Wilcomatic taps Tesco Clubcard to power car wash subscriptions

For nearly 60 years, Wilcomatic has been synonymous with automatic car washing in the UK. Now the company is using a subscription model, built with Liquid Barcodes platform technology to write its next chapter.

A legacy built on automatic washing

Wilcomatic was founded in 1967 and is widely credited as the first company to bring automatic car washing to the UK. The company supplies, maintains, and operates automatic car washes, jet washes, vacuum units, and air stations.

Wilcomatic is the UK’s sole provider of Otto Christ equipment, German-manufactured wash systems the company has supplied since 2000. Kevin Pay, director at Wilcomatic, said the relationship has grown into one of Otto Christ’s largest export partnerships anywhere in the world.

“We have a very strong relationship with them,” Pay said. “And I think it’s fair to say that we are the biggest export market outside of their own home country.”

Finding a new path to growth

The UK car wash market has weathered real disruption over the past two decades. Petrol stations have closed at scale as oil companies sell off sites, and a wave of unregulated hand car wash locations has created price competition that automatic operators struggle to match.

In response, Wilcomatic pioneered a revenue-share model in 2017, supplying, maintaining, and operating wash equipment at supermarket forecourts in exchange for a percentage of sales rather than an upfront purchase. The model started small and scaled quickly.

“We started with six locations,” Pay said. “That quickly grew to 90 locations and they were so pleased we ended up doing all 180.”

Wilcomatic now operates 450 car wash locations on a revenue-share basis across major UK grocers, and automatic car wash today accounts for roughly 60% of the company’s portfolio. With the equipment refresh complete, Pay began looking for the next source of growth and landed on subscription.

“What came next?” Pay said. “The [mobile] app was really the area that I perceived, and in particular subscription, as being that opportunity.”

Pay traveled to the Nordics to study mature app-based car wash subscription models before choosing a partner.

“It was Liquid Barcodes that caught my attention the most,” Pay said of the company’s sales and account team, noting they were “very informative and very attentive.”

Building the app around Tesco’s Clubcard

Wilcomatic launched its subscription pilot with Tesco, a retailer it had already equipped with contactless payment and Clubcard integration at the wash terminal. Pay wanted the new app to lean on that existing loyalty relationship rather than launch as a standalone product.

“I wanted to use the power of that Clubcard marketing vehicle because it’s huge what Tesco does with Clubcard,” Pay said. “I wanted to use the power of that to act as the foundation and the bedrock for how we launch the app and what we base the app on.”

Liquid Barcodes worked with Wilcomatic and Tesco to enable Clubcard points issuance through the new subscription program, which offers a large bundle of Tesco points on signup and additional points with every monthly renewal, roughly equivalent in value to a free month of subscription over the course of a year.

The rollout is being staged deliberately. Wilcomatic aims to reach 50 Tesco locations by the end of September, 100 by the end of the 2026 calendar year and all 180 sites in the Tesco estate by mid-2027. Pay said the pacing is tied to when Tesco will begin actively marketing the subscription through Clubcard channels.

“When we get to a certain point above half of the estate, they are prepared to send messages to anyone that buys fuel with a Clubcard,” Pay said. “For me, that’s going to be the engine really driving the success and growth beyond what we’ve done at the moment, which is a few posters at the forecourt promoting this program.”

Early results and a World Cup boost

Six months into the launch, the results have exceeded Pay’s expectations for customer satisfaction.

“If you look at the metrics, I will tell you that’s a world-class service, and I’m really proud of that. Within six months, we are now consistently achieving more than 70% NPS,” Pay said.

Churn sits around 15%, a figure Pay wants to bring down further, though the trend is moving in the right direction.

“That level of churn, or the inverse of that being renewal, is improving every month by one or two percentage points,” Pay said. “Our revenue is increasing every month by somewhere between 5% to 10%.”

Beyond growth, Pay pointed to subscription’s value in smoothing out a business that has historically swung with the weather.

“When it rains, car washing declines, and when it’s hot and sunny, car washing increases,” Pay said. “With subscription, we’re hoping to flatten that curve, because we’ll end up with consistent revenue every month that’s predictable and renewable.”

Wilcomatic and Liquid Barcodes have also used the app for timely promotions. During the World Cup, the two companies built a limited time offer around a ceramic polish add-on, discounted for as long as Scotland or England remained in the competition, with app branding cleared under FIFA’s guidelines.

“It was good and it was successful,” Pay said. “It was really collaborative the way Liquid Barcodes worked with us in order to achieve that.” The World Cup results weren’t as promising for either team, but it was all great fun, nonetheless.

What comes next

Pay sees subscription eventually reaching every forecourt in Wilcomatic’s revenue share estate, including two oil company customers the business recently added. From there, he envisions a broader role for Wilcomatic as a subscription enabler beyond its own network.

“Eventually I perceive us becoming almost a virtual car wash provider, and we can offer subscriptions to companies that aren’t affiliated with us via revenue sharing,” Pay said. “We can bring them customers, we can bring them business and marketing, and we can charge a small license fee to do that.”

Pay is also eyeing an expansion into fleet services, using the app’s data to give fleet managers visibility into wash activity.

“We can offer discounted, targeted, convenient washing for them that is traceable via a set of KPIs for fleet managers to see that their vehicles are being washed sustainably,” he said.

Underpinning all of it is the technical link between Wilcomatic’s Christ-manufactured wash hardware and the Liquid Barcodes app. Christ’s remote diagnostics platform, known as CIS, confirms a customer’s eligibility and instructs the wash to run, a connection Pay said Liquid Barcodes had to build from scratch.

A model built to last

For Wilcomatic, subscription is proving to be more than a new revenue line; it is a hedge against the volatility that has long defined the UK car wash business, a deeper hook into the retailers it already serves, and a foundation the company can eventually offer to forecourts well beyond its own estate. With Tesco’s rollout still scaling toward full coverage and interest already extending into fleet and oil company partnerships, Pay’s early read on the opportunity looks to be paying off.