A Water Crisis Created This Car Wash Franchise

By Sean Goldsmith

Cape Town's water crisis pushed CleanMe to redesign the car wash. Using less than a cup of water per vehicle also helped create a more flexible franchise model.

CleanMe had spent years washing cars the traditional way when Cape Town's drought forced a rethink. The solution used less than a cup of water per wash — and helped create a business that could be taken into new markets through franchising.

CleanMe knew the car-wash business long before it became a franchise. The people behind the company say they had operated car washes at Cape Town's Century City and the V&A Waterfront for around 20 years before the city's water problems forced them to reconsider something fairly fundamental: how do you run a car wash when using large amounts of water no longer makes sense?

Their answer in 2016 was to change the way the business worked. CleanMe Eco Carwash and Cleaning was developed around a waterless system using the company's own eco-friendly cleaning products. Today, CleanMe says it uses less than one cup of water to clean a vehicle and can complete a wash in under 15 minutes.

The obvious benefit was saving water. The less obvious one was what removing all that water did to the business itself. A car wash with lighter infrastructure requirements can operate differently, and that eventually gave CleanMe something it could franchise.

The Drought Forced a Better Question

CleanMe's story is interesting because the company wasn't trying to invent a fashionable new business category. It was responding to a practical problem in a business its team already understood.

Cape Town's drought became increasingly serious during the second half of the 2010s, eventually leading to severe restrictions and the city's well-publicised preparations for “Day Zero”. CleanMe says its own decision came earlier, in 2016, when it responded to the developing water crisis by moving to a waterless model.

Instead of washing dirt away with large volumes of water, the company developed products and a cleaning process designed to remove it with minimal water use. That gave CleanMe an environmental selling point, but it also changed some of the practical requirements associated with operating a car wash.

For a business considering expansion, that matters. Every utility, piece of specialist infrastructure and property requirement adds another condition that has to be reproduced at the next location. Remove one of those dependencies and more sites can potentially become viable.

The Site Doesn't Have to Do All the Work

Traditional car washes are heavily influenced by property. The site has to accommodate the vehicles, equipment and water requirements of the operation, while attracting enough passing motorists to support the investment.

CleanMe says its franchise has minimal setup requirements and can operate from different types of locations. Its model has been used at shopping centres and commercial sites, while the company also provides fleet and vehicle-cleaning services.

That gives a franchisee more options. Rather than depending entirely on customers making a special trip to a conventional wash bay, the service can potentially be positioned where vehicles are already spending time.

There is still plenty for the operator to get right. A convenient location with poor demand is still a poor location, while labour, rent and pricing will ultimately determine whether an individual franchise makes money. The advantage is that the operating model gives the franchisee more ways to find the right combination.

Twenty Years of Experience Can Be Packaged

The value of franchising becomes clearer when you consider what a new operator doesn't have to do.

Someone starting an independent waterless car wash would need to choose products, test equipment, develop cleaning procedures, find suppliers, establish pricing and build a brand before discovering whether those decisions work in practice.

CleanMe has already spent years doing that work. Its franchise material says operators receive ongoing support, established trading methods, products and integrated systems covering areas including online bookings, database management, HR and cloud accounting.

That does not remove the responsibility from the franchisee. The local operator still has to win customers, manage people, control costs and build relationships in the market. What franchising can remove is the need to solve every operating problem for the first time.

For entrepreneurs entering a service business, that distinction can be significant. Their capital and attention can go into executing a tested model rather than developing the entire model while simultaneously trying to earn revenue.

A South African Problem Created an Exportable Idea

There is something distinctly South African about CleanMe's origin. Water scarcity presented the immediate problem, and an experienced local business changed the way it worked in response.

The result, however, is not limited to Cape Town. CleanMe now describes itself as fully franchised, advertises opportunities in South Africa and London, and has extended the same low-water thinking into other cleaning services.

That is where franchising can turn a local solution into something larger. CleanMe does not have to fund and manage every future operation itself. Local franchisees can put their own capital behind the business, bring knowledge of their market and concentrate on execution while using products, processes and support developed by the franchisor.

For the brand, that creates a route to growth without carrying the full capital cost of every new location. For the franchisee, it provides a way into business ownership without starting with a blank sheet of paper.

What We Can Learn From This

CleanMe shows that some businesses become easier to franchise after being forced to simplify the way they operate. Reducing its dependence on water gave the company lighter infrastructure requirements and more flexibility over where its franchisees can trade, while years of operating experience provided systems that new owners do not have to develop themselves. Franchising can now put local capital and local operators behind that model without CleanMe having to build every location itself. For other franchisors facing rising utility, property or labour costs, the useful question is whether the next stage of growth requires more resources — or a better way of operating with less.

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