nrpick44 Posted December 27, 2011 Share Posted December 27, 2011 Hey everyone, Hope everyone had a happy and safe holiday. Im purchasing a soda machine to go into a new account and I have a tough decision to make between buying a DN single ( $650 ) or multi ( $850 ). I do not plan on selling anything other than soda at this account. They have a coffee shop inside that sells bottled water. Would it be smarter to think long term and buy the multi-price or is there still a place for single price machines out there? Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rookie514 Posted December 27, 2011 Share Posted December 27, 2011 I would get the multi-price as you never know if you will be moving that machine to another location that will have different requirments. 850 seems a little steep for a used dn. shop around, check craigslist and ebay. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dogcow Posted December 27, 2011 Share Posted December 27, 2011 Hey everyone, Hope everyone had a happy and safe holiday. Im purchasing a soda machine to go into a new account and I have a tough decision to make between buying a DN single ( $650 ) or multi ( $850 ). I do not plan on selling anything other than soda at this account. They have a coffee shop inside that sells bottled water. Would it be smarter to think long term and buy the multi-price or is there still a place for single price machines out there? Thanks! depends what kind of account it is. around here (central fl) 850 is a good price for a used bottle machine depending on the condition. $650 is too high for a single price i'd go between $200 and $400 for a used single price machine in location ready condition. I agree the multiprice machine is going to be more versatile in the end but depending on the acct it may take a long time to return the investment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WillisNYC Posted January 5, 2012 Share Posted January 5, 2012 depends what kind of account it is. around here (central fl) 850 is a good price for a used bottle machine depending on the condition. $650 is too high for a single price i'd go between $200 and $400 for a used single price machine in location ready condition. I agree the multiprice machine is going to be more versatile in the end but depending on the acct it may take a long time to return the investment. My rule of thumb is not to place a machine if it will not pay for itself in 9 months with a standard 'projection'. A soda machine should sell $50/week gross. 40 weeks comes out to $2000 gross and $1000 net at $50/ week. This will pay off either of these machines in 9 months or far less. If the stop won't make $50/week I would reconsider even the single price machine. Out of my 127 sodas, 4 are single price machines that were in place with stops I purchased except for one. It was one of my first five stops and I will never place another one on purpose since it is not only single price, but can only. I think I paid $400 for it and it was too much. I have put over that much into this old machine in repairs over the past 2 and a half years. Go with the multi price machine if at all possible! The flexibility to move it later may be very important. The only reason most of my single price machines are still in place is that they are not appropriate to be placed in any of my other stops! The places they are currently at DO NOT make $50/week but I can't find a place to move these machines to either! Thus they sit and collect a small amount of revenue where they are 'stored'! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nrpick44 Posted January 6, 2012 Author Share Posted January 6, 2012 Thanks for the replies fellas. I did some shopping around to find the prices that I found. I shouldve added that the machines where in great shape inside and out. I have to ask though, where do yall mostly get your machines from? I dont have a way to move machines or a place to store any yet so I have to go to resellers here in Dallas. I ended up going with the single price machine because of price and it was in great shape. The soda machine should do around 50/week without any water sales. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngryChris Posted January 7, 2012 Share Posted January 7, 2012 I don't have the luxury of getting these location-ready single-price machines for $200-$400 around here... unless it's from a private individual with one-machine or an actual vending company that just wants it gone.... however... I use a distributor and I have just gotten a number for a piano mover to move my vending machines too, so you might want to ask your local piano mover... or a distributor... it can cost $100-$150 for a distributor to do it... that's in my area though. Also, I ALWAYS want multi-price... for the flexibility as others have mentioned (new location with new requirements can cause your single-price machine to be useless for months... or years....). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dogcow Posted January 7, 2012 Share Posted January 7, 2012 I have to ask though, where do yall mostly get your machines from? craigs list . I have a small storage unit and I have a contact who is a vending machine mover and repair. basically my best contacts for equipment are other local vendors and repair shops the guy i use for moving sometimes deals in equipment and i always keep the number when I buy equipment off other vendors. If i need some equipment my first e-mails and calls go out to other operators who may have stuff they want to pull off location and dont want to foot the bill to move it into a warehouse. also most vending repair places can move machines around here the going rate is $65-75 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coinvestor Posted January 7, 2012 Share Posted January 7, 2012 I had a long post typed out, then I got the blue screen of death, so here are the cliff notes: I know you already made your decision in this case, but this is just my thoughts. I use only can/bottle MDB standard machines in my route. For me this was more than a product packaging decision and more of a strategic business decision. I realized early on that there was no reason to not have bottled water in every machine, the margins are just too high to not have even if I only sell one a week. I am not talking about a certain bottle that I can find in a certain place that I can vend in my can machine. I'm talking about a bottle that I can buy at discount by the pallet and put in every machine. Because I can do any package in any machine, all of my drink machines would work at any of my locations. Because of MDB, any of my changers and validators will work in any machine, so I keep minimal spares. The MDB portion will be very important to me going forward. As the next standard payment device is being determined by the marketplace I will be well positioned to cheaply integrate it once the outcome is clear. The same goes for for DEX telemetry systems. Existing large businesses still use single price machines because it is too costly to replace all of these machines at one time. Being a small business you can make this decision one machine at a time as you grow and the price difference is nominal in the big picture. To me the question you are asking is "should I grow smart, or should I grow cheap". JD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nrpick44 Posted January 7, 2012 Author Share Posted January 7, 2012 I had a long post typed out, then I got the blue screen of death, so here are the cliff notes: I know you already made your decision in this case, but this is just my thoughts. I use only can/bottle MDB standard machines in my route. For me this was more than a product packaging decision and more of a strategic business decision. I realized early on that there was no reason to not have bottled water in every machine, the margins are just too high to not have even if I only sell one a week. I am not talking about a certain bottle that I can find in a certain place that I can vend in my can machine. I'm talking about a bottle that I can buy at discount by the pallet and put in every machine. Because I can do any package in any machine, all of my drink machines would work at any of my locations. Because of MDB, any of my changers and validators will work in any machine, so I keep minimal spares. The MDB portion will be very important to me going forward. As the next standard payment device is being determined by the marketplace I will be well positioned to cheaply integrate it once the outcome is clear. The same goes for for DEX telemetry systems. Existing large businesses still use single price machines because it is too costly to replace all of these machines at one time. Being a small business you can make this decision one machine at a time as you grow and the price difference is nominal in the big picture. To me the question you are asking is "should I grow smart, or should I grow cheap". JD I couldnt agree more with you JD. Thanks for the reply! I'm gonna keep this in mind going forward. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngryChris Posted January 8, 2012 Share Posted January 8, 2012 I had a long post typed out, then I got the blue screen of death, so here are the cliff notes: I know you already made your decision in this case, but this is just my thoughts. I use only can/bottle MDB standard machines in my route. For me this was more than a product packaging decision and more of a strategic business decision. I realized early on that there was no reason to not have bottled water in every machine, the margins are just too high to not have even if I only sell one a week. I am not talking about a certain bottle that I can find in a certain place that I can vend in my can machine. I'm talking about a bottle that I can buy at discount by the pallet and put in every machine. Because I can do any package in any machine, all of my drink machines would work at any of my locations. Because of MDB, any of my changers and validators will work in any machine, so I keep minimal spares. The MDB portion will be very important to me going forward. As the next standard payment device is being determined by the marketplace I will be well positioned to cheaply integrate it once the outcome is clear. The same goes for for DEX telemetry systems. Existing large businesses still use single price machines because it is too costly to replace all of these machines at one time. Being a small business you can make this decision one machine at a time as you grow and the price difference is nominal in the big picture. To me the question you are asking is "should I grow smart, or should I grow cheap". JD *Thumbs up* This has been my business model from day 1. I had to settle for a couple of single-price machines to pick up a couple of small customers that were already near existing customers and they would pay for themselves... but as of right now, I probably have MDB coin mechs and validators in 75-80% of my machines. It's an expensive way to grow your business, but it is practically GUARANTEED to last longer and be more versatile than any other system... because having MDB equipment means they are NOT that old and are capable of just about anything!!!! However, I have been rounding up older used equipment that can be upgraded to MDB . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vendman0729 Posted January 8, 2012 Share Posted January 8, 2012 Everytime I have a single price can machine and even in a low volume account, I always want to vend some sort of bottle or be able to even change the price from one can to another such as changing from soda to orange juice or yoohoo in one selection. I feel like they always lagged me behind on sales because I know I can have an increase in sales if I could have the bottle and multi price option. I think that there are only a very few locations really where a can only machine would be alright. Perhaps maybe some swimming pools or some low volume accounts, but then again this comes back to what coinvestor and the pros say to themselves, is it really worth my time to service a low volume account such as this. Well there you go. I think you get my point here. In your case, the $200 extra for the bottle option really is not that much more considering hopefully the amount of money you will be making back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Poplady1 Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Even with a single price can machine we could always adjust a column to vend a bottle. We just needed to find a product that was priced right so we could make money on that single price. Sometimes we would make a little less on that one selection to get the account if it meant that much to them. I am a firm believer that multi-price machines are the best investment. Not only because you can just do more with them, the updated mech's and validators can be used in them using the right harnesses. Which is another consideration when buying used equipment, spend the extra money to get good updated mech's and validators so the machine accepts the money which is the most important thing for any machine. We always bought our equipment without mech's or validators so we could put our own stuff in. We also got good discounts from our supplier (Vendors Exchange International). Poplady Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mission vending Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 My attitude is that this is a service industry and you need to keep in mind that sooner or later you will lose every account you have, it might be a year or twenty but sooner or later they will close, move, new owner etc and you will loose it. So, IMO, you need to make equipment purchases looking at the long term. What value and use can I get out of it for the next location it will go to is a good question to ask yourself. You might find that good account that needs a multi price machine and the single price machine is at a location doing 15-20 bucks a week. The best choice would be to take the low performing machine to the new location, more $$ and no additional investment works great. However, you can't use the single price there so now you get to keep the 15-20 buck a week location and spend another 700-800 to get a decent multi price machine for the new location. That's why I don't buy single price machines. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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