Southeast Treats

Schools can be hard to work with as the people that are running them usually have no business sense and are only able to follow what others tell them. Chris is right, it won't hurt any to give them a W-9, it's a single page form you can find online for free, fill in the blanks and print it out, and give it to them. Then they can make a check mark on their list and be happy. As for the commission, who did you originally deal with to place the machine? Are they still there and still in charge, or has this person replaced them? Like Chris said, schools are accustomed to getting big commissions from Pepsi or Coke as that is good product placement for the bottlers. If you are doing student snacks, Chris is on target. Give them an offer and adjust your prices to cover it and the aggravation. Remember too that student vending items are required to meet USDA standards for nutrition, and most of your regular products won't qualify. They may not know the difference but if someone shows up who does know, you will have to comply or lose the location. If you are only doing the teacher's lounge that students can't access, I would laugh and tell them to call me when the machine needs to be picked up. Hardly anyone would take a teacher only location at a school; most of those are horrible.

All of the suppliers I work with are having issues with supply chain and labor, as well as self inflicted injuries such as prior staff cutting. They will still work with me but I try to be a low profile customer. I order online when that option is available and email or text when I have an issue instead of phone calls. Deliveries run late or get skipped sometimes but I can still get most of what I need.

Capacity looks identical to the 5800 Bev 4. The rvv 500 also has pull out trays but I never used that feature; too cumbersome to get the loaded tray back in the right position. If the price is right you could have a very good machine.

Externally the refresh looks identical to the Bev 4, but the board and wiring plan is all new. I have one from pepsi, will see how it works over time. Would not mind trying out a new vendo but the bottlers don't seem to be buying them, and I am not buying new machines right now.

Chris, do you ever use the Sams website to order? As a business plus member the shipping is "free". I hit them up when the local club is short of something and can usually get it in a few days. It seems crazy to me that they would operate that way but it works, I have 2 cases of ruffles being shipped to me from SC to Florida right now because the local club is out of stock, and I am paying the same price as if I had picked them up locally. Also getting all my cinnamon pop tarts that way since my local club dropped that variety...

All small business is under attack it seems. Scale is everything.

Thinking about this some more, for frozen entrees you would need to have some wide and tall slots for boxed frozen dinners or other large containers. A spiral machine with operator adjustable slot widths would give the most flexibility for planograms. Sliding motor mounts on the back, adjustable dividers and the ability to add or subtract motors from a shelf, pair or unpair as needed.

Same here, just got back from sam's and no small chips at all. Have been ordering the sm regular lays form vistar for about a month. Was able to order ruffles on the sams website but no sm doritos. If I have to have a fallback I would look at Herr's or maybe even Wise.... provided vistar can get them!

As far as frozen, my experience with ice cream was divided. There are great markups but you have to be in the right locations. Service also requires the ability to transport frozen. I'm not seeing a big market for frozen. Frozen food also requires a microwave on site. I seem to recall someone (maybe USI) tried to build a machine with a microwave built in a few years ago, it never took off. While switching to frozen for food vending (vs cold) would extend shelf life and reduce spoilage, I wonder if customers would be attracted to frozen. All the reach in coolers coming on market right now are going the other way with fresh food (another difficult market).

That's very true, I only have a few cold food machines where I find they are warranted. I have been on and off the food issue over the years. The narrow markups and short shelf life, along with other spoilage issues, make it difficult. Not to mention the high cost of new machines, or even good used machines. I also have to have storage freezers, and product sourcing is not easy. Trying to keep a good selection at prices the market will bear is tough. All of my current machines have at least one drink shelf, as I can market higher end selections such as RTD coffee, energy drinks, and juices that won't go in my regular drink machines for whatever reason, and those sales help make the overall machine more productive. For a really busy food location I would have a food only machine, but so far my locations have not justified that. I also provide condiment packages at my food locations and I would like to find some type of add on to place those right on the machine instead of a random tray somewhere in the room.

Yea, I know. For some reason I still like Crane. I have had several new machines from them and with maybe one exception all of them have needed something right out of the factory. They do have great field support people to handle those problems (at their prices I would expect no less). Would like to see their factory QC improve....

UPDATE AND RESOLUTION: After replacing the G10 was still having the problem, consulted with Crane tech support twice; we decided to replace the BevMax4 VCB (under warranty). New board solved the issue, and the old board will be going to Crane for analysis. And a related piece of info: BevMax has been completely reworked, the new "Refresh" version has a small VCB that mounts inside the service door behind the keypad, and some of those units will need a firmware patch to work correctly with card readers. The patch is available from Crane and can be loaded via a flash drive. This was not my issue but found out about it since the problem machine was apparently one of the last Bev4's out the door, and I was also setting up a Refresh model (different machine, same location) at the same time.

I got rid of my wheel of death machine for cold food and replaced it with a spiral vendor. The carousel had a lot of customer issues with doors jamming, and I felt limited in adding selections. Almost impossible to track telemetry data and forget about good date rotation. When I did ice cream I was using fastcorp because of the chest freezers, if I went back into that I might rethink using frozen glassfronts because of the better marketing, but what I had was working well. Frozen food items I think would be better in a GF with spirals for marketing visibility.

Keep a close eye on your costs; my coke bottlers has notified me their prices are going up 8% next week...... I am thinking about going to 1.15 for cans just to not lose my donkey...

The drink units actually hold about 12 cases of cans, are reliable, and have drop sensors. The 2 wide snack cabinets are a pain, especially with the 2 chip side by side shelves.