statik27

I'm in central california. In general California is pretty saturated, but I've found my area to be alright. As far as product, I'm trying to keep my selections to a minimum. Candy in places that don't serve food, gumballs and bouncy balls in places that do. It simplifies my product ordering and makes servicing pretty easy I find. Perhaps in the future I'll do toys, but right now if I have a bunch of gumball locations doing 30 or 40 dollars a months, that ok by me lol. statik

I thought I'd throw my hat into the ring. This has been a growth month for me, picked up 3 new locations with only one being serviced so far on the first 2 week service. These are all charity locations. Barber Shop: $56- 5 weeks- Triple with PMM's, Skittles, Gumballs. Nice location, but I always have to go fix the machine, it gets abused quite a bit. Taco Shop: $33- 4 weeks- Double head- Gumballs/Superballs. Not the greatest part of town, but the folks are nice and they take care of my machine like its their own. Its always cleaned when I get there lol. Italian Rest.: $26-4 weeks- Double head- Gumballs/Superballs. This machine would do better if they didn't lay the "Nickel Classifieds" on top of it all the time. Taco Shop: $102-3 weeks- Single head- Superballs. This is the biggie. Had it since June, had to put it on a 3 week rotation because it was empty every time I serviced it. I would upgrade, but there's already 2 other double heads in there with candy in them, not sure what that guys thinking in a food establishment. At some point I'd like to try gumballs for the margins, but why mess with what works right now. Auto Shop: $6.50-4 weeks- Single head- PMM's. Have I mentioned how much I hate Auto shops? The machine is always dirty and hardly used. This one is getting pulled as soon as I have a place to put it. Taco Shop: $20- 2 weeks- Single head- Gumballs. Love the taco shops. People are always nice and they have quarters in their pockets. Looks like a definite upgrade in the near future. Hope the numbers continue on the 4 week service. Still have a few more locations to do before the end of the month, plus the 2 week service a couple of new ones. A sandwich shop and another Italian place. All of these locations were found by kickstart. statik

I've been using black machines. It shows the candy in good contrast and works in any location. statik

Forget locating one of these things. I want one of them for my garage. Would be a great stress relief after one of those "Hi, please come pick up your candy machine for no explainable reason." phone calls.

I use to manage a retail shipping/copy-print shop. Couple times a day a machine would jam up and you'd have to find where the the paper was accordianed to get it working again. Not a big deal if your in the building, but it would get annoying and very expensive gas and time wise if you have to drop everything just unjam a copy machine across town or god forbid out of town. statik

This is actually an awesome Idea, I think I might give it ago next year.

On the other side of the coin, I have a single head location that did 7.25 its first two weeks. Did it's first 4 week cycle pull today. 7.25 again. Go figure.

As a noob myself, these 8 head u-turn machines just don't seem like a good starter machine. You have to have at least 8 products stocked just to fill them and not all of those products will work at every location, in fact a machine of that size will work at even fewer locations. My advice would be to buy one or two double head machines on the cheap off craigslist and locate them, you can fill them with candy for less then 50$ and you'll find out if you like this business before your looking for a big truck to carry all that product to locations. statik

Seems to me vending DVD's is vending the hard way. First the price of the machine is immense, then the price of product(movies). Loss of DVD's, credit card company hassles, god forbid the machine goes haywire and you have to fix something that resembles a NASA space project. Competition is more then tough, its the big boys, coinstar, macdonalds ect. No I think it's better off to start small, get a few gumball machines, sell a few pepsi's. In the long run I think you'll find it both more satisfying and profitable. But thats only my opinion. statik

I'm with Vendnoob on this. I think that if your doing well with the .25$ caps, leave it alone. Perhaps you could give it a test run in a new location or something to that effect, but I wouldn't want to offend any repeat business by doubling my price on a product they like. Statik

Honestly, I didn't shop around a whole lot. Looked on a few sites. Got them from Candymachines.com I'm sure there are cheaper places. 120$ for a case of 2000, comes in niffty 200ct bagies. With the 25$ shipping it works out to 7cents a vend. But I'm not going to complain about 300% profit on a product that pretty much lasts until someone buys it. Cheers, Statik

Thirteen days ago I drug one of my double-head machines into a busy local Taco shop trying to secure a location. The manager nixed the double-head as they already had one in the place. I convinced him to take a single and he said. "Sure, as long as it's different then the other guy." The "other" guy is running all candy, runts and the small gumballs on a 2-fer. I thought about it for a minute and then broke my double-head to a single monolith in the parking lot. I was going to run 850ct gumballs and superballs with the double and seeing as how thetr was already gum in the place, I opted to try the superballs on their own. As I said, this was thirteen days ago. I walked into the taco shop this morning, just to have a look see. It was 2/3rd's empty. This isn't one of those little globe machines, it's an LYPC tough-pro, holds 14lbs of candy, 400 gumballs. Total take for the 13days= 57 dollars and 11cents (gotta love the drop-through mechs.) I'm gonna go faint now. statik

I'm sorta late to the discussion, but since I'm fairly new to charity vending, I thought I'd give a newb's opinion. This question came up on the very first machine I've ever located. I got the machine placed through a locator and went to drop it off. First question out of the patron's mouth was the dreaded "How Much?". I told him my small route would donate 300$ dollars this year to the charity. Which is completely true. I have 25 stickers right now. I told him that every location is like a brick in a wall. The national average on a machine is 7$. 2$ for the candy 2$ to pay down debt on the machine and 2$ so I can continue vending. The remaining dollar goes to the charity. I then explained that I could give him 10% of the gross if he wished it, but it meant that the machine wouldn't be a charity machine and I'd have to use the sticker somewhere else. I also pointed out that 6-8 PMM's for 25cents is a good deal considering the price of a bag of the candy and that it was in every way a fair business transactions for his customers. Presented with this fair and truthful explanation, he was more then happy to have my machine in his establishment. I think that both sides of this argument are valid. Its easy to vilify, but not so easy to justify. I think that as a charity vendor, as long as I'm both candid and consistent in the way I approach my locations, I can sleep easy at night, knowing my 300$ bought a family in need groceries for a month, or medical care for their child.

I'm currently using a charity for the locator. But I think it's easier to sell a location myself with the comission. statik27

Hey Guys, I used Kickstart to get 5 locations. Took less then a week to get them and Rob sent me 10 instead of 5. Response time on emails was quick and pleasant and the placing of the machines has been a lot easier then I thought. I guess everyone has a different experience but mine has been great. Statik