During the holiday, I spent a night at Muyunshe, a hot-spring retreat opened by a friend in Qijia Town, Longhua County.
Compared with the livelier hot-spring resorts along the roadside in Qijia, I actually prefer this place.
The property covers several thousand square meters, with gardens, vegetable plots, tents, hot springs, barbecue areas, and even a basketball court. Everything is spread out naturally, with plenty of space to slow down.
I stayed for one night and headed home the next day.
On the way back, I passed Kuanguang Supermarket’s Lishui store and stopped to wash the car.
That was when I noticed that the benefits for Gold Members had been upgraded again: the member car-wash area now has a second bay.
That means much less waiting.
While waiting, my family and I did a quick calculation.
The Gold Membership costs 188 yuan a year, with 30 yuan returned, so the effective cost is 158 yuan.
Members can use the car wash once a week. Spread over 52 weeks, that works out to only about 3 yuan per wash.
And this is not just a quick rinse.
The whole process takes a little over ten minutes and includes two rounds of foam, high-pressure rinsing, liquid wax, and air drying.
Once you factor in the equipment, water, electricity, consumables, and maintenance, three yuan clearly does not cover the cost.
If this were a dedicated car-wash business, the economics would make no sense.
A professional car wash needs to make money from washing cars, ideally with additional services such as waxing, polishing, or interior cleaning.
The core service itself has to be profitable.
A supermarket works differently.
Car washing is not Kuanguang’s main business.
The once-a-week design is easy to understand: it gives members a reason to come back to the Lishui flagship store every week.
The car gets washed, and the customer is already there.
Once you are at the supermarket, there is a good chance you will go inside and pick up fruit, vegetables, milk, household goods, or something else you need anyway.
For a retailer whose core business is fast-moving consumer goods, whether the car wash itself makes money may not be the most important question.
Its real value is that it adds convenience around the core business and creates another reason for customers to return.
So some services that look obviously “unprofitable” can make perfect sense once you look at the entire retail model instead of judging them in isolation.
It also made me think about a familiar consumer reaction.
A lot of people see the words “annual membership fee” and immediately think:
I have to pay just to join? No thanks.
But the picture can look very different when you calculate the value another way.
A typical car wash might charge 300 yuan for ten washes and throw in two more, which works out to around 25 yuan per visit.
By contrast, if you already shop regularly at Kuanguang’s Lishui store, the car-wash benefit alone brings the effective cost of each wash down to about 3 yuan.
That is roughly one-tenth of the price of a regular car wash.
Three yuan does not even take you very far on a shared bike these days.
Of course, the benefit only matters if you actually use it.
The worst kind of membership is one that makes people spend money simply because they want to “get their money’s worth.”
But if you already need groceries, already visit the supermarket, and already wash your car, then benefits like these are worth paying attention to.
Working inside a retail company, I have seen this logic firsthand.
Many of these services are not designed to generate profit on their own.
Parking, car washing, member events, loyalty points, rest areas, and other add-on services all follow a similar idea:
Make the customer’s visit easier, more comfortable, and more worthwhile—and give them a reason to come back more often.
The retailer gains traffic and goodwill.
The customer gets genuine convenience.
If both sides benefit, why not?
This is one membership perk that is genuinely worth using.
After washing the car, I parked it in my underground garage at home.
Since I did not expect to drive for a few days, I pulled out a disposable transparent car cover and put it over the freshly washed car.
Within moments, something looked wrong.
The engine was still hot from the drive, and the body still held some moisture from the wash.
The transparent cover quickly began to puff up.
It looked like I had wrapped the whole car inside a giant clear balloon.
I watched it for a few seconds, then removed it immediately.
Apparently, even “protection” can be a bad idea if you rush it.
Haha.