Plodded along this week. Placed another honor box and hired a friend to place more for me at $20 each (he got one already).

Still waiting on the mover to move my new 4-wide snack machine and soda machine into place, that is supposed to happen this upcoming Monday.

I'm riding along with the previous owner visitng all the new honor box locations. It's taking longer than I hoped because the boxes take a while to fill (I have to sort through each box to remove the large number of stales the previous owner left behind, then enter the remaining items into my inventory system, and finally refill the box) and the prior owner can only spare a few hours every couple days. So far I've visited 70 accounts and there's another ~50 to go. I'm eager to finish visitng these so they can start generating revenue (part of the sale is that he's cleaning out the cash-box on each honor box as we visit it).

I'm purchasing a used bottle-vendor this upcoming Wednesday (assuming it checks out ok). The current owner is a vendor in a rural area ~200 miles away who lost his location and doesn't have room to store the machine. For the sale price of $500 he's willing to transport the machine to the location I have set up and help me wrestle it into place with his liftgate and appliance dolly.

Got my three bulk locations from Kickstart this past week. Though it took a little longer than I expected I was pleased with the quality locations. One is a chinese restaurant. The other is a phillsteak speciality sandwich-shop on the local university campus - when I brought in the machine the owner got excited and filled a bowl with jelly beans using a dollar's worth of quarters. He told me he was glad to have the machine so he didn't have to walk down to the restaurant a few doors down and buy from theirs. The last location is in a busy mall food-court. I'm a little worried about this one as there wasn't a lot of room for the machine (set it next to the counter but still in the common dining area next to the aisle) and I'm not sure the mall is going to approve of having the machine there. I'm planning on going by to check on it on Monday to see if its still there, but if it is (and they let it stay) it should do really well as this is likely one of busiest spot in our whole small city. I was able to place all three machines easily without trouble - many thanks to Kickstart.

Metro Vending sent me 5 more potential locations. I've only had time to check in on two of them so far. The first is an off-road auto-parts store. They have an old Pepsi machine out front that they are hauling off to allow room for my machine. The second is an assisted living center. They said I could place my machine if I got rid of their existing machines that were abandon by their previous vending company two years ago (they have been sitting empty). The abandon soda machine has cooling problems according to the staffpeople I spoke too, but apparently the snack machine works fine. The manager was out but I intend to ask her if I can drill the lock and start stocking the machine again for them. I'll put a 3rd party bottle vendor in place of their old can machine and hopefully trade it to my contact that works on machines as credit toward a refurbished one. The remaining three locations are an auto-parts shop, an auto service center, and a truck wash - all three are in a city an hour away that I won't be visiting until later this week.

I having trouble getting Coke to return my calls so I still don't know if my 3PO account is set up. Pepsi was rather responsive until last week and was working on getting my first few machines ready - though now I haven't heard from them in a week regarding final approvals. I'm hoping my machines have been ordered as I have locations waiting!