Exterior view of Tommy’s Car Wash

PapillionBusinesses.com Interview with Jeremy Eickman  and Keagan Glazebrook  of Tommy’s Express Car Wash Papillion

Keagan Glazebrook  (left) and Jeremy Eickman (right)

Jeremy Eickman: My name is Jeremy Eickman, and I’m one of the owners here at the car wash.

Keagan Glazebrook: My name is Keagan Glazebrook. I am the general manager here at Tommy’s Express Papillion.

Jeremy Eickman: All right. So yeah, we’ve been in business here a little over two years. We opened in September of ’22. We grew pretty fast right out of the gate. This area was kind of an underserved area for the car washes, and obviously that’s kind of changed, and we touched on that a little bit ago with the fact that there’s a lot of car washes opening. There are continuing to be a lot of car washes opening. On average throughout the day in the summer, we wash around 700 cars a day, and in the winter we wash over 1000. So the industry being, quote, saturated, I would say isn’t really the case; there’s still a high demand for automated car washes. I think a lot of people really enjoy the convenience of an automated car wash, where they could be in and out in three to four minutes rather than spending an hour in their driveway or going to a park-and-spray-it-off car wash and spending a good 30 minutes and probably not getting the same kind of quality product that we put out here.

That’s what really differentiates us between even our competitors in the Express space is that we really focus on our detergent quality, the pH levels, all of the chemistry that goes into creating a good- quality wash because there’s different soaps that hit your car at different times. And we train all of our staff to understand the value of that and how to modify that, where we’ve actually employed a lot of those same folks that come from other car washes where that’s not even a topic of conversation. It’s just throughput: get them through, get them through. So our focus, I believe, is more on quality and less on just throughput. We slow our belt down to ensure that we have good-quality product. Even though we could increase it and put more cars through faster, we enjoy the quality aspect of what we do.

Thank you. I’ve got a very good car wash here.

Jeremy Eickman: There’s certainly a difference between the different brands in town and the way everybody approaches it. We also have an app that you can completely customize your entire experience here. You can sign up for all sorts of things. You get rewards back for referrals. I believe we’re the only one in town that has an actual app, not just a random website that you sign up on. So you can control your members, you can pause it, you can cancel it, you can sign up multiple vehicles. You can do everything from the app without having to worry about “Did my change actually take place? Because I called the store and I don’t know if that actually happened.” And so you’re in a lot more control with our business than maybe at other competitors.

Tell me a little bit about Tommy’s and where it started and why Papillion and this location was chosen.

Jeremy Eickman: Sure. So, Tommy’s, the brand in general, started in Holland, Michigan 20-some years ago. They were flying the flag Quality Car Wash brand, but they were creating their own equipment. And one of the owners of that business’s name was Tom, and so they called their equipment line Tommy’s Car Wash Systems. And then about in 2016 they decided to start franchising the model as an all-in-one package. So instead of most car washes buying their equipment from one supplier or building from another place and getting all their different pieces from many different suppliers, now with Tommy’s, it’s, like, a franchise where you get everything from one supplier, one-stop shop. So as an operation side of things, if you have problems or you need replacement equipment, you have one place to go to get it, which makes our operation went a lot smoother and quicker, less down time, less finger pointing when equipment doesn’t work and whose fault is it. And so that model really helps us grow, just like any franchises you see. from McDonald’s next door to us here to you know, other places, other restaurants or whatever it be, the franchise model really works well. So we can still be in local ownership. We are. We live here in the community; we are local owners. We just have a franchise brand that we use, but all of our employees are from here. We’re really strong in the community with fundraising. We employ about 20 people. We obviously supply quite a bit of tax revenue to the city as well, and we like to think that our facility stands out and is very nice and clean and aesthetically pleasing, not a dilapidated car wash that’s got trash all around it.

I’ve been through quite a few of the dilapidated ones.

Jeremy Eickman: Sure. And to rewind, I think that’s why our model works so well, because people they want better and they deserve better and sometimes…I’m not pointing fingers at any car washes specifically, but if you kind of let things go and maybe don’t change and modify your equipment and get better technology as something new comes out… and consumers want a better product. We can supply that, and maybe other car washes felt like they just didn’t need to modify and change with the times. And if you imagine if every industry just didn’t change, we would have a pretty archaic society today, you know? And so we’re really all about our technology improving the way that our car wash   can work efficiently and quality and all that.

What did you do before coming here?

Jeremy Eickman: Before this I was involved in franchising with Jimmy John’s. I worked for a franchise partner who had about 50 different restaurants in four different markets. We had Omaha here, as well as Florida and a few different markets. And so we were familiar with the way franchising works and that whole community of franchising. And then we were able to take that same kind of approach to running those restaurants and then…really just a different product, but same type of management structure and employee morale and all that. We focus on our culture to be really strong here, and it’s really worked. It’s really worked well here, and we’re growing more on the franchise. The Tommy’s Express brand in Omaha is kind of divided up between two different franchisees. We have the Sarpy County market and in Pottawattamie over in Council Bluffs. And then the other group has the northern part of Omaha. So we work together and that way our pricing is the same and our operation hours and a lot of that is the same. Obviously our product that we’re putting out is the same, but there are separate owners. So we’re growing here. We’ve got two more locations that we’re going to open in this area, one in Bellevue and one over on 204^th and Q, and then we’ve got two opening up in Council Bluffs in the next couple of years. One actually opens up in November.

Where is that one?

Jeremy Eickman: Menards built a new location on built on Madison Ave. So over by the new HyVee… the old Mall of the Bluffs, I should say. If you know where the Mall of the Bluffs is, that whole area got redeveloped by Menards. There’s a new HyVee there, and we’re right next to. Menards as well. So that’s our next location that’ll open, and then we open up at 204th and Q sometime around the January, February time frame. And then Bellevue will open up on 31st and 370 probably in June.

You’ve been in franchising for a long time. What do you consider the advantages of owning and operating a franchise? And any advice for people thinking about it?

Jeremy Eickman: Two really important things come through franchising… is brand recognition, because typically unless you’re in the early days, which we did get in on Tommy’s in the very early days when n obody knew the brand. In 2018 is when I got started with Tommy’s and I was in Florida doing some there before we opened this one. And so when you…but usually you have an established brand. Jimmy John’s is a great example of this, where that brand was already pretty popular. You know, Chick-fil-A is a great example of cult-following brands—people who all go crazy when one of those comes down. And so you get the benefit of the brand recognition before you open, typically.

And then secondly, you have the support behind you. So if you’re running a Tommy’s, for example, we know that we have our corporate partner who can supply us the products that we need. They can negotiate things so we can get a better deal on it, whether it be a product or we are always doing test research to come up with better products, better throughput, whatever we can do to make the experience better. We don’t have to invest all that ourselves. They do that. Now, we do pay a percentage of our revenue for that. But as a one- or two-store operator, you would never be able to afford a research and development department to that size, and so you get an economy of scale without having to put all of your own money into that. Well, that’s a major benefit.

There’s other intangibles, too. When it comes to that, people want to work for a brand they recognize. So by default, employees may feel a bit more comfortable about working for Tommy’s Express than Jack’s Back Street Car Wash. I’m not discounting that at all, but we are still local owners.

Jeremy Eickman: Sure. Thank you for that. Yeah, but the brand really does hold true. It helps the consumer feel comfortable and confident about that they’re going to get a good product and we’re going to stand behind it, and the employees feel really good to think about working for a brand that they are proud work for.

Keagan, could you tell us a little bit about how you came to Tommy’s and anything else you’d like to add coming up.

Keagan Glazebrook: I came to Tommy’s when this store was being built. I tried to walk on site and there were fences around it and I got denied. Then applications came out and I applied, came in and met Jeremy, and we had a good interview, and we ended up working together, and here we are today two years later.

Jeremy Eickman: Keagan worked himself up from a basically a team member of the car wash to the general manager within a year, and that’s extremely fast growth. He’s a very, very strong individual. We’re very happy to have him.

Keagan Glazebrook: Yeah, working for Tommy’s I’d say is very pleasing. I have a big support group behind myself within the franchise partners and the brand. It’s very family orientated. Anything that I’ve ever asked or needed is proposed right then and there for me, and I have nothing but good things to say.