How do you decide how much candy to buy?

[baxsonvending]

  I know we all have a vast number of machines, but wondered how everyone knows how much candy to buy? I always buy to much and then fine myself standing in line at Sams to return it, I'm worried about it being fresh the next time around. So do you have a rule of thumb at estimating your candy usage??

[caserri]

As a rule, gumballs have a usable shelf life of 6-8 months while Peanut M&M's can go 13 months. (in cool dry place) Novelty candy like runts are good for at least 9-12 months. With that said, once you run through a few service cycles at your locations you'll now how quickly they go through product.

I usually stock 1 refill for each machine I have out. If you consider the shelf lives of my products from above, I have at the very least 6-8 months to run through 2 fills of gumballs before my stock goes bad. If I cant sell 2 fills of GB in 8 months, I either need to pull the machine or swap product.

Using my method, If you have 1 machine out there, you should have 1 refill readily available in stock. If you have 500 machines, then 500 refills. Ok maybe thats a bit overkill :shock: