I have a private vo-tech school, about 99% male students in their early 20's, average 80-100 students at a time. 4 machines, $400 to $500 per week, about 85% cashless...

The F14 bulbs are becoming rare; I think they are out of production. I have a ton of used F15 bulbs (about 16" pin to pin) that a local bottler gave away when they cleaned out their storage. Going to experiment with LED kits myself...

Machines to vend larger products do exist, but they are not common in normal vending; sometimes have to be custom built. If this is for a promotion and not ongoing, they may want to look at Jofemar or USI special products, but that would be buying a new machine just for the promotion. There would not be enough volume to justify it for ongoing vending IMHO. Could they achieve what they want with single serve type boxes?

The royal 660 is a good machine, I have several, but AZ is correct; the programming takes some practice. Coca-cola buys a lot of them and it could still be theirs. (I think the RVCC means it was built specially for Coke, someone tell me if I am correct??) If it has a card reader with it the value of that depends on the make and age of the telemeter and can you get the unit transferred to your own account.

Canteen does not seem to have much in the way of standards or controls over their franchises. They seem to be hit or miss in my area, and the biggest reason they keep a lot of accounts is because they sign them to very intimidating contracts; most locations will back off dumping them for fear of being sued. I have been called by a number of their accounts but don't usually get them, they get cold feet trying to figure out the contract they had signed.... Compass Group (Canteen's parent company) is big and into all kinds of things, not just vending.

Good luck, interested to know how things work out for you! If you are going to sell your regular vending items in the market, why bother with the market at all? The point is to move to a more upscale (and busier) type of sales. More like a C-store or small deli.

Exactly. And one is enough. You are plugging into a GFCI outlet so your machine will be safe.

I would bet on a faulty GFI first.... they go bad a LOT; they have to be pretty hair trigger to begin with in order to provide the protection they are designed for. If the electrician is balking on replacing it he may not be wanting to stand behind his work. Wonder why... but the outlet itself is a pretty easy remove and replace job with the GFCI available at about any hardware or home store.

You might want to look at Gimme, they were working on various ideas for data... http://www.gimmevending.com/

I see an underground opportunity smuggling machines into California... LOL

Royal space to sales is confusing but you can reassign all those columns. There are usually a number of preset configurations available (look for a chart on the inner door), or you can manually assign each button to a column or number of columns. I don't know of any videos, but the big thing I always forget is to save by exiting properly when I am done.... then I have to start over! Curious, you describe your business as "rare" snacks and sodas, so I presume you are specializing in the off beat selections. Neat idea. Did you by chance look at using glass front soda machines? Seems like a better fit for your niche and a lot better marketing. Royal 500 or Dixie 3800/ BevMax....

On a drink machine I have found that surge protectors tend not to work so well, most of the ones you get are not rated for the current when the compressor starts, and they will melt - causing problems not solving them. I do sometimes use them on snack machines. Most drink machine manuals will advise against using any extension cord, and fire inspectors frown on them as well. A heavy duty appliance cord as short as I can get that works would be my choice if I had to do that at all. Card readers are a whole topic unto themselves. First questions would be is your machine MDB, what make and model, and what version is the VMC software? If the machine can support a card reader, then you would have to set up an account with one of the companies (ParLevel, USAT, Nayax,) and buy or lease a unit from them to install. Plan about $350 per machine to buy and install a reader. Then there are monthly fees ($ 7-12 a month depending on provider) and a percentage of each card sale. Leasing spreads out the cost but you usually have to lease in bulk (6 units or more) to get that deal. It's usually worth it for the sales increase but for a single unit operator it may not be practical.

never did find any, tried making a plastic flap for one machine, it didn't last....

If you order the mask as part of the telemeter kit everything is included, otherwise the power supply and cable adapter are extra. They can be ordered off the USAT parts website.

Energy-Drink Upstarts Are Sapping Monster’s Strength Beverage industry analysts say Monster has struggled to address a particular consumer shift Monster represents just over 40% of energy-drink sales in U.S. retail stores. Photo: Dinendra Haria/Zuma Press By Jennifer Maloney April 17, 2019 7:00 a.m. ET The king of energy drinks is in need of a boost. Monster Beverage Corp. MNST 0.24% is losing market share, fighting in court with an upstart competitor and trying to stop its biggest partner— Coca-Cola Co. KO -0.11% —from releasing an energy version of Coke. Now Keurig Dr Pepper Inc. KDP -0.49% is jumping in with an energy drink developed by Lance Collins, the entrepreneur behind successful brands including Fuze tea, BodyArmor sports drinks and Core bottled water. His new drink, Adrenaline Shoc, is meant to appeal to consumers looking for less sugar and more natural ingredients, Mr. Collins said. “Traditional energy drinks have ingredients that you can’t pronounce: glucuronolactone, inositol, taurine,” he said. “We took all those things out.” It is a consumer shift that beverage industry analysts say Monster has struggled to address. Monster accounted for 41% of energy-drink sales in American retail stores in the four weeks ended April 7, down from 45% a year earlier, according to an Evercore ISI analysis of data from IRI, a market research firm. Meanwhile, a new entrant called Bang has quickly captured about 9% of the market. A Monster spokeswoman referred to its previous comments, criticizing Bang for “false and unsupported” health claims. At an investor meeting in January, Monster CEO Rodney Sacks said fitness-oriented energy drinks like Bang will end up expanding the category, allowing Monster to continue to grow. Monster is touting a new brand called Reign, which contains coenzyme Q10, a dietary supplement taken for heart health. “Will we have competition? Sure, we will. But we’ve had competition before,” Mr. Sacks said in January. “Ultimately, we’re confident about the ability of Monster to continue to grow and the ability of Reign to participate in that space.” The Monster brand has nothing to do health and wellness, Evercore ISI analyst Robert Ottenstein said. “Monster recognized that to their credit. They recognized that they couldn’t use the Monster trademark to go after Bang. The question is are they going to be able to do it? There’s a whole new wave of brands with authenticity in the fitness space.” Other players are crowding into the category: Anheuser-Busch InBev SA in 2017 bought organic energy-drink startup Hiball Inc. And Amazon.com Inc. just launched its own energy drink under its Solimo brand. Coca-Cola, which owns an 18.5% stake in Monster and distributes the brand through its bottling network, has developed a drink called Coca-Cola Energy that is already being introduced in Europe. Monster says the move is a violation of an agreement the companies struck in 2015; they are in arbitration. Bang also has drawn Monster into a fight. In September, Monster sued Bang’s parent company, Vital Pharmaceuticals Inc., alleging that it doesn’t contain creatine, the ingredient it touts prominently on its cans, and that the company had made false health claims about its product. Monster also raised concerns about those health claims with the Food and Drug Administration, according to a person familiar with the matter. Monster’s March launch of Reign was a parallel attack on Vital, with the new brand’s packaging and flavors closely mirroring Bang’s. Vital has sued Monster alleging trademark infringement and refutes Monster’s charges. “A meritless and frivolous lawsuit has no chance to prevent the inevitability of Bang’s meteoric rise to the top,” Vital said in a September news release. “Consumers choose Bang because it’s more effective, tastes better, and doesn’t contain harmful amounts of sugar and ingredients like D-glucuronolactone contained in Monster.” Monster called Vital’s trademark suit a bad faith attempt to slow its Reign launch. Keurig Dr Pepper has taken a significant minority stake in Adrenaline Shoc with a path to ownership and will distribute it nationally. Terms weren’t disclosed. The deal comes unusually early in the brand’s development. Typically startup brands build sales on their own before striking a national distribution agreement. This one has yet to appear in a single store. Keurig plans to launch it in June. With the energy-drink category fragmenting, Keurig Dr Pepper said it wants to offer consumers a range of options. It already owns two small traditional energy-drink brands and earlier this month said that it would distribute Runa Clean Energy, an organic energy drink with caffeine derived from the Guayusa leaf. Runa is owned by All Market Inc., which also owns Vita Coco coconut water. Adrenaline Shoc has no sugar and contains caffeine derived from green coffee beans, yerba mate, coffee-bean fruit extract and guarana. Write to Jennifer Maloney at jennifer.maloney@wsj.com