CLEANING UP: The Gas House Express Car
Wash has become one of the highest-volume
washes in St. Louis, according to director of
operations Lynn Coleman and owner Stu
Mandel.
A
The House That
Mandel Built
‘Colorful’ car-care pioneer shines
at mammoth St. Louis wash
By Bill Donahue
[email protected]
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sk Lynn Coleman what makes the
Gas House Express Car Wash such
an interesting place to work, and
she might start talking about goldfish.
“The police come in here a lot for
free coffee or popcorn,” says Coleman,
director of operations for the St. Louisbased car wash. “Every once in a while
they’ll come in and give us a goldfish
for the waterfall we have inside the
store. The fish don’t last very long, but
we appreciate them bringing us pets.”
Many notable stories spring from this
2-acre plot of concrete and blacktop, on
which sits a stunningly attractive car
wash, convenience store and 10-MPD
fuel island. The 170-foot-long conveyor
wash employs the best equipment
$450,000 can buy, and it has swabbed as
many as 1,700 cars in one day. The
attached 4,000-square-foot c-store is
always busy too, even though it does very
few tobacco sales, mostly by choice.
But the most compelling story surrounding this all-in-one site is about
the man responsible for all of the above:
its amiable owner, a guy named Stu
Mandel.
He’s the funniest man in the room,
as well as the smartest. He’s a gifted storyteller. He’s “the father of the conveyor
tunnel wash,” as one competitor calls
him. He’s the kind of rival any retailer
would want, even though he always
finds a new way to outfox the guy down
the street; the son of a Massachusetts
Institute of Technology student; heir to
a thriving car-care enterprise that has
yielded one of St. Louis’ most unique
and highest-volume washes; and, he
likes to say, an “uncommonly goodlooking” and “youngish” 65 years old.
GOING LONG: The Gas House wash tunnel’s conveyor measures
170 feet long, compared to the average conveyor’s 60 to 80 feet. Last
year the Riverfront Times named it the best car wash in St. Louis.
Becoming the Best
Mandel’s car-wash legacy dates back to
the era of the Great Depression. It was
then that his father, Morris “Mac”
Mandel, who had just graduated from
MIT with a degree in electrical engineering, befriended a man who ran a
parking lot. Mac ultimately bought the
lot and expanded it. That was the
beginning of what one day would
become a multiunit empire of car-care
sites with gasoline, convenience-store
and car-wash services.
Stu Mandel entered the family business in 1967. After he finished college,
he was drafted and served the Army
stateside. He joined the business fulltime in 1970, six years after the Gas
House Express location was built. (The
name Gas House Express, by the way,
is a nod to the 1934 St. Louis Cardinals
baseball team, which had the Gashouse
Gang as its nickname.) All but the one
location have since been sold or leased
to dealers; a second Gas House car
wash, a full-service location in Rock
Hill, Mo., is run by a dealer. But what
Mandel lacks in store count, he more
than makes up in volume.
While he couldn’t share exact numbers, Mandel did say his sole site cleans
“far in excess” of the 66,000 cars a year
washed by the average exterior location.
Customers line up for St. Louis’ best
car wash—an honor bestowed upon
Gas House Express last year by the
local Riverfront Times—and top off
their gas tanks at 20 fueling positions,
Monday through Saturday from 6 a.m.
to 8 p.m., and Sundays from 8 a.m. to
6 p.m. The flow of customer traffic is
steady, thanks to a growing cast of regulars, as well as newbies drawn to the
curious design and colorful marketing.
“On one hand you think he’s a goofball, but on the other you have a very
smart guy who runs a business that has
endured a lot of changes and a lot
of tough economic times,” says
Mark Thorsby, executive director
emeritus of the Chicago-based International Carwash Association, of
Mandel. “The way he treats his
employees is classic and admirable.
… They love him, and they would
walk through walls for him.”
Gas House Express’ success stems
from its high-profile location, which
used to house stables for police horses.
It’s situated on a central artery in a
commuter area 38 blocks from the
downtown area, not far from the St.
Louis University campus. Mandel estimates 70,000 cars pass the wash’s corner of Forest Park Avenue at
Vandeventer every 24 hours.
Location aside, customers flock to Gas
House Express primarily because of its
ability to clean the grime off their vehicles. Originally it was a full-service site
but has since done away with hand-prepping cars and moved toward automated
GREAT FORMULA: A prime location, unique
marketing and the guarantee of a sparkling
car have helped the site clean “far in excess”
of the 66,000 cars a year swabbed by an
average exterior wash, according to Mandel.
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prepping and cash acceptors; the site has
undergone at least two major upgrades
in the past 20 years. Because of its size—
the conveyor measures 170 feet long,
compared to the average conveyor’s 60
to 80 feet, according to Mandel—cars
tend to get twice the wash for the price
of one; Mandel offers three wash packages priced at $7, $10 and $14.
The conveyor’s length also enables the loosely because it’s touchless with a cousite to wash cars expertly and consistently, ple of mitters,” Stout says of Mandel’s
site. “It provides very good coverage on
even during its highest-peak times.
“You can speed up the conveyor and the presoaks, so it kind of washes the car
strengthen the soap, so the car gets a twice. When you have that long of a congood wash even though there might be veyor, you can do that. Whatever the first
less dwell time,” Mandel says. “You can [cycle] misses, the next gets.”
run 16 an hour or 100 an hour and still
get a clean car. And we have a satisfac- The Pacesetter
tion-guaranteed policy; we don’t ques- Thorsby of ICA calls St. Louis “a pretty
tion the rewash if the customer wants it.” good market,” due to its well-developed
After the car finishes the wash cycle, highway system, high number of cusit enters the drying stage, which features tomer counts and location “right on that
16 motors running a series of 15-horse- edge weather-wise, where you get decent
power dryers. Cars emerge spot-free winters and the summers get really good
because of the thorough drying car-washing weather.” It also has plenty
process—the longer conveyor also allows of car-wash, c-store and fuel-marketing
for more drip time—but also because competition, including a glut of indethey are treated during the rinse process pendents and high-profile chain operawith reverse-osmosis water,
meaning it has been ren“[Stu] has a philosophy of
dered free of minerals.
having fun and working hard.
Gary Stout, vehicle car
specialist for St. Paul, Minn.… He doesn’t want to get
based Ecolab Inc., represents
up and go do something
car-wash conveyor equiphe doesn’t want to do.”
ment from 3G Enterprises
Inc. of Fridley, Minn., which
manufactures the Flapan conveyor used tors such as QuikTrip Corp., Wallis Cos.
in Mandel’s wash. Stout, who ran the and Waterway Gas & Wash.
Auto Shine Car Wash in Cedar Rapids,
Not far from Mandel’s site is an
Iowa, before joining Ecolab, has known Amoco with a c-store and a rollover
Mandel for more than 20 years. He is also wash. There’s also a Phillips and a large
intimately familiar with Mandel’s car Shell-branded store down the street.
wash.
Most days, everyone follows Mandel’s
“It’s a hybrid, and I use that word lead on gasoline pricing. In early
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LOOKING IN: Gas House employees keep
a close eye on customers and their cars.
Here, Mandel and location manager
Jerome Abbott monitor the wash’s
performance through a viewing window
inside the c-store.
December, as prices began to increase
slightly, a competitor dropped his prices
first. Mandel says it was “unusual” that
he matched him because he prefers to
stay out of that kind of rat race.
“We’re the dominant marketer in the
area,” he says, no hint of arrogance in
his voice. “It makes us set the tone. They
follow. We used to be very aggressive
with price; that was my background, and
that was what you did. Now, with the fee
on credit cards, we aren’t.”
Mandel and Coleman, his operations director, often collaborate on
“wacky” ideas to nab additional traffic.
One recent brainstorming session happened two days before Election Day.
Mandel came up with the idea of giving away free washes to anyone wearing an “I Voted” sticker. Coleman
e-mailed contacts at area radio stations
and garnered some free publicity. It
worked. She says 75% of the washes
completed that day went to customers
wearing the sticker.
Mandel has hatched similar schemes
to reward existing customers and generate trial. For years he has run promotions such as any red car receiving
a free wash on Valentine’s Day and any
green car receiving a free wash on St.
Patrick’s Day. He’s always doing something different (see sidebar, p. 89).
“Stu is one of the most colorful individuals in the professional car-washing
industry,” says Thorsby, who has known
‘Nothing Normal’
t’s hard to walk into the c-store, or anywhere on the Gas House Express Car Wash site, without
noticing the penguins. In fact, owner Stu Mandel and his St. Louis-based car wash are
synonymous with the tuxedoed flightless bird, which has become a sort of unofficial mascot.
The penguin’s addition came as a bit of serendipity when Mandel was sending out a
marketing mailer a few years ago. He had seen a logo of a penguin with a slash through it—
the international symbol for “do not freeze”—on a drum of car-wash soap, and the proverbial
light bulb flicked on. The penguin is now a central part of
the Gas House Express brand, and it is everywhere,
including a prominent spot on the site’s road sign
(pictured).
Even though Mandel was never particularly fond of or
attached to the penguin, “I am now,” he says. Rarely does
a birthday or other special date pass when someone does
not buy him a penguin of some sort. “He’s our secret
backer,” he jokes.
The penguin, like Mandel and his car wash, is different
and memorable.
“There is no typical here,” says director of operations Lynn Coleman, who joined Gas House
Express in 1994 after working for Mandel as a third-party tax consultant. “I’m working with the
crew, and I’m checking out the cars, and I’m making sure the vendors are fine. Being behind
a register all day can be monotonous. So I may tell the crew, ‘I want someone in a penguin suit
out on the corner.’
“There’s nothing normal around here.”
I
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Mandel since 1994, when Mandel was
readying to take the reins as the association’s president. “I mean this respectfully, but he’s always been a half a
bubble off plumb, and that has given
him a slightly different take on things.”
One such different take: tobacco,
which has next to no presence in the
store, with the exception of some
“finer” cigars. “I don’t like cigarettes,”
Mandel says. “We price it very high. I
really don’t want to sell it. We’re not a
typical convenience-store marketer.
That’s our belief.”
Apart from not selling tobacco,
there’s nothing particularly new or different about the store, other than its
compelling design, which features open
ceilings, uncluttered aisles and a massive
window that gives customers an uncom-
promised view of the inner workings of
the car wash.
“There’s nothing as far as a category
that really sets us apart,” says Coleman.
“We really don’t have anything screaming, ‘Hey, we’re different.’ I think it’s
more about the atmosphere. We have
two cashiers at all times, ringing up customers. We have 12 TVs in here, and
that’s something we have done for a
long time. Nine or 10 years ago, that
was unheard of except in a sports bar.”
‘Never Met a Stranger’
Even though Mandel started it all, he
credits the people on his payroll for cultivating the culture he created.
“Here it is so nice to see somebody
who is concerned about quality and the
things you hear people talk about but
don’t back up,” Coleman says. “We do
background checks, police checks, drug
tests, honesty tests. You’d think they
were interviewing to be a bank teller.
“[Stu] has a philosophy of having
fun and working hard,” Coleman continues. “One of his things is that he
doesn’t want to get up and go do something he doesn’t want to do. He wants
his employees to feel the same way.”
Justin Alford and his father, Ben,
have been friends with Mandel “for a
long time,” and have shared ideas for
everything from promotions to queuing cars and equipment.
“Anybody who calls him, even his
competitors, he’ll show them around,”
says Alford, co-owner of Benny’s Car
Wash, a chain of five washes—soon to
be six—based in Baton Rouge, La.
DIFFERENT: An in-store waterfall is among
the many unique attributes of the c-store.
“That says a lot about his integrity. Stu
has never met a stranger.
“A lot of people manage off the bottom line; Stu manages off the heart, and
we do as well,” Alford continues. “And
when you look at his place, it’s run just
like his personality. … That’s his
approach: Let’s have fun and worry
■
about the rest later.”
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