Rest stop vending?

[engineer1984]

Hi,

 

Does anyone service or know of anyone servicing rest stops?  Seems like a ton of gas to drive out to a rest stop and fill up a few vending machines, especially with the amount of vandalism that must take place.  Who is filling these machines?  I guess they are worth it?

 

Cheers,

[andyinchville]

HI,

 

While I don't have personal experience servicing rest stops I can say that (at least locally in VA) they would be hard for a small vending company to get into because of the large geographic area the contracts call for....potentially even statewide ! (sometimes more is not necessarily better !)

 

I suppose the saving grace for doing rest area stops is that the same vendor can do all the food vending (snacks, drinks, etc) at each rest area so I suppose each stop could be profitable if there are large banks of machines there (on the flip side the cost to get started would be high since many contracts call for new machines and or / high tech machines that can do credit cards etc... Also, vandalism can be a problem I suppose especially on some of the unmanned rest areas. 

 

Hope this helps.

 

Andrew

 

Personally, I would think it would be best for a smaller company not to get involved with rest areas

[AZVendor]

Many states, Arizona included, give the vending contracts for rest areas to the Services for the Blind program.  The federal government and most states give first right of refusal to blind programs within their states per the Randolph Shepherd Act, which created the various federal and state blind programs.  Usually the Program for the Blind in a given state won't be capable or even interested in servicing rest areas throughout a state, but they will sub-contract them out on a bidding basis to local vendors or to large entities capable of covering large geographical areas.  In Arizona there is a landscaping company that services most of the state rest areas and they had also won the contract for vending at the same rest areas.  What they actually did is to install the machines and then pay the rest area attendants who lived on the property and maintained the restrooms, etc. to actually service the machines with product supplied by the sub-contractor.

 

The problem with rest areas, even though the sales are very good at high prices, is the amount of vandalism that occurs to basically unsecured machines.  Even machines in cages get abused and damaged. Unless you have the capability to install a large number of machines, maintain them, service them and replace them within 24 hrs. of vandalism, you are much better off avoiding them.

[Mistah Mike]

We have a few rest areas we service, that said if you can get into a.lpcation that jas staff on site your vendors should be reasonably safe. We have two glass fronts, a 501e for water and two snacks. We've been in there for a few years and only had one incident of vandalism. Someone squirted super glue in the lock and coin slot. Considering the amount of revenue we get it wasn't a big deal. Think $2.00 for a bottle of Poland Spring water and 1.75-2.00 for candy and you'll see how quickly the cash can add up.

[orsd]

I've been to some pretty rough rest areas where the snacks had the Val's missing and the sheet metal around them had been peeled back

Also the coke machines had really beat up Val guards so it depends on the stop