The rise of washing bays as social daytime hangouts

When you wake up at 2pm, on the eighth day of your annual leave, having finished all the errands for the day and you are bored, witless of your indoor surroundings, what do you do?
You will probably end up at a car wash.
Because we all know that the car wash is the best daytime hangout spot depending on what extras come with it.
Many entrepreneurs have figured out the economic potential of the car wash beyond washing cars and acted accordingly, turning them into the perfect daytime hangout spots. Back in the day, a car wash used to be an open plot, often muddy, where young men washed cars for a day’s wage.
Later, smart entrepreneurs built small sheds where customers could sit as they waited for their cars. Another smart person brought a small fridge and packed it with beverages and stationed it in the small shade.
The keen observer could tell that some customers were willing to stay, drink a beer or two and make new friends, if they were given a nudge.
And that is how a daytime hangout spot was born. Today, many extras have been added onto cash spots and if you look closely in your neighbourhood, you will see crowds building in those spots.
Pork
First of all, Ugandans tend to favour pork as a hangout snack more than any other meat. Pork always does well in hangout places and the right pork guy will turn any car wash into a huge daytime hangout spot.
The right pork guy will attract people to the car wash and the more people come to the car wash, the more customers the pork guy gets. It is a perfect symbiotic relationship.
Because of this phenomenon, the first thing that smart car wash operators often build after a shed for customers is a pork joint. But the smarter car wash operator will not hire someone to run the pork business for him.
He or she will look for a partnership with an established pork guy, who understands meat and knows the traditions that surround a man’s meat. The man (they are always men somehow) has to have proved himself to the world that they do not steal a few chops off every serving.
That is the number one qualifier for a good pork guy. Every other virtue does not matter much. Just don’t eat my pork. Once you partner with right pork guy, your washing bay will make you more money than you can imagine.
Sauna
There is a car wash operator in Zana on Entebbe road, who decided to build a sauna in one corner of the large plot. He had run the washing bay for years, with very little success, but after he built the sauna and the steam bath during the lockdown, he effectively turned his place into a perfect daytime hangout and smiled to the bank.
Prior to the building of the sauna, the place was always deserted. After the sauna was built, the place became perpetually full of patrons. The sauna came at the right time when everyone was locked down and they had little else to do. But he nonetheless, set the ball rolling and the place has remained a big daytime hangout spot.
Different stews
When you wake up at 10am on Sunday morning having outdone yourself at your cousin’s wedding the previous night, the thing your inner being often wants is some hot soup to jumpstart your engine. Smart car wash operators know this and they got you covered.
The last time you had a hangover the day after your office Christmas party, you sloped there, gulped a bowl of chicken soup and this (local chicken) and breathed better. The smart car wash operator does not just serve chicken stew. They also serve goat stew or lamb stew, which is also called goat stew.
If you do not believe this, try and find a lamb butchery. I digress. These stews are beloved by local drunkards and they bring people together. And once you bring many people on a Saturday or Sunday morning, you are probably guaranteed customers for the whole day.
Mini pub
This comes last because it is the most obvious. Any car wash operator knows that bored men will grab a beer to kill time as they wait for their car to be finished. Once two or three strangers sit down with a beer each, chances are they will talk, until evening. Men are simple creatures.
They will start on a small talk about football and end up becoming bona fide buddies that may decide to always meet here every Saturday at 11:30 am.
Throw in a TV screen with European football and you are minting money like the US Treasury. This is why the car wash is the perfect daytime hangout.