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Counting mints


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Just switched to mints for my honor boxes. Trying to put 50 in pink ribbon boxes, how is everyone counting mints out? I tried a scale but the weights on these things is all over the place..Just have to hand count them all?

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Yea. I know I can fit 120 or so mints in the box without really cramming them in there. If I watch how much money I'm spending on mints and how much I'm collecting, it should give me a good idea of how much I'm making. 

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i know a lot of people will disagree with me on this one... but id never hand count my mints. i have a lil over 300 stops, and hand counting them would be a nightmare!! heres how i do it, and this is just my way, not saying by any means its the smartest way, or the most effective way. but, youll find as you grow, anything that slows you down will be a curse. traffic does enough of that for me already! 

i walk into a location. i know i have no more than $11.25 in product in there. i dump the left over mints into a cooler in my front floorboard, make a note, tear it off my paper and put it in the coin slot, put the now empty box in the back, grab a new one, move on. example: marks grill, half full, add 25 days.

now if i get home, and i see marks grill had $9.25, and was about half full, i may make a note in the location title like this "marks grill, add sign if loss goes higher".  

down the street, at changs, i may have a nearly empty box with $45 in it. no note needed except "changs" . as long as you know your product costs, and service times, youll get a feel for it if you do it that way. just my .02 

i guess it all depends on your goals too. if you want 50 spots doing $35 a month with low loss, id keep close track of loss. if you want 500 spots averaging $17-20 a month... id give up on the hand counting and focus on growing, and end of day profits. obviously, at some point, if you have a location that consistently gives you $12 on a empty box, its probably time to pull it. my rule of thumb is pretty simple: if its near empty and has more than $15, close to other locations, ill try and keep it. 

 

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Bbeckl how do you know you only have$11.25 worth of product in the box?

Lake cities yea I tried weighing too, at some points I was at the right weight but 3 or do mints off.

But all in all sounds like the consensus is become good at guessing and things should be ok. That's all I need to know lol, I figure like most things in life...Figure out how other people do it...and then, after you got the hang of it, you can make changes if you want.

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the $11.25 was a guesstimate. i did the math, and its actually closer to $10.40. the way i came up with that number is i pay $13 per box of 175 count yorks =.074 ea x a maximum of 140 pieces (thats another guess. maybe 150 pieces in a crammed full box thats piled high, in a location thats 30 miles away, and is a weekly service with low loss). so with my new found math and knowing its closer to $10.40 product per box on a really really full one, id say most boxes have $9.25 or less in mints, per box. 

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Makes sense, I'll give it a try and see what happens. I was giving my wife a hard time because she wasn't being careful with my mint counts. I guess she had the right idea all along lol. 

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I vary the products I offer in my boxes between locations. This pretty much requires me to hand count. But it allows me the flexibility of offering various products and different locations.  This in turn allows me to maximize profits.  An example of this is a location of was considering pulling due to extremely low sales with Mints is making a killing with Laffy Taffy and Airheads.  

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I do Pearson Mints, Laffy Taffy, Airheads, Tootsie Pops, Blow Pops, Nestle Candy Bars, Mars candy bars, etc. Or a combination of some of the above. Locations always seem to get excited when I switch product, which I do when sales start to decline consistently over a few cycles.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 3/22/2017 at 4:37 AM, bbeckl said:

i know a lot of people will disagree with me on this one... but id never hand count my mints. i have a lil over 300 stops, and hand counting them would be a nightmare!! heres how i do it, and this is just my way, not saying by any means its the smartest way, or the most effective way. but, youll find as you grow, anything that slows you down will be a curse. traffic does enough of that for me already! 

i walk into a location. i know i have no more than $11.25 in product in there. i dump the left over mints into a cooler in my front floorboard, make a note, tear it off my paper and put it in the coin slot, put the now empty box in the back, grab a new one, move on. example: marks grill, half full, add 25 days.

now if i get home, and i see marks grill had $9.25, and was about half full, i may make a note in the location title like this "marks grill, add sign if loss goes higher".  

down the street, at changs, i may have a nearly empty box with $45 in it. no note needed except "changs" . as long as you know your product costs, and service times, youll get a feel for it if you do it that way. just my .02 

i guess it all depends on your goals too. if you want 50 spots doing $35 a month with low loss, id keep close track of loss. if you want 500 spots averaging $17-20 a month... id give up on the hand counting and focus on growing, and end of day profits. obviously, at some point, if you have a location that consistently gives you $12 on a empty box, its probably time to pull it. my rule of thumb is pretty simple: if its near empty and has more than $15, close to other locations, ill try and keep it. 

 

bbeckl I agree with your approach.  I currently have 650 locations with 690 boxes on location.  It would be impossible for me to hand count candy (I don't sell mints).  

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After we got the hang of it, we just put about half a box in the mint box at about every location. So approx. 6.40 product cost. If a box is to low, we're mention it, if it repeats and it's not worth it, we pull it.

We don't count individual stops, money or mints. 

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I get everything except, how do you know which location was low unless you counted the money vs mints and knew where that box came from? I'm heading a similar direction because counting a bunch of locations and mints and money took quite a chunk out of my day last time..

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I know that a half box (175ct) makes 18-30 dollars for me to be ok with it. 18 being medium theft and 30 being extremely low theft. That's just my area. When I open the box to dump the money out I can tell by looking at it if it's unreasonably low.

I don't track individual locations after the first round or 2. I did for awhile and I made the same amount as I do now.  To me it's not worth it.

I use 2 boxes to service my route, or my driver does when I'm not with him.

Call me later today if you want specifics.

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