land cost factors, ease of entry and exit, and a few other factors can sometimes make the regional play less attractive in some instances. A self-serve car wash on a $1,000,000 + piece of land in a regional shopping district is not a "best use" when it comes to commercial real estate development in my estimation. You might wash a bunch of cars but the revenues could probably not support the expense of the land. As mentioned, there are exceptions to any rule but "rolling the dice" on one of these high priced locations would be too risky for me.

Traffic Count

Traffic count on your prospective site is usually one of the major factors for deciding on a good retail location. How can you determine what constitutes a good traffic count though? Is there a magic formula for what amount of traffic will allow you to be successful in the car wash business? Really, there is not a minimum traffic count that will determine your overall success. However, traffic count along with other location factors will be a major factor in your overall success. A good indication of how traffic effects the overall success of location is shown by how many franchise operations will determine where or where they will not allow their retail stores to be located. If you research the real estate requirements of many of these retail operations a specific traffic count minimum will be disclosed. While I was working with a leading a local commercial real estate developer, I learned very quickly that traffic count was always a high priority on every retailers list for obvious reasons. When you contact the real estate department of any major retailer, and send them a prospectus on a location, the traffic count is always prominently displayed up front and personal. In my experience, the minimum benchmark was usually around 20,000 average vehicle count daily traffic before they would consider a location. This does not mean that lower traffic counts will not work. You should however have strong reasons to locate on a road that the traffic count is lower than 20,000 though. Also, keep in mind that traffic count is only one factor in traffic equation. You also need to evaluate speed limits, turning lanes, nearby traffic signals, ease of ingress and egress, etc. We will talk about all of these factors in more depth later in this section. I would rank traffic count as one of the most important factors to choosing a good location. My location currently has an approximate 14,000 traffic count which in many retailers considerations would be a light traffic count. But there are other reasons that still make it perform well that I felt compensated for the light traffic count including being in a good shopping district, a high density of population nearby, little to no competition, good ingress and egress, and a few other factors. However, my location would probably perform much better if it had the 20K+ traffic count. (As a side note, a Walmart is being built about a quarter of a mile away, and this should increase traffic to almost 20k!)