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need some machine recommendations...


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Ok, I am sure that if I had the time, I could find this info on here somewhere but I really don't since I am trying to prepare a proposal for a Monday afternoon appt. with an account I really can't pass up the opportunity to bid on. So, I haven't handled any food machines in a while and this account requires them. I will likely be going with new equipment so what do you recommend? 


Also, they would like ice cream so I'd like thoughts on what machines to look at there as well. 


Thanks in advance!!!

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Kiwi, it's about 18 machines total. Likely 4 food machines. I looked at the USI combo and may consider that for two of them. 

Out of interest.. what other machines are you considering?

 

I think USI, AP & Fastcorp are the only US manufactures still doing a frozen model.

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USI is the only one I've looked at, but I thought AMS had one as well. Since AP is Crane, I'll likely skip that one. I have the Fastcorp page up but haven't looked at it yet. 

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AMS did have one but I think (Technivend told me) they have ceased production.

 

Are you also looking at drum machines for fresh food?

 

What machines do you currently use for Coffee, Snacks & Drinks? 

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You're right, I don't see one available on their website. 

 

I will consider drum machines but have never liked them. 

I have Nationals (older), Dixie's, Royals and Vendo's, no coffee vending machines just OCS brewers.  

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I would recommend the AP320, now Crane 960 frozen machine.  I know you might not like them due to the issues you had with your first one but since you're buying new and investing a lot of money, I wouldn't hesitate to use their frozen machine.  Frozen vending allows you to avoid stale products as you know and allows the use of ice cream that should be a good seller.  You can also slave this to a Crane snack machine so you don't need coinage in the frozen machine, saving you significant cash. 

 

Whether you can use frozen machines only depends on how many breakrooms you're doing.  If you have to do new and you decide to do a cold food machine, the 960 can also be configured as a cold machine or you might want to use the Crane 932 Shopper machine.  The 932 could be used in conjunction with a frozen machine to offer all the food or drink products you can't freeze.  You can also use a Bevmax 4 for milk, juices and other drinks that would normally be in the cold food machine along with a great presentation of bottled soda, etc.

 

Good luck with your proposal!

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Thanks Randy. Yeah you know how I feel about the 320. Yes, it has been updated and is probably a much better machine than my experience with it. The biggest problem =with that machine in this instance is its size for what I would need the frozen for (pretty much just for ice (s)cream). Not sure it will be necessary to have that much room for frozen. They want the majority of the food fresh.  

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I have been long interested in the idea of slaving a frozen machine to a snack and installing a credit card reader and equipping the machine to take 5's and 10's. It seems like the easiest and cheapest way to offer food.

Do you guys think it will ever be possible to slave a machine with an MDB cable? That way, you could hook anything up to anything.

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The AP 320/Crane 960 can be slaved to the AP120 series, the Studio SL series and the 130/930 series of snacks from AP using AP's proprietary MDB cable.  Since Crane still produces it, the frozen cabinet can still be slaved to something that Crane produces, likely the Merchant series, but I'm not certain of that.  If it won't slave to the Merchant then there must still be an AP model that Crane still produces that will do it.

 

Per the AP website, they still offer the 960 frozen and their sell sheet shows the 120 snack as the master and the specs show the 130 series as the master.  The website photo shows a 930 snack paired with a 960 frozen, so your guess is as good as mine.  It probably means you will have to order any of those models.

 

If you used a USI snack with their slaved frozen machine, USI uses a machine-to-machine umbilical harness from their SM6 snacks to the FF2000 or CF1000 machines.  Many of their later GVC1 and GVC2 controllers can also run a slave machine.

 

Basically you have to use each manufacturer's slave machine with one of their own master snacks. 

 

The only two cross-platform slave setups I've seen were from USI.  One was to run a USI Menumart cold food from an AP LCM snack and the other was to run a slave FRD frozen machine from a USI SMIII machine (3013-3015 series) and later.  Very old tech, there.

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The newer USI slave units use a mdb cable but I heard they were going to stop manufacturing the slave in favour of the stand alone unit which uses the same cabinet & board as the ST3000

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