As a South Florida business owner, Tom D’Eri is at the forefront of the social entrepreneurship movement. When D’Eri learned 80 to 90 percent of adults with autism are unemployed, he set out to change that statistic, one car wash at a time.
Started by John D'Eri, whose son and employee Andrew is diagnosed with autism, the car wash has given many individuals with autism a sense of purpose.
"I don't want him to sit in a room, taken care of by others once I'm gone. I want him to have a life," D'Eri said in the video.
"I want him to have a job, I want him to have friends who are like him, so this car wash creates an answer for Andrew, and also creates an answer for their mom, whose taken care of him and has done all the heavy lifting."
With his dad, John, as his investor, Tom researched options and determined a car wash would be the ideal business for creating jobs for people with autism, like his brother Andrew, who likes structure and performing repetitive tasks and follows safety guidelines to the letter.
After training workers on its 46-step car-cleaning process, they opened Rising Tide Car Wash http://risingtidecarwash.com/ in an existing Parkland site in April 2013. Eighteen months later, the results have been better than projected, supported by repeat customers.
When he purchased the car wash, the business was cleaning about 30,000 cars a year: “This year we will wash more than 105,000 cars and next year we are projecting 130,000. That’s a good turn around. I think we have proved the business model works.” Along with making money, D’Eri said he finds it gratifying to see people with autism get an opportunity to thrive and experience community support. His employees, including his brother, come to work happy.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/biz-monday/article3655776.html and http://abcnews.go.com/Health/family-car-wash-changed-lives-people-autism/story?id=28842659&cid=fb_abcn
Update Feb 27th, the website 22 Words picked up this story http://twentytwowords.com/this-dad-started-a-company-to-employ-his-son-his-business-model-hire-autistic-people/
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