Fast-growing car wash chain chooses fast-growing Polk city for expansion

AquaShine Express has opened its first newly-built car wash in Winter Haven, expanding the company’s footprint across the Southeast.

The location on Eloise Loop Road celebrated its grand opening earlier this month and is AquaShine’s 11th car wash across Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, according to Charlotte-based QC Capital Group, the private investment firm that owns and operates the chain.

Unlike AquaShine’s other locations, which were all buildings acquired and renovated, the Winter Haven car wash was built from the ground up. The project allowed the company to select the property and design its building around its shorter express-wash tunnel, according to a release.

“Every location we operated before this one, we bought and then made better,” QC Capital founder and CEO Chris Salerno says in the release. “Winter Haven is the first one that is ours from the dirt up.”

The company has not disclosed how much it invested in the project.

In addition to its newly opened car wash, AquaShine is already building a second Winter Haven location expected to open this winter. 

The commitment to building its brand in Polk County was driven by the region’s rapid population growth, Salerno says in the release. The Lakeland-Winter Haven metropolitan area’s population increased by more than 34% from 2014 to 2024, the company says in its release. Recent U.S. Census Bureau estimates ranked the area fourth nationally for percentage growth among metropolitan areas, with more than 23,000 residents added in one year.

“You cannot underwrite your way into a market after everyone has noticed it,” Salerno says in the release. “We would rather be the car wash a family joins in their first month in town than the one trying to win them back five years later.”

The new Winter Haven location offers an express wash tunnel, free vacuums, towels and glass cleaner for windows. Unlimited car wash memberships start at $22 a month without a contract, the company says. AquaShine also offers family memberships, fleet programs and fundraising partnerships with local organizations.

Salerno says the decision to build two locations in the same market is intended to make memberships more convenient and increase AquaShine’s visibility.

“Two tunnels in one growing market means a member is never far from a wash,” he says. “Winter Haven is not a site for us. It is a market.”

Founded in 2018, QC Capital invests in car-care businesses, industrial and commercial real estate, health care and other ventures. Its AquaShine division initially expanded by buying existing car washes and oil-change properties, then renovating and rebranding them.

The firm launched its third car-wash investment fund in January to finance a pipeline weighted toward new development. That pipeline includes the second Winter Haven location, a property purchased in Alpharetta, Georgia, in July and two other sites under contract, the release says.