Kevin Grimm doesn’t need a calendar to know when love bug season has arrived in Starke. He just counts cars.
Grimm, the general manager of Snappy’s Express Wash, said the twice-yearly swarms, once in April and again in September, each lasting about four weeks, can nearly double the number of vehicles rolling through the tunnel, from about 250 a day to 450.
“At the beginning of September, the first 15 days we washed 3,500 cars,” Grimm said. “The second 15 days of that, we washed 5,500 cars.”
Part of that surge comes from drivers buying a single wash to get the bugs off. The rest comes from members, some of whom return almost daily.
“They’re like, ‘I drove home and I got love bugs on my car, I’ll go back tomorrow,’” he said. “And that’s the nice part about membership, it is unlimited.”
From pawnshops to car washes
Grimm took an indirect route to Bradford County.
A Texas native, he grew up in the country and worked on a Beefmaster cattle ranch during high school. He joined the Marine Corps, then attended the University of Texas after his service.
He went on to spend years in the pawn industry, working for both of the industry’s publicly traded companies and its two largest privately owned chains. For most of that time he was a district manager overseeing eight to 12 stores. The two publicly traded companies he worked for operated more than 1,800 and more than 3,800 stores, respectively.
He was living in the Fort Myers area when he decided to move to North Florida to be closer to his aging mother. He planned to take some time off, but when he started looking for work, he found a job managing a car wash, something he had never done.
That first car wash was owned by a private equity firm. When a Starke resident who knew the owners of Snappy’s called and asked whether he would like to interview, Grimm jumped at the chance to work for a family-owned operation.
“It’s more about the customer than it is about producing numbers for shareholders, because everybody knows if you treat the customer right, the rest kind of follows,” he said.
Snappy’s in Starke opened Sept. 23, 2025. The company also operates a location in Alabama and plans a third in Macclenny, which Grimm said is close to breaking ground.
A million moving parts
Grimm describes himself as mechanically minded, “not the best mechanic in the world,” but someone who can fix most things, or at least stare at a problem long enough to solve it.
“Somebody figured this out before. I can figure it out too,” he said.
That comes in handy. A car wash has “a million moving parts,” he said, and something minor always needs attention. Most repairs are plug and play: a few bolts out, a few bolts in, or a cut and patched pipe.
The wash has been closed only one day since it opened, Grimm said, when a sensor that detects cars entering the tunnel failed. The replacement part was overnighted, and the wash reopened the next day.
When something breaks, Grimm often brings an employee along.
“I’ll have one of the guys come with me and, ‘OK, let’s learn how to fix this,’” he said. “It could be something as simple as screwing something back in , righty tighty, lefty loosey.”
Teaching behaviors, not tasks
Grimm supervises a staff of six. Two have been with him since the wash opened.
He said the skills he developed managing pawnshops transferred directly.
“You’re always managing personalities,” he said. “No two people can you manage the same. And really, it’s just about teaching behaviors and not tasks, because once you kind of develop those behaviors, then it becomes natural to that employee.”
Greeting customers is one of those behaviors. Many of his younger employees, some 18 or 19 years old, are petrified of striking up a conversation with a stranger, he said. So, he pushes them out onto the lot. This summer, he started having them hand out bottles of water to drivers, partly to beat the heat and partly to force them to talk with customers.
“It is fun to watch and see them get better at it and then go, ‘Oh, I can do that,’” he said.
Grimm knows many regular customers by name, and employees often ask him how.
His answer: Go talk to them.
The work is physical, and summer heat indexes can top 110 degrees. Grimm schedules two employees to open, two to close and a midshift worker in between so everyone gets relief, and he rotates workers between prepping vehicles, helping customers at the pay stations, folding towels and working the parking lot.
‘Make your bed’
Grimm credits the Marine Corps with shaping his approach.
“You wake up first thing in the morning, you make your bed,” he said. “And if you’ve done nothing else that day, you’ve at least accomplished one thing.”
He tries to build a culture where everyone is “rowing the same direction.” He tells employees to leave their problems at home, but also that his door is open if they need to talk.
“I might not have all the answers. I might not have the best answer for you, but I’ll listen to you,” he said. “And then let’s go to work.”
He said he tries to teach life lessons along with job skills, knowing the payoff might not come for years.
“It might be 10 years from now when it pays off for that young man or woman, that they’re like, ‘Oh, I remember this. I remember how to get through this,’” he said.
Memberships carry the slow months
Business at the wash follows a predictable curve, Grimm said. Pollen season and love bug season drive traffic up. January and February are slow because of the cold, and August is slow because of the heat, summer vacations and tight household budgets.
“One of the first things that people decide aren’t a necessity, one of those things would be a car wash,” he said.
Rainy days slow business too, though that usually means more customers the next day. Bradford County’s dirt roads create what Grimm calls something like a year-round pollen season whenever conditions turn dry and dusty.
Unlimited monthly memberships help carry the wash through the lean stretches. Grimm said anyone who washes twice a month or more saves money with a membership, but he insists the pitch stays low-pressure.
“You’ll never see anyone from our team going, ‘Are you sure?’” he said. “It’s, ‘Hey, this is our single washes, this is our memberships. What do you want to do?’”
With the wash now a year old, Grimm said he will soon have year-over-year data to spot local trends. He expects traffic to dip slightly as love bug season tapers off but stay steady through the end of the year, barring cold snaps in December.
Owners who ‘say yes’
The wash is owned by brothers Matt and Landon Woodall and their father, who visit about once a month, Grimm said. He also reports to a district manager as the company grows.
The owners have supported the Bradford Touchdown Club, the Bradford Diamond Club, cheerleaders and an under-8 girls softball team through Bradford Sports United.
Grimm said that responsiveness is one of the best parts of the job.
“I pick up the phone, and I call them and like, ‘Hey, this team is looking for sponsorship,’ and they’re so glad to be a part of the community,” he said. “It’s so fun working for people that say yes all the time.”
For Grimm, everything else starts with the product.
“Number one priority is clean cars,” he said.
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