Is fasting good for you?
These guys will find out.
Curt Ensign, Tom Utman, and Steve Clark co-own Fast5Xpress Holding Co. LLC in Newport Beach, which owns and operates 10 newfangled auto-magical drive-thru car washes—several borne of repurposed full-service operations struck by labor costs and slain by technology.
Likely we’ve driven through one ourselves—in Irvine at Harvard Avenue and Main Street perhaps—checking messages or noshing lunch as 120 to 150 feet of tunnel-of-love TLC conveys our rancid jalopies through a wash-wax-rinse-buff treatment to come out roses at the other end.
Ensign heads operations, Utman shepherds land and entitlements, and Clark Investment Group in Wichita is the money.
Fourth musketeer Warren Fix is a CIG investor and its point man on the venture.
Fast 4 Guys
Fix joined Irvine Co. in 1964 as controller and spent a quarter-century there, rising to chief financial officer and serving on its executive committee. He’s a partner at Peter Ueberroth’s Contrarian Group, invested in a predecessor company to First Foundation Inc., where he’s a board member, and was previously a board member at CT Realty.
Clark was an Air Force fighter pilot, co-founded one of the earliest and largest Godfather’s Pizza franchise groups, and focuses now on real estate development and investment—about 7 million square feet of office, retail, hospitality and self-storage property, the last comprising 70-plus locations with 40,000 units.
Ensign ran divisions for Ryland and UDC Homes and “built a couple thousand homes” as head of then-Newport Center-based New West Homes in the early 2000s.
Utman built Southern California projects for clients that included Costco and Whirlpool Corp.
The latter duo became acquainted over rounds at Shady Canyon Golf Club in Irvine.
Washing OC
“Curtis is a longtime friend,” Utman said, and as he began to go at a burgeoning segment of car care called “express car washes” in 2011, Ensign came aboard.
“I was looking for something more to do,” Ensign said.
Clark agreed to invest, and Fix rides herd on finances. Fast5 was founded in 2012.
“Automated washes [existed] but … beat the heck out of the cars,” Ensign said.
Full-service centers—hand-washes, comfy chairs, espresso machines—hit the top end in response.
Then technology improved, labor costs spiked, and a niche was born.
“We hit the market at the right time,” Utman said.
The time crunch is a factor—people get their espresso to go—and facilities now use lasers to measure cars and adjust cycles midwash. Rising wages priced the high-end higher; gas station offerings look like kiosks next to a Fast5, at a third of the length.
In Fast5 tunnels, “There’s so much more we can do,” Ensign said.
Waxing Nostalgic
The classic-to-the-point-of-cliché account of Fast5’s founding—“we noticed this-and-this-and-this and integrated them to create a category”—is playing out and paying off.
The first Fast5 opened in 2013: the Irvine site a bankrupt full-service operator. Fullerton came last year; Costa Mesa, an ex-Beacon Bay full-service joint, is the third in OC. Others are in Riverside and Los Angeles counties; No. 10 Pasadena opened in November on Colorado Boulevard.
The next will come in a Walmart parking lot in Torrance, with No. 12 maybe in Beaumont. Another 10 are at the lease-signing or letter-of-intent stages.
Market rates for 30-year leases with options run $15,000 to $20,000 a month for about an acre near “quality retail with lots of traffic—at least 30,000 cars a day,” Ensign said.
Sites serve 200,000 cars a year with an $8 average ticket. Locations need a dozen workers—a manager and two to three others per shift—and are open 12 to 13 hours a day.
“Once it gets dark, people don’t want their car washed,” Ensign explained.
Rinse and Repeat
Opportunities attract competitors.
Ensign said Northern California operator Quick Quack in Roseville—40 locations in five states—could enter OC. National City-based Soapy Joe’s has put 10 locations in San Diego.
Crisscrossing the county by car finds some chains already here—San Pedro-based WildWater Express has three in OC; San Dimas-based Zaroo Express has two—along with one-offs.
Other California-based chains include BlueWave Express in San Rafael, Prime Shine in Modesto, and Surf Thru Express in Bakersfield.
Professional Carwashing & Detailing’s 2017 Top 50 list of express wash chains had about 1,400 locations spread across 50 companies; the No. 1 chain had almost 20% of the total, and the 10 largest had more than half. The bottom half of the list has several groups of companies tied at nine to 14 sites apiece and ends with No. 26, Fast5Express, tied with four others, including L.A.-based Waterdrops Express.
Buffing Up
The niche is young, fragmented, and not as easy as it looks.
“It takes 18 to 24 months to open from the day you find a spot,” Ensign said.
And while a car wash starts at six bucks for drivers, front-loading labor expense onto machines is $1 million upfront, part of a $4 million all-in investment per site.
“This takes a lot more time, a lot more money” than many people expect, Utman said. “Two years is a long time.”
Franchising? Nope.
“Not interested,” Ensign said. “We’re [after] a quality of life.”
No sale, either.
“We’re building a company,” Utman said. “We’re having fun.”
Drive Time
So … how often should we wash our cars?
Here’s where fasting gets complicated.
Is washing the car something one gives up, or adds, every day for Lent?
Thrice-weekly through the end of January, then not again until swimsuit season?
Once a year after returning from the business-and-life vision quest retreat?
Back in the day, Blue Diamond Almond growers implored, “a can a day, that’s all we ask.”
So imagine a 150-foot tunnel, machines a’roaring, and four guys calling out above the din, “A wash a week, that’s all we ask.”
