Bravo Duck

Our business philosophy is we keep trying things until we find something that works.

I agree with gumball guy, tootsie tarts is the replacement for lots of sours, but doesn’t sell as well. Nothing I found feels the same niche as nerds gumballs. I never knew I would miss Oak Leaf this much.

Ford’s carousel gumballs are the best tasting gum by far. That doesn’t matter. Double bubble sells much better.

Hey Mark this is Tom, ( I bought some of Marks routes when he moved on to the coffee business full time). A lot of your customers miss you too and ask about you every time I come through. Your routes are doing well and even thriving. As we do on all our other routes we tweak them a little bit every time we run them ( upgrade to .50c mechs where appropriate and pull and replace the bottom 2 or 3 performers). Your routes are the best organized of any we have ever taken over and some of your best practices we are now implementing in the rest of our business. I hope to have a cup of coffee with you the next time we are in your area and catch up. Be Blessed!

As far as what to purchase, I have hundreds of Beaver machines but no Mark l’s so I don’t know for sure if it’s a standard Beaver lock. After you get it drilled post a picture of the lock. Many years ago I owned an Oak version of this machine and it was a pain in the butt to service. If this machine is for home decoration, then you don’t even have to have locks, probably a couple of 1/4-20 nuts will hold the top down.

There are 2 ways to go: 1. Drill the locks and replace them. This is what most people do. 2. Take the whole machine to a GOOD locksmith. He will pick the lock and reverse engineer a key. This is more expensive and usually only worth it if you have a number of machines.

The best looking bouncy balls are part # 27mib from A & A Global, if you buy 10 cases at a time they are reasonable.

Two problems, you have the wrong wheel and brush housing. The wheel and brush housing that you have are for candy. The other problem is your brush housing is in facing the back, it should be in facing the front. So rotate it 180 degrees.

Two or three years ago we tried every one we could (that didn’t cost hundreds of dollars) and found that none of them work as well as manually routing them.

There is no alternative to Peanut MMS.

Mary, first find your product cost per vend. Lets say you have 54oz bag of skittles and the cost is $6.52, portion size is 1/2 oz, that's 108 servings divided by a cost of $6.52 giving you a product cost per vend of 6 cents. For a .25c vend multiply the product cost in cents by 4 and you get the product cost in %. For a .50c vend multiply the product cost in cents by 2 and you get the product cost in %. For a .75c vend multiply the product cost in cents by 1.34 and you get the product cost in %.

White lithium grease.

They are double-head Eagles.

I am new to locating and am wondering what are some good strategies to use when out "free-styling," as the American Pickers call it. I started out pretty well. On my first attempt I placed 3 machines in one hour.. but here lately I'm having a hard time deciding which kinds of businesses are worthwhile attempts and likely to be successful. I studied the scripts again and feel like I'm saying the right things, but clearly something needs to get better.. thanks for any support, encouragement, or tips you can throw my way!

It was the East Tennessee Bag Company, I bought 50 bags from them and they were great.

I read someplace that Tomy pulled out of the US market last February, he probably cannot get replacement product.

If you live in a major metropolitan area then any restaurant supply store will carry square Cambro food containers. I use 4 quart and 8 quart sizes. I prefer the white polyethelyene to the clear ones. If you want to buy online, I've bought several boxes of them from this company: http://www.centralrestaurant.com/Camwear-Square-Container--Quart-Capacity-c84p13934.html?from=Search The person I dealt with was Michelle Clemens 1 800 222-5107 extension 8443

Steve over in Mesquite has Nerds for $25 a box, if you want to try those. http://dallas.craigslist.org/dal/bfs/1528432284.html

Tbird, I'm interested in the trays, let me know how many you have and how much you want for them. Give me a call, I left my phone # in your PM.

A van is much much more useful than a p/u with or without a camper shell. If you're serious about vending, eventually you WILL buy one.

Its probably a Northwestern machine, so Northwestern parts will fit.

DON'T DO IT ! Nuts go bad quickly, you said earlier that many of your locations are not air conditioned. The salt in nuts corrodes the wheels, hoppers, chutes, rods and anything else it touches. Sales is very iffy, a few places do well, but most are nowhere near worth the trouble. jmo

I don't know if Oak even prints a Vista manual, I've ordered a number of machines from them and never gotten one. What you probably want is a parts catalog that has the exploded diagrams. They send you one if you just call and ask, their # is 1 800 247 4932.

Darryl, I'm cheap so I give $60 in good used condition and $80 in pristine condition.

I buy 10-15 cases at a time and it works out to $21.47 shipped to Big D.