Car wash operators know the reality: your business lives or dies by how well your team performs on the floor. Rising Tide Car Wash proved this—not just in one area, but across their entire operation. For instance, with their training approach, they improved membership sales conversions from 5% to 18% within a year to achieve the industry benchmark of 5,000 membership per store.
At Rising Tide Car Wash, the importance of frontline training runs deeper than most competitors. As a business that primarily employs individuals with autism, training has always been the foundation for delivering on their mission. Today, that early investment has become their competitive advantage.
The challenge: build one simple system that keeps up
Before Opus, training at Rising Tide was a mix of different platforms, binders, and checklists. Team members reviewed materials to learn skills, but there was no simple way for managers to confirm who was truly ready to perform on the floor. Training lived in too many places, updates were slow, and quality was hard to maintain across locations.
For a team made up largely of neurodivergent employees, that inconsistency created barriers to success. It became clear they needed a system that could grow with the business—one place to train, track, and reinforce skills in a way that worked for everyone.
The approach: Training that connects learning to doing
1. Skills that are proven on the job
At Rising Tide, in-person skill check-ins are the foundation of training. After employees complete their in-app training, managers use check-ins to verify whether the skill translates on the floor. They observe team members in action—greeting guests, using equipment, or delivering a membership pitch—and confirm in the app that the employee can apply what they learned. Photo verification makes this even more concrete, letting managers capture proof of performance for tasks like equipment setup or quality checks. These small moments of verification keep training grounded in the real work and give operators confidence that it’s sticking.
"If we just pushed training out, that's only 20% of the job. We have to go back in, do the check-ins, and make sure they can actually do the work.”
— Tom D'Eri, Co-Founder & COO, Rising Tide Car Wash
2. Designed for teach every team member
Rising Tide needed training that was easy to access, understand, and apply—especially for their neurodiverse teams. Content is mobile-first and short-form, built around videos, images, and step-by-step demos.
The read-aloud function became essential. With 78% of Rising Tide's team using text-to-speech, team members listen to training while following along visually. "A meaningful portion of our team is functionally illiterate, and the read-aloud function coupled with pictures and videos overcomes that barrier," D'Eri explains.
They also built a searchable resource library with 400+ training materials. Team members use Ask Opus AI Search to find what they need mid-shift and review content in the format that works best—reading, listening, or watching.
"The goal was simple. Can someone learn it and use it—regardless of how they best take in information?”
— Tom D'Eri, Co-Founder & COO, Rising Tide Car Wash
3. Built to adapt, fast
In the car wash industry, change is a constant: new service packages, updated protocols, evolving customer expectations are the norm. Rising Tide uses Opus to stay ahead, building training quickly as needs emerge and rolling it out by role, location, or team.
Rising Tide’s membership sales training shows this in action. Instead of a one-time training rollout, they iterated: starting with fundamentals, then layering in objection handling, pitch refinement, and manager coaching. Every update came from real feedback on the floor and reached all locations in days, not months.
Opus gave Rising Tide the tools to train at the speed of the business. Opus’ AI Module Builder streamlined content creation, and role-based assignments pushed updates to the right people instantly. Training became responsive to what was actually happening on the floor.
“Using Opus as one of the lynchpin tools, we now have 5,000 members per location. We scaled that in a year.”
— Tom D'Eri, Co-Founder & COO, Rising Tide Car Wash
Results: more membership sales, lower turnover, happier customers
Training is a core value for Rising Tide, and is a strategic part of how their business operates. With one system to train, verify, and update their team, they’ve built consistency across every location.
The numbers show the impact:
- Membership conversion grew from 5% to 18% in one year
- Course completion is 99% once started
- Annual turnover is 81%, compared to a 200% industry average
Rising Tide built its operations around one goal: setting every team member up to succeed. With Opus, they’ve put the right systems in place to deliver on that goal: equipping their team, protecting their standards, and scaling their impact.
