Health Vending Machines Advice

[Astate31]

Hello, within the last 5 months my father and I have purchased 10 healthy vending machines fora little over 26k,  all were placed. Our monthly sales are running roughly about $1,200 to $1,400 a month. We have a few machines that hardly do any business that need to be relocated but we are having trouble finding new locations. 

As I have read the whole healthy vending machine isn't really a good sale so most of our machines have a mixture of healthy and regular products. 

My big question is what kind of income should I expect from 10 machines that have both drinks and snacks in them?

Also, what is the best way to go about placing machines? 

Any advice is appreciated. 

[taysha]

I have 8 healthy vending machines, 6 are drink/snack combos in YMCAs and high schools.  In another HS I have 1 snack machine and 1 drink machine.  My machines average $4-5k per month, but obviously are lower in summer when school is out.

[Southeast Treats]

Welcome to the forum!  There are so many variables involved that it's hard to say, the location is the most important.  A combo machine can't handle large locations very well, as the capacity is limited and it will require frequent restocking.  You want to limit your labor and transportation costs as much as possible while still giving good service and keeping product available in the machines, and capacity is key to that.   Sounds like you are averaging about $30 a week per machine right now.  You might be able to get that up to $60 or $70 a week; above $100 or so you may have a location that needs larger machines.

Getting locations requires getting out and selling your service and yourself.  You are the face of the business and represent the service you want to provide.  Look for businesses that have at least 30 employees on site, or that have a large number of people coming and going.  Look for new businesses going in; the first one in the door has a good chance of winning the business. 

Hop on over to the food and beverage forum and go back thru some of the existing threads; a lot of the talk about getting locations.  Good luck!

[Poplady1]

We work for some large vending operations.  They look for $75 to 100 a week.  They will keep the machines on location if they are doing those figures. At NAMA this year some of the speakers were saying they now have most of their machines doing over $150 a week.  Those are some big numbers.

The independents I work with feel $40 is okay on a refurbished machine but you need to get double that if the machine is new.  The formula used by many companies is the machine plus locations fees (if any) should pay for itself in 8 months.  

Many vendors are asked about putting healthy items in their machine.  Some will give it a try but the larger companies include healthy in their contracts.  They will include a percentage of healthy items in the machine BUT if the items do not sell by the sell by date they will pay for them.

Hope this helps.