Landing the First Location

[casey259]

As someone who is new to this whole process. I have spent the better part of about a month just reading and planning. Everything from the type of machine to my goals. You can never read enough or plan enough. I finally jumped into the deep end yesterday with the placement of my first (and hopefully more) machine. Can you still remember that first drop off? From anyone's experience, I've heard the phrase "you'll eventually lose all accounts at some point", have you ever found this to be true?

I want to personally thank everyone for any post I've read and taken notes on. Without you I wouldn't have a plan (even though the plan with change) and wouldn't feel as though I have at leas a fighting chance at being successful here.

[GagesVending]

Congrats on your first placement!  It's always exciting landing a new location.  My first few machines went out about the same time:  a barber shop, insurance office and Chinese restaurant.  I pulled the insurance office due to poor performance, but two and half or so years later, the Chinese restaurant and barber shop locations I still have making money.

 

Take care of your clients and you're bound to keep the location for quite awhile.  What types of machines did you end up buying and what type of location did you get?

[shepherdsflock]

I still remember when I bought my first machine for $40 and thought I was jumping into the deep end. Now, a couple of years down the road I look back and laugh at the idea that I thought I had jumped deep into something. I had just got my toes wet. Now I've got close to 75 machines between around 50 locations. Now that I'm focusing more on racks I'm starting realize I haven't even scratched the surface of how much a person could spend on building a really serious professional route.

 

It took me almost three months to land my first location; and it was a total dud. It only made about $5 per month. I was so discouraged I almost gave up on bulk vending. But, as you can tell, I didn't. I relocated the machine into a much more profitable location and kept going.

[casey259]

Congrats on your first placement!  It's always exciting landing a new location.  My first few machines went out about the same time:  a barber shop, insurance office and Chinese restaurant.  I pulled the insurance office due to poor performance, but two and half or so years later, the Chinese restaurant and barber shop locations I still have making money.

 

Take care of your clients and you're bound to keep the location for quite awhile.  What types of machines did you end up buying and what type of location did you get?

 

I should mention that it has in a growing hair salon in a lower social-economic area. Not poor just lower compared to surrounding areas. I did this because I've read from others there seems to be an influence of "lower" social economic areas and increased sales with bulk candy. Hopefully this experiment will confirm that.

 

I'm starting off with triple heads and here why. Sticking with one product group. Sticking with mainly Peanut MM's and Skittles. As we all know the margins on PMM are shrinking but I can still get some good deals at around $.19 - $.20 an oz for those depending on applicable sales. The main reason I'm sticking with these is I can find them used and cheap on CL. The other major reason is the tax hassle. In our state anything vending at $.25 per turn is sales tax exempt. So anyway to not deal with Uncle Sam and a mismanaged state government is great by me. Also these machines don't need permits and other licenses compared to some other machines that vend. Here's an example you need a permit in my service area if your machine has lights on it.

 

It'll take awhile as I'm crawling right now if not crawling, stopping, revaluating, then crawling again. Hey it's better than buying 50 machines and having at it. It's been fun and challenging so far and it'll be great adventure no doubt about it.

[shepherdsflock]

What kind of triple machine are you using? If possible, you should get some toys in that hair salon. Yes, you'll have to deal with sales tax if you vend toys at 50 cents, but I bet you'd make a ton more money and your profit margins would be much higher than if you were vending peanut m&ms.

[casey259]

What kind of triple machine are you using? If possible, you should get some toys in that hair salon. Yes, you'll have to deal with sales tax if you vend toys at 50 cents, but I bet you'd make a ton more money and your profit margins would be much higher than if you were vending peanut m&ms.

 

Route Pro and Seaga machines. The toy route hasn't been eliminated as of yet. I may do a test set with toys/candy to see which one works better and potentially makes more money. Here's a question directly for you Shepherdsflock, in terms of service times per machine. Is there a large difference between candy vs. toy? While top line revenue is important service times for a machine is also important and that is something I haven't found too much information on as of yet.

[shepherdsflock]

The only major difference is the need to emtpy out stale candy and refill (Peanut M&Ms are the worst, they go stale pretty fast). You don't need to do that with toys. You should also adjust your portion wheels when switching to a different candy so maintain profitability as different candies are different sizes. You don't need to do this with toys. You also don't need to worry about cleaning the inside of the heads as much with toys. Candies like Reese's Pieceshave a waxy coating that makes a real mess when it gets hot and then they clump together when they cool back down. Mike and Ikes and Hot Tamales tend to clump together. Nuts are salty and corrode metal parts (and their prohibitively expensive). Really the only candy item I would mess with is gumballs; they've got a great profit margin at 25 cents vend price and they last a long time.

 

The biggest difference between toys and candy isn't so much cycle time to service, but revenue and profit margin. The other big difference is the ability to keep cycling the same toys in and out indefinitely until you finally sell all of them. Candy goes stale eventually.

 

Another thing to consider when thinking about what's convenient for route servicing is weight. Candy is a lot heavier by volume than toys. I've only got a few locations now that have any candy in them; but when I go out to service those locations I usually take about 50 lbs. of candy with me. Some of my locations have a large parking lots, and then a long walk once I get inside the building; and toting all that candy gets pretty heavy. I bought a small collapsible two wheeled dolly at Sam's Club just for hauling candy and gumballs in and out of locations. Then you've also got to consider heat. Hauling my candy around in my car's non-airconditioned trunk does magical things to Reese's Pieces and other heat sensitive candies. I bought a cooler and some ice paks to mitigate that. On and on it goes. Candy is a pain in the golpher.

[jerry1973]

Yes candy is a pain without a doubt. Hard candy, gumballs and toys as you seem like you suspicion do allow a much longer service interval which equals more profits by not having to service the  machines nearly as often. For example if your machines are averaging $15 per month, then if you service it in two months you collect $30 without making two trips. This saves time and fuel, and will become more and more important the more machines you have in the field.

[sherlock]

As someone who is new to this whole process. I have spent the better part of about a month just reading and planning. Everything from the type of machine to my goals. You can never read enough or plan enough. I finally jumped into the deep end yesterday with the placement of my first (and hopefully more) machine. Can you still remember that first drop off? From anyone's experience, I've heard the phrase "you'll eventually lose all accounts at some point", have you ever found this to be true?

I want to personally thank everyone for any post I've read and taken notes on. Without you I wouldn't have a plan (even though the plan with change) and wouldn't feel as though I have at leas a fighting chance at being successful here.

 

 

Congrats on your first placement.

I don't know if I recall my first placement exactly....but I do remember some of my early ones.

I had this fear of spilling product on the floor or doing something worse like forgetting to lock the globe/machine.

Luckily, nothing like that ever happened.

 

You have started out on the right foot by doing research on TVF and getting your info together before jumping into the business.

I was lucky enough to find this forum before I spent my first dollar in vending, too.

And I know it made a huge positive difference for me...I hope it does the same for you.