Introducing “Duluth’s Destiny” Series
Duluth’s Destiny Begins Here
Every generation hands the keys to the next.
Tanner Stokes – Tanner’s Express Carwash
At an age when many young adults are still deciding what they want to become, Tanner Stokes has already built businesses, managed employees, developed commercial real estate, and invested in the community he calls home.
This story launches Duluth’s Destiny, a new Destination Duluth series highlighting future-minded entrepreneurs whose ideas, leadership, and investments will help shape what Duluth becomes in the decades ahead.
Each entrepreneur’s story will be told in three parts
Part one – The Entrepreneur’s Duluth Story
Part two – The mentors who shaped the entrepreneur
Part three – The uniquely Duluth business the entrepreneur has built
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He Can’t Buy a Beer, But He Built a Carwash
In high school, young entrepreneur Tanner Stokes was obsessed with keeping his new Chevy Silverado Z71 clean. He worked hard for it, starting a DJ business that performed at nearly 400 events and generated more than six figures in revenue. His passion for a clean truck led him to wash it. Daily. Sometimes twice a day.
Waiting in line for more than an hour at a convenience store carwash that didn’t completely remove the ice, salt, and dirt from his beloved Silverado, Tanner began dreaming of a better way. For his senior-year AP Business class, his final project became a 42-page business plan for a carwash designed specifically for Duluth winters.
What started as a senior-year AP Business project quickly became an obsession. Instead of turning in the paper and moving on, Tanner set out to learn everything he could about the carwash industry. Every trip through a wash became research. Every frustration became a lesson. He studied equipment, traffic flow, site design, customer experience, and cleaning performance, eventually visiting 33 carwashes across the country, taking hundreds of photos, and filling legal pads with observations.
Armed with those photos and notes, Tanner designed and engineered every inch of the 150-foot wash tunnel, creating the longest carwash in the area and pursuing a single vision: build the best automated carwash possible for Duluth winters.
And he did it.
Before he was old enough to buy a beer.
But Tanner’s story doesn’t start with soap, tunnels, or six-stage filtration systems. It started with a lemonade stand, then a lawn mower, then DJ equipment, and a kid who always seemed to ask one simple question:
What’s a better way to do this?
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TANNER STOKES – ENTREPRENEUR CHILD PRODIGY
AGES 7-11 | TANNER’S LEMONADE
Country Time? Not Even Close.
Age 7: Tanner’s first business. What began as a lemonade stand at Downtown Duluth Sidewalk Days became the starting point for every venture that followed.
“So the whole entrepreneurial journey started with a lemonade stand, like a lot of kids,” Tanner said.
Except most seven-year-olds don’t walk into a restaurant and pitch a business partnership.
One day Tanner was with his mom, Kristi Stokes at Valentini’s Italian restaurant. He walked up to Carol, the owner, and said, “Mrs. Valentini, I was wondering if I could have a lemonade stand with you at Sidewalk Days?”
Carol was enamored, “He was seven, he was cute. He had glasses and a nice haircut. I just thought, well, yeah, I guess so, why not?
Carol taught him how to make lemonade in the restaurant kitchen, and Tanner’s Lemonade was born.
What set Tanner apart wasn’t the lemonade. It was his obsession with making it better.
The first year featured a hand-drawn sign. Soon Tanner had a professionally designed banner because the homemade sign no longer matched his vision. Then came a custom lemonade recipe made in the Valentini’s kitchen, followed by improved offerings,
“Mrs. Valentini, don’t you think I could maybe add some brownies to my lemonade stand?”
Carol laughed and said yes.
By fourth grade, Tanner was calling business meetings. One spring, he invited Carol to discuss Sidewalk Days and arrived carrying a notebook filled with ideas for new products and improvements: cookies, iced coffee, and San Pellegrino Italian sparkling water.
Carol asked what he did with his profits, Tanner answered, “One third goes in the bank, one third goes to my mom and dad for a trip, and one third I spend.”
The lemonade stand lasted about three years.
Then Tanner walked up to Carol and announced, “Mrs Valentini, I don’t think I’m gonna make it very far in the lemonade business. I want to work for you.”
And he’s worked for Carol ever since; now the general manager at Valentini’s
FUN FACT – In recognition of where his entrepreneurial journey began, Tanner’s Express Carwash was a major sponsor of the 2025 Downtown Duluth Days
TANNER STOKES – BUILDING A LAWNMOWING BUSINESS
AGES 11-18 | TANNER’S LAWNCARE
MOWING LAWNS FOR A DJ DREAM
Long before Tanner Stokes built a carwash, he was trying to solve a much smaller problem.
He loved music and wanted to become a DJ.
The problem?
DJ equipment wasn’t cheap.
His first event came around age 11, DJing a friend’s sister’s birthday party with a collection of equipment he had pieced together from Facebook Marketplace. The experience only fueled his passion.
To buy better equipment, Tanner started Tanner’s Lawn Care.
“I tried to hustle my way to make enough money to afford DJ gear and get my foot in the door.”
He spent summers mowing lawns, raking leaves, and taking on odd jobs, often recruiting friends to help.
When winter arrived and the mowing season ended, most kids would have waited for spring.
But Tanner started another business.
Working with Advantage Emblem, he launched a line of Tanner’s Lawn Care apparel.
“Everything sold out,” he said. “My classmates were wearing it, teachers were wearing it, everyone was wearing it.”
“Everything I did had a brand with Tanner’s on it,” he said. “A big one was margins. A young kid at the time with his name on everything, I was like, ‘Oh, you can have this, you can have that.’ Then the bills came in to pay for those items and it was like, ‘Oh.’ Your margins get pretty thin at that point.”
The clothing line generated winter income but also taught him one of his first important business lessons – Margins matter.
The profits from Tanner’s Lawn Care funded the sound system that launched Stokes Entertainment. Years later, the profits from that DJ business would purchase the truck that ultimately inspired Tanner’s Express Carwash.
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TANNER STOKES – ENTREPRENEUR CHILD PRODIGY
AGE 11-18 | STOKES ENTERTAINMENT
Turning Up the Volume
For most teenagers, music is something they listen to.
For Tanner, it became a business.
What started with a simple setup at a birthday party steadily evolved into something much bigger. Every year, he reinvests his profits into better speakers, better lighting, better controllers, and a more professional experience.
The question remained the same:
“How can it be done better?”
What began as a hobby grew into Stokes Entertainment.
The turning point came when Tanner sold some used equipment on Facebook Marketplace and met the owner of A.T. Entertainment, Paul Peterson
“He’s a fantastic guy, an incredible mentor, and really gave me my start on the whole DJ thing.”
The partnership accelerated the business. The calendar quickly filled with weddings, school dances, corporate events, and private parties.
To date, Stokes Entertainment has performed nearly 400 events and generated more than six figures in revenue.
As the business grew, so did the equipment inventory. Soon Tanner needed a vehicle capable of hauling speakers, lighting systems, DJ booths, cables, and gear across the region.
So he bought a 2019 Chevy Silverado Z71.
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TANNER STOKES – ENTREPRENEUR CHILD PRODIGY
AGE 18-20 | TANNER’S EXPRESS CARWASH
From Legal Pads to Reality
The idea for Tanner’s Express Carwash started in a carwash line, but his heritage explains part of the story.
“My dad and my grandpa were clean freaks about everything,” Tanner said. “The boat always had to be clean and the car always had to be clean.”
When Tanner bought his Silverado, he inherited the family obsession.
“Of course, the best thing I could do was keep it clean.”
That meant washing it daily. Sometimes twice a day.
It also meant sitting in line.
A lot.
“I was sitting in line sometimes for 45 minutes to an hour. That kind of got my gears going. I wanted a better way to do something, and I wanted to solve the problems that I didn’t like everywhere that I was going.”
At 18 years old, Tanner began researching the carwash industry with the same intensity he brought to every previous venture.
Around the same time, Tanner called family friend Sandy Hoff to discuss real estate.
The conversation quickly shifted.
“I talked to him about a carwash. And at that moment, both of our eyes connected and lit up.”
The two believed Duluth’s market was underserved and began exploring opportunities.
Tanner still needed industry expertise for Hoff to buy in.
So for two weeks he started cold-calling distributors, manufacturers, suppliers, and fabricators across the country.
“I was given this opportunity. I was not gonna let it die.”
Then one night, standing in a Kwik Trip carwash, he noticed a support number on a piece of equipment.
He called it.
“That essentially opened the vault of gold.”
One contact led to another. Then another.
Within weeks, six of the industry’s leading experts were flying into Duluth on a Falcon jet to map out plans for building a carwash here in Duluth.
Everything happened through phone calls and emails. The industry executives Tanner was speaking with had no idea they were dealing with a teenager.
“One of them thought I was the doorman or the bag boy,” Tanner laughed. “I reached out my hand and said, ‘I’m Tanner.'”
The meeting changed everything.
While reviewing possible locations on Google Earth, one consultant pointed at a large gray box.
“What is this gray box?”
Costco.
“You need to be in this circle of life.”
That insight eventually led Tanner and Sandy to the former Camping World property near Costco. Months later, Bass Pro Shops announced plans to build directly across the street, validating the location even further.
Then came the challenges.
Competitors entering the market. Financing. Utilities. A water main crossing Haines Road. Raising the entire site nearly six feet.
Still, Tanner and business partner Sandy Hoff pushed forward.
“Every inch was thought out of where things were going and how they were going in this building.”
Five equipment brands.
Hundreds of design decisions.
Thousands of hours.
Then came the part that turns dreams into reality: construction.
The $8 million project employed roughly 200 to 250 people. Tanner was on-site every day, bringing lunch every Tuesday to crews that sometimes numbered 50 workers. “Sandy (who owns Rustic Inn as well as Pier B Resort) would bring pies and I would bring pasta from Valentini’s.”
Five hundred eighty-seven days after the first meeting with Sandy and the connected dream of building a carwash, ground was broken. Eight months later, Tanner’s Express Carwash opened its doors.
Today, Tanner works 10-15 hour days managing the carwash, fine-tuning and maintaining its millions of parts and touch points.
And besides all this? Tanner continues to manage operations at Valentini’s.
But he still isn’t old enough to buy a beer.
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Coming Up…
Part Two – No One Builds Alone
The people who shaped a young entrepreneur
In part two of Tanner’s “Duluth Destiny” series, we will share Tanner’s story from the eyes of his mentors.
Part Three – Tanner’s Express Carwash is better
Tanner’s is designed for Northland winters
