New Deals: A car wash with part-time owner, 66-year-old window cleaning company, and 3 other finds...

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NEW DEALS

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📍 Location: Georgia
💰 Asking Price: $1,705,000
💼 EBITDA: $400,000
📊 Revenue: $1,350,000
📅 Established: n/a

💭 My 2 Cents: The reason you keep hearing about car washes is the recurring revenue. At the big operators, monthly plans now run about three quarters of wash sales, and when the consumer softened last year those members kept paying while pay-at-the-door revenue fell almost 12%. That is what people mean by recession resistant. This one runs a full-service wash in front, where the car comes back hand-dried, with an express lane behind it, on about an acre it owns. It sits on its own well, which covers nearly all the wash water (for context, water and sewer run $1,500 to $6,000 a month at a wash on city supply). The owner is down to a few hours a week on payroll and supplies, with two supervisors running the floor and average staff tenure past five years. That said, I'd want the member count and how many cancel in a normal month, since churn at the better operators runs around 5%. I'd also want to see revenue and payroll split by format, since full-service carries the labor and express carries the margin. And I'd pin down what share of the wash water the well actually supplies. Single-site washes change hands at roughly 4 to 5.5 times earnings, and owned land normally pushes one to the top of that range, so this one is priced at the bottom of it with an acre included.

📍 Location: Florida
💰 Asking Price: $3,500,000
💼 EBITDA: $1,009,356
📊 Revenue: $2,875,585
📅 Established: 2015

💭 My 2 Cents: Replacing a windshield used to be glass and adhesive. On a newer car the forward-facing camera sits behind that glass, so the job is not done until the camera is recalibrated, and that step adds $300 to $600 to a windshield that runs $200 to $600 on its own. In Florida, a driver with comprehensive coverage gets that windshield replaced with no deductible, because state law bars the insurer from charging one. This company offers mobile service alongside the shop, and sells add-on services beyond the glass itself. Six people cover office management, billing, receivables and customer intake, and the owners do not perform the technical work themselves. The first thing I’d look at is the revenue split between insurance-paid and cash-paid jobs, since the insurer's network sets one price and the shop sets the other. Then whether the recalibration is done in-house or sent out, since a shop that sends it out buys the calibration for $200 to $400 and bills $300 to $500, while one that owns the equipment keeps the whole ticket. Then the installer count, which is what decides how many jobs a day this can run. Glass is a trade where the work can be done in a driveway, so growth here costs a van and a hire rather than a building, and the ceiling sits in the hiring market.

📍 Location: Illinois
💰 Asking Price: $1,350,000
💼 EBITDA: $400,000
📊 Revenue: $2,500,000
📅 Established: N/A

💭 My 2 Cents: The profit in an independent grocery store is not spread evenly down the aisles. Packaged goods move volume at thin markups while meat, deli, bakery and produce carry most of the margin, which is why the strongest independents run about a third of their sales through those departments. This store sells grocery, meat, deli and fresh produce out of a stand-alone 8,000 square foot building that comes with the business, recently remodeled and re-equipped. It already earns from the lottery terminal, an ATM, a Bitcoin machine and the cigarette counter, all of which pay commissions the grocery aisles do not. The staff is staying on after a sale, and the seller is willing to finance 60% of the deal. The first thing to check is sales and margin by department, since a meat counter and a deli need staff and equipment a canned goods aisle does not. The second is shrink, meaning food that spoils or walks out before it sells, because the departments carrying the margin are the same ones throwing product away. The third is the share of sales paid with SNAP, since roughly 2 million households came off the program this year and EBT spending fell about $10 billion, so a heavy EBT share is exposure rather than a floor. What this store has never held is a liquor license, which in Illinois is what opens the door to video gaming terminals, where the average location grosses over $100,000 a year and keeps $30,000 to $40,000 of it.

📍 Location: New York
💰 Asking Price: $2,000,000
💼 EBITDA: $500,000
📊 Revenue: $1,000,000
📅 Established: 1960

💭 My 2 Cents: A window cleaning company can be started for a few hundred dollars and break even in its first week, which is why the four largest firms in the country hold under 5% of the market. What costs real money is the insurance. In New York a commercial account wants $1 million of liability coverage, and workers compensation on this work runs $12 to $25 per $100 of payroll depending on height. This one works a single New York territory with four part-time people and $10,000 of equipment: poles, squeegees, ladders and buckets. The owner is retiring, will carry $600,000 of the price at 6% over five years, and will stay to train. Four part-time people producing this much revenue probably means the crews are subcontracted, so I'd want the subcontractor agreements first: how many crews, what they are paid per job, and whose insurance certificate goes on the building. The loss history comes next, specifically the experience modification rate, since one serious fall can raise workers compensation by half for three years. Then the split between commercial and residential, and how much of each is recurring work on a schedule rather than a one-time call. New York's Scaffold Law holds a building owner liable when somebody falls regardless of fault, so buildings hire whoever their insurer will accept rather than whoever bids lowest, and a company working the same territory since 1960 sits on a very short list.

📍 Location: Massachusetts
💰 Asking Price: $2,100,000
💼 EBITDA: $773,302
📊 Revenue: $1,044,938
📅 Established: N/A

💭 My 2 Cents: A hotel is about as good a grounds customer as this trade gets. Guests check in at every hour, so the entrance has to look right and be safe at 3am the same as at noon. In Massachusetts that is not optional: since a 2010 ruling, a property owner can be liable for ice that accumulated naturally, where the old rule said nobody was. This company serves a contracted base of hotel properties on recurring monthly payments, roughly 60% landscaping and 40% snow. The snow contracts are seasonal and pay regardless of how much it snows, because a hotel is not buying shoveling, it is buying somebody already committed to its lot before the storm starts. The relationships came through referrals, and the sale includes $256,000 of equipment plus an experienced foreman and the crew. I'd start with the P&L, because the earnings and revenue here imply a 74% margin, and maintenance work in this trade runs gross margins in the 30s and 40s. I'd also want the snow side's cost in a heavy winter set against a mild one, since the revenue is fixed and the weather only shows up in the expenses. And I'd want the landscaping side split between recurring maintenance and one-off installation work. Landscaping normally lays crews off in November, and a company that can offer twelve months of work keeps people a seasonal competitor has to rehire every spring.