Business View - August 2015 97
pendent franchiser of automotive service centers,
offering oil changes, preventative maintenance, and
other car care services. The modern Grease Monkey
serves more than two million car owners worldwide,
each year, with its “less hassle, more hustle!” brand of
customer experience.
Lori Schneider is a Grease Monkey Franchise Develop-
ment Specialist. She explains that the concept of the
quick oil change came about some time in the 1970s
and that Grease Monkey’s founders understood its po-
tential business opportunities: “People did not want to
take their vehicles in and leave them for half a day at
a dealership. There was an opportunity to get consum-
ers to come and have their oil changed and their vehi-
cle serviced in an in-and-out fashion, so the founders
brought the quick oil change concept into the Denver
market and Rocky Mountain area.”
And so Grease Monkey was founded in 1978 – the
same year its owners began franchising its service
centers. Today, there are 299 total units operating un-
der the Grease Monkey brand. Sixty-two are company
owned and the rest are franchises. Mexico has 60
stores and there are already five in China. The compa-
AT A GLANCE
WHO:
Grease Monkey International, Inc.
WHAT:
The nation’s largest independent fran-
chiser of automotive oil change centers
WHERE:
Headquarters in Greenwood Village,
Colorado
WEBSITE
:
Ralph Yarusso, Senior Vice President
FRANCHISE
