Las Vegas car wash chain plans to more than double its valley locations
One Las Vegas car wash company plans to double its operations over the next two years to maximize its presence for the area’s growing population.
The WOW Carwash chain has 11 locations open in Las Vegas. Its newest opened in early October at the intersection of South Pecos Road and East Desert Inn Road, and the company plans to expand to have 25 to 30 locations open by the end of 2025, said Scott Wainwright, co-founder of WOW Carwash.
“We just decided to go all in,” he said.
The company has selected 11 sites for new locations — listed on the WOW Carwash website — that are set to open in the near future, Wainwright said, with more sites being evaluated. The new car washes will be located across the Las Vegas Valley from the northern edge of North Las Vegas to the southern edge of Henderson.
“The main thing is proximity to rooftops. We want to make it convenient for people to get their car washed,” Wainwright said.
WOW Carwash uses several factors when looking for property to build new locations, including access to major roadways, proximity to residential areas and surveying current customers on where they want to see new locations, Wainwright said. He also said this growth is “demand-driven” based on the population of the area.
Wainwright and business partner Todd Bender started WOW Carwash in 2015, with the first in Las Vegas opening in 2017. Both Wainwright and Bender have a background in real estate development in Southern California, and they noticed a high demand there for express car washes. These types of car washes have longer tunnels and quicker operations than car washes at gas stations. They picked Las Vegas for its main market to operate in because of its expanding population and its lack of express car washes at the time, Wainwright said.
WOW Carwash’s potential expansion to 30 locations could create over 200 jobs in the valley as each typically has 12 employees, he said.
One of the main challenges for the planned growth has been the land acquisition and supply chain costs to build new locations, Wainwright said. He estimates these costs have tripled in the past six years from when the first WOW Carwash location opened.
The demand from customers as well as capital investments that started in 2021 from Garnett Station Partners, a New York-based investment firm, helped fuel WOW Carwash’s expansion and rising business costs. Wainwright declined to disclose the financial terms of the investment in his company but said that there is a good culture fit between the two organizations and the investment firm will continue to be involved with WOW Carwash’s future expansion.
The “core focus” of WOW Carwash is to expand its Las Vegas operations and serve its existing customers, Wainwright said. But he added the company is considering expanding into another unnamed market in the Southwest in the near future.
Contact Sean Hemmersmeier at shemmersmeier@reviewjournal.com. Follow @seanhemmers34 on X.
