Take 5 Oil Change offers speedy oil changes that allow customers to stay inside their cars.
Winner: Take 5 Oil Change
Finalists: Jiffy Lube and Valvoline Instant Oil Change
Take 5 Oil Change franchisee Vik Patel is no stranger to franchising, and part of the appeal when he added the brand to his company’s portfolio in 2020 was its “less-complicated” model.
“One of the reasons that we’re growing aggressively with Take 5 is we’ve been pleased with not only the financial performance, but the support we’ve got from the franchisor and also the facilities, the operations,” Patel said.
Patel’s Purple Square Management is a franchisee of Dunkin’, Baskin-Robbins, The Brass Tap, Rent-A-Center, Popeyes, Take 5, American Family Care, RimTyme and Smalls Sliders. It has 25 Take 5 locations, a number Patel anticipates doubling by the end of 2024.
Take 5 Oil Change beat out Jiffy Lube and Valvoline Instant Oil Change in the Road Warriors category. Take 5 offers oil changes that allow customers to stay in their car, and it advertises a 10-minute service. Founded in 1984, Take 5 is part of the Driven Brands portfolio, which also includes Carstar, Fix Auto USA and Maaco, among others. Driven, in turn, is owned by private equity firm Roark Capital.
Purple Square was only in food and beverage brands until it diversified with Rent-A-Center and Take 5. After adding those two brands, Patel said he wanted to continue growing in the quick-service restaurant sector and wanted to dive into some other categories. Take 5 was appealing from the start. “The unit economics are favorable, the ease of operations—that appealed to us,” Patel said. In the QSR space or coffee space, there are a lot of competitors, he said. But the oil change category is a lot smaller, with less competition by comparison, Patel said.
Jay Taylor owns 14 Take 5 locations with partner Harry Clayton in North and South Carolina.
Purple Square has stores open or under construction, as of late January, in Pennsylvania, Florida, New York and Puerto Rico. “They’ve been great partners for us, obviously evidenced by the fact that we’re now buying new markets, growing in those markets, which speaks to not only our happiness with the brand,” Patel said, “but hopefully their happiness with us as a franchisee and their willingness to want to grow with us.”
The investment required to open a new Take 5 franchise ranges from $759,294 to $1.6 million. The cost for a converted store ranges from $222,794 to $760,685. The company finished 2022 with 807 locations, a 139-unit increase over the previous year.
In 2023, Take 5 opened its 1,000th store, which happened to be one of Purple Square’s. As the brand has grown, Patel has seen Take 5 offer more data and key performance indicators to ultimately help franchisees evaluate operations and understand what success looks like. “I think it’s a very analytics-driven company,” he said.
Take 5’s franchise disclosure document includes a thorough Item 19, where it lists gross sales, fixed and variable expenses and four-wall EBITDA, or cash flow, separated by the bottom and top 50 percent, plus median and average. Average EBITDA among 215 Take 5 franchised stores in 2022 was $368,081. Gross sales on average were $1.36 million, with an overall range of $368,999 to $3.3 million.
The oil change franchisor also lists the number of cars per day and annual revenue over a three-year general period for franchisees, and for the 2022 fiscal year.
Patel sees the company growing and changing to fit vehicle trends. “Everyone knows that electric vehicles are going to come at some point. That’s not surprising or a secret,” he said. “We’re investing money now in a business that’s still going to be around 10, 15, 20 years from now, knowing full well that maybe 20 years from now it’s no longer an oil change business. Maybe it’s something else.”
Vik Patel, far right, is CEO of Purple Square Management, a portfolio company that owns Take 5 Oil Change locations and is an operator of several quick-service restaurant franchises.
Jay Taylor and Harry Clayton own 14 locations in North and South Carolina, the first of which opened in 2018. The pair also own a construction business, and they built Take 5 locations before considering the concept as franchisees. “We were familiar with the brand from building several of them. We decided to make that part of our portfolio,” Taylor said.
Prior to Take 5, Taylor and Clayton didn’t have experience in franchising, but the Take 5 corporate team made the process easier for them. “Anytime we’ve ever needed anything, operations-wise, they’re a phone call away,” Taylor said. “They’re always jumping in to help us, whatever we need. … It’s been a good experience.”
Take 5 has a marketing fund contribution that equals 5 percent of gross sales. Taylor said he wished there was “a little more clarity as for marketing, where those marketing dollars are being spent. We pay a lot in marketing and it’s pretty vague as far as what they’re doing.”
The pair aren’t in their locations most of the time, as they live about three hours from the nearest unit in their portfolio. Taylor hired a manager who is on site more frequently to ensure they’re operating well. “I think him being present in the shop is what makes us do well,” Taylor said. “Our team and the people that we have are the main reason for our success. They’re paramount to our success.”
Franchise Times
Emilee Wentland
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