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Wanting to get into food / snack vending and some info needed


ruff84

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Well after only having the 1 vendo machine for about 1 week i would like to add a snack machine next to it. About 15-16 employees in the company and i have been on the hunt for a cheap snack machine.

I found these 2 on ebay local to me (about 40 miles.)

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Rowe-4900-Snack-Machine-/271024695216?pt=BI_Vending&hash=item3f1a54a7b0

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Rowe-5900-Snack-Machine-/280928950671?pt=BI_Vending&hash=item4168ab998f

Any idea of what might be wrong with either of these 2 machines? Ball park price to order parts to potentially fix them.

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first off dont put a snack machine in an acct with 15 or 16 ppl

second i would avoid buying a non working rowe ,parts are hard to come by vendors exchange has some

but i do not think they have control boards and bill acceptors would most likely require a conversion kit

since you would want a more reliable validator anyway. u might start with an honor box, that type of acct

may do well with one. but any kind of food you have to commit to getting a number of accounts probably around

10 honor box accounts or 5 good quality snack machine accts to actually make money

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I have a couple accounts with about 15 employees and they do pretty fair. I wouldnt put alot of money into a machine though. Try to find one of those older lance USI machines. They are ok machines and fairly simple to work on. The problem you will run into is buying in bulk you will lose alot of product that never even makes it to the machine. Buy your chips in 6 packs at wal-mart to avoid this. As far as honor boxes go i have never tried that, seems like you would "give away" too much. The snack machine will probaly do 1/2 of what the drink machine does, if your lucky, so thats something to consider.

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I thought about an honor box, but not sure if i trust the employees that much. They actually had someone stealing the toilet paper.... lol (i wish i was joking) so getting them to pay might be an issue.

I think the machines i posted about may be to big, for the amount of employees there. I did see a few USI machines for sale but they were in the $700-$900 range.

Might just have to keep on looking to i find the right one.

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first off dont put a snack machine in an acct with 15 or 16 ppl

second i would avoid buying a non working rowe ,parts are hard to come by vendors exchange has some

but i do not think they have control boards and bill acceptors would most likely require a conversion kit

since you would want a more reliable validator anyway. u might start with an honor box, that type of acct

may do well with one. but any kind of food you have to commit to getting a number of accounts probably around

10 honor box accounts or 5 good quality snack machine accts to actually make money

Agreed.

Rowe went out of business over a decade ago and getting parts is getting harder and more expensive.

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With 16 employees it is unlikely you will sell more than 8 items a day.

In the unlikely event you can get the average price up .75 the gross will be 6.00 a week.

You will be lucky to keep your product cost at 50% once you account for spoilage and shrinkage.

Leaving you 3.00 how much time will you spend gathering product for your 3.00.

No less pay for the machine, repairs, city licenses fee and insurance.

Walta

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I have a couple accounts with about 15 employees and they do pretty fair. I wouldnt put alot of money into a machine though. Try to find one of those older lance USI machines. They are ok machines and fairly simple to work on. The problem you will run into is buying in bulk you will lose alot of product that never even makes it to the machine. Buy your chips in 6 packs at wal-mart to avoid this. As far as honor boxes go i have never tried that, seems like you would "give away" too much. The snack machine will probaly do 1/2 of what the drink machine does, if your lucky, so thats something to consider.

what do you consider "pretty fair"

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Well after only having the 1 vendo machine for about 1 week i would like to add a snack machine next to it. About 15-16 employees in the company and i have been on the hunt for a cheap snack machine.

I found these 2 on ebay local to me (about 40 miles.)

http://www.ebay.com/...=item3f1a54a7b0

http://www.ebay.com/...=item4168ab998f

Any idea of what might be wrong with either of these 2 machines? Ball park price to order parts to potentially fix them.

There's a company on ebay that sells new control boards to convert to MDB.I bought 2 to convert ap 5500's.I now have 2 machines that work perfect for 2+ years without a single problem.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Rowe-1-and-3-Board-Replacement-4900-/200274640643?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2ea14c7f03

John

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what do you consider "pretty fair"

I service them every 2 weeks and they sell about 75% of stock. One of the places has around 15 employees and the other one has 6 employess but customers have access to the machines as well.

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I service them every 2 weeks and they sell about 75% of stock. One of the places has around 15 employees and the other one has 6 employess but customers have access to the machines as well.

thats kind of meaningless, what is that in terms of money

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Well these 16 guys can really drink some soda. I have been selling out almost daily out of pepsi, mountain dew, and lemonade. About 40 bottles of pepsi, 30 Mt. Dew and about 20 of Lemonade every other day. But i guess working outside on 100+ degree days will make you thirsty.

Since there are so few i may just grab a manual machine (non electric table top) and try it, i can probably get one for about $50.00. I have heard to stay away from them, but with such few employees it might suffice for now. If anything it will tell me if theirs a need for a bigger machine.

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Found another (Smaller) machine close by in working order, any body ever had issues with this type of machine. "Nerley Walke Snack Vending Machine"

http://www.ebay.com/...=item2a20fcf9c7

Looks like a "private label" version of the USI GF19. I know they did things like that in the past but have never heard of "Nerley Walke Snack Machines" If it is a USI machine its not a bad little machine.

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