Queues for car washes in the Anchorage area are longer than they need to be. From that observation, other questions arise. How many more car washes would satisfy demand? Where should those car washes be? What price should they charge?
“We have spent a lot of time and effort, even in the Lower 48, figuring out the best way to analyze markets,” says Tamara Davis, CFO of Wild Pines Ventures. The family-owned company brought the Tommy’s Express Car Wash franchise to Anchorage last year, adding a fourth state to its chain of six locations in Oklahoma, Kentucky, and her home state of Kansas.
The Lower 48 is seeing a boom in car washes, Davis says, more so than in Alaska. But it wasn’t the market opportunity that put Alaska on the family’s radar; it was love. Her daughter-in-law is Alaskan, so Davis has been spending more time in the state visiting relatives. That’s what alerted her to the expansion potential around 2018…