chris in bc Posted December 8, 2013 Share Posted December 8, 2013 I was a Third party officer for Choke and Pepsi. It was so cool! New machines for free, new coin mechs for free, delivery for free and even service calls were handled for free. Ah the good intentions I had of sitting back and letting Choke and Pepsi take care of my beverage business as I stuffed those shiny red and blue cash cows with soda-lots of soda, millions of calories, millions of coins! Boy was I a sucker. Yip. I was mesmerised by the free stuff. ( Brain washed ) Being a third party officer is a bad deal-it represents a business I was not in control of-I know a few of you on the forum here will use this in a quote so here it is again below! BEING A THIRD PARTY OFFICER WAS A BAD DEAL-there use this one! I was blindsided, proud, thought it was so cool to be part of a huge organization known as Coke and Pepsi. I was irresponsible, dumb and made a very poor choice. I did not take care of MY business, I let 2 huge companies work their song and dance around my business and serve THEIR own interests! I was blindsided by the fact I could not pick or choose my machine. I could not pick or choose my delivery dates. I could not repair something that was in front of me-my choice of a machine was chosen for me AND I was not part of the choosing process-Coke and Pepsi...what about me?? I was also proud to have the shiny red truck deliver all those skids of product, freshly wrapped the night before, just waiting for me..OH boy! The red truck is here! Coooool! Then I looked at the invoice..OH boy! It was a cool..more like a cold feeling! I felt suckered, lied too cheated and even sad! Salesmen called to make sure I put an order in-not to ask if everything was OK. They did not care about me. I put an end to this and now Choke and Pepsi will collect the last of their old pop machines, collect their coin mechs, their use of my accounts and NOW I will take control of my business...my way! Coke and Pepsi were running their business using me as an account finder-the salesman not on their payroll. I stopped this and took control of my business like a real salesman, like a real business man like a MONEY hungry golpher that I am! Now I call the shots, make deliveries when I want, fix machines when I want and I do it all with pride and Professionalism. I have never seen that word "professionalism" in any Coke ad, machine delivery or even printed on a can or bottle. So now I own my own machines, service my own machines and put what the customer demands...I do it all with professionalism. I proudly control just about every aspect of my business......all done with professionalism and pride. I enjoy this business and can't wait for 2014. My last coke machines leaves for the red scrap yard this week....but the new comes before! I proudly sell 24oz bottles....in fact I sell a greater product than Coke delivered! Bye coke. Bye Pepsi-hello new business! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chocolate Bar W / Nuts Posted December 8, 2013 Share Posted December 8, 2013 Hahahah!! Well written post! Kudos to you, chris in bc! Glad to see you take the 800 lbs toothless gorilla and throw him out the door kicking & screaming! How many machines did you have to replace on your route? What type of machines did you replace them with? I have a buddy of mine who has 3rd party machines too and he also feels like the 800 lbs gorilla has him in a musty armpit headlock. He feels like he's stuck because he has about 40 bottler owned machines on his route and he doesn't have the funds to purchase his own machines Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris in bc Posted December 8, 2013 Author Share Posted December 8, 2013 I had about 60 machines. I am seeing my last CHOKE machine go to coke heaven this week-if coke shows up? And on with the Vendo live display 721-10 select. Before I buy a quantity of machines I test them in high volume locations. The vendo passed! It is quiet ( great selling point for your customers) it looks great, performs well......ZERO service calls in a high volume account-around 1000 cans per month. I use MEI 7512i coin mechs and business is great! Coke machines were always a service call away once delivered. They were just junk. There performance failures were not part of my business plan. I even cringed and just did not want them anymore. I basically listened to my customers who wanted soda, cold, accepted coins, machine looks good, easy to use, live display, and very quiet. Vendo gave me a competitive edge-plus they vend 24oz bottles. Tech support was phenomenal, the machine just does what it was designed to do less the headaches. The warranty is 6 years on the compressor-but I turned my compressors off at night at a few locations so hopefully I will get some 8-10 years out of a cold pack before a tune -up! The most important part was now I can buy 24oz bottles for around .50 cents sell them for $2 bucks and everyone is lovin it! I took control of my business! I buy cans from grocery stores, I sell coke and Pepsi and other brands-so the machine will pay for itself and I don't have to worry! I take advantage of grocery store deals, points and my cost on cans is sometimes less than .10 cents a can! Vendo live display 721 + 24oz bottles + Coke/Pepsi/other brands =nicer profits combined with happiness! Well worth the investment! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris in bc Posted December 8, 2013 Author Share Posted December 8, 2013 My business is represented by my machines. My business needs quality machines to make a perfect long lasting FIRST impression. My income is derived from my machines-Invest in quality and the coins will follow! You must spend money to make money-how you spend your money is a choice. I made a choice to save up my money and buy the best! An investment that pays dividends is a machine with max uptime and as few service interruptions as possible! The branded equipment just didn't seem to meet my sky high standards! I spent the money and this past summer proved owning your own equipment was WELL worth the choice I made! My sales are up at least 25% with my own machines-I could not believe what a difference quality makes! I could not believe how much money I was losing. Coke machines allow for only coke sales and Pepsi machines allow for only Pepsi machines. What if there is a Pepsi drinker in front of coke machine? What if there is a Coke drinker in front of a Pepsi machine? I found out-the hard way-that sucked! Now I capture all those sales-that is awesome! I was surprised how many people came to me and thanked me for placing there brand in my machine-these were customers who were bringing there own pop to work-now they don't. I brought MY machine to their work! Awesome! $$$$$$$ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasonkw Posted December 8, 2013 Share Posted December 8, 2013 How many cases of product are you moving per week chris in bc? Right now I'm too tied in with Coke and Pepsi to dump them. I just got notice from my rep that our product prices are going up. Sigh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris in bc Posted December 8, 2013 Author Share Posted December 8, 2013 I usually sell about 3 skids every 4 weeks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chocolate Bar W / Nuts Posted December 8, 2013 Share Posted December 8, 2013 Hahahahah!! I'm loving it! That's great, chris in bc! Welcome back to true business ownership! You see it the way i see it. We're in business for ourselves, not in business to be ruled by the heavy hand of the 800 lbs toothless gorillas, telling us how much we're going to pay for cases and dictating what we can and cannot put in our machines! 3rd party machines may work for some vendors, but I never had any 3rd party machines because i figured if i purchased my own machines as opposed to securing 3rd party machines, after 3 years of buying drinks at discounted prices, using coupons, and catching store sales, i would come out ahead with owning my machines. There are a lot of resources out there that sell soft drinks waaay cheaper than the bottlers. And as you know, the bottlers can just arbitrarily increase your case cost at the most inconvenient time for you. Now that you're out from underneath the crushing weight of baby Huey, your sales should trend upwards as you can now fulfill any and all request that YOU deem viable for YOUR business & your profit margins will increase now that you have the ability to shop around for the lowest prices. And you bought arguably the best stack machine available, the Vendos 721. Those are some beautiful machines and they work flawlessly! They definitely have you pumped up and excited again about your business! And I'm sure your customers are just fawning over them and showering you with compliments and gratitude! Now that's how you grab the bull by the horns and take back control of the business you've built! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snack dude Posted December 8, 2013 Share Posted December 8, 2013 I think thats great, I think a lot of this has to do with who your local bottler is. I have about dozen that belong to coke or pepsi mainly because I needed a glass front or other machine fast and the local bottler was able to accommodate it. My local coke bottler is aces in my book. Calls me about every two weeks wants to know how im doing tells me about specials coming up and what I need to order to stay on the gold plan. All I am saying here is different regions have different bottlers and sometimes you would think that they work for different companies The reason I know this is my coverage area crosses the border of two pepsi bottlers and they cant be any more different. One always in touch with me let us know what you need, The other acts like they were doing me a favor answering the phone Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chocolate Bar W / Nuts Posted December 8, 2013 Share Posted December 8, 2013 Hey chris in bc, are you a one horse operation like myself? How many years have you been in the business of selling packaged happiness? What type of snack machines are you currently setting out? What model of validators are you using with your 7512i mechs? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasonkw Posted December 8, 2013 Share Posted December 8, 2013 3 skids in 4 weeks....where are you buying these 24oz products from? I've tried buying from supermarkets before and they usually have a limit as to how much I can purchase for their sale prices. I sell a lot of 20oz bottles thanks to the fact I'm tied in with the bottlers too much. How much do those 721 live displays cost for you? I've always toyed with the idea of replacing their machines with some of my own but never really tried it. I picked up some large accounts with 20+ bottler machines and if I had to dump in the money initially for the drinks machines I'd be broke. Sort of forced me down the bottler route. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris in bc Posted December 8, 2013 Author Share Posted December 8, 2013 3 skids about every 4weeks. I got to know the manager of a few grocery stores really well. The managers were very happy to sell skids of products. The grocery store needs sales and I got money! I had a few grocery store managers say "no" initially-once they realized I had money and told them "sales" are good for your business, they put down their shields and daggers! I also speak to managers at non busy times. Monday AM forget about it. Tuesday to Thursday evening perfect! I even talked a few managers into "relaxing" there stupid limits. Again I mentioned the word "sales"! Saturday afternoon is great! So I have a few managers who will relax their stupid limit laws and realize their making a large sale over a short period of time therefore reducing their "labour dollars"! Use this phrase it might help. I buy a lot of bottles and huge quantity of cans. I use the grocery stores points program to reduce my cost. Safeway is great, Fred Myer is great and walmart will sell anything to anyone. Small quantities over a short period of time and then place a few larger orders leading up to a skid or two at a time-it works! I have a lot of vendo machines. I use MEI 7512i coin mechs exclusively. CoinChow was just junk. You pay less for coinco but it always came back to bite me with a service call, coin jam and then a few customers sayin " beat it-take your junk machine with you". The customer was right. I had rice in the shape of a coinco coin mech. I was really riced out and my sales were as low as rice in a pot. Made in China crap. Coinco hurt my business-BAD investment. In fact some of those machines I bought with coinco were brand new. They were suppose to be on location, when they were sitting in my shop. BAD-I was not happy! Damn rice products. I use 6 wide crane and 5 wide crane snacks. I have a few AP machine but I prefer the crane snacks-for these reasons 1) I add the Vendors exchange control board-excellent product 2) I add the VE gum and mint tray for more sales 3) I add LED lites and I also add a MEI coin mech 4) top of the line equipment for top results. It works! 5) I also remove the 9 count chip coils and add 11-13 count coils for more sales and fewer service-well worth it! 6) The vendo 721 live display units are top notch. I paid about $3000-I should have leased and let the machine pay for it self! My local bottler was a pain in the golpher. I hated the lies and mystery price increases. Choke and Pepsi were just bad. They gave me junk machines I gave em back! Do not regret or miss any of that crap. The short deliveries, the unannounced price increases and the lousy expiry dates. Not for me! I check all my dates. I spend more time shopping and this is important-I get the dates I want and I do not have to worry! You have to spend money to make money-Coke and P were just traps. Big holes with no light! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chocolate Bar W / Nuts Posted December 8, 2013 Share Posted December 8, 2013 Coinchow huh? Hahaha! That's funny! Your approach to business is very similair to mine. Put out good quality, new or like new equipment, give the people what they want, and at the end of the day work out your arms by carrying heavy bags of $$$$ to the bank! Merchant snacks are awesome! Do you have any experience with the Media series? I have my 1st Merchant Media sitting in my storage unit, ready to be deployed. Just wondering if the programming is way more different than the Merchant Six. I do the same thing with my Merchant snack machines. I remove all of the 9 count augers and replace them with 11,13 & 15 counts. I use 18 count spirals on items like Fruit Snacks, popcorn, Cheezits, etc. It's amazing how much product those machines can hold!! I have 2 Merchants side by side at an account and everything in the machines cost the employees .25! There's only about 75 employees there, but they wipe out everything! Which validators do you prefer? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasonkw Posted December 9, 2013 Share Posted December 9, 2013 I can chime in on the Medias. They've improved since I've first bought them early 2012. Have about 15 or so deployed in the field. First off, they're a lot slower than standard machines. The computer takes time to boot up, and the keypad isn't as responsive as I'd like them to be. They're more flimsy and plastic compared to the 15x/16x series. Programming of these machines is completely different as they've taken out the service keypad - you use the touchscreen or the customer keypad to program. They do look really nice and cool, but I wouldn't put these in a rougher location as they are significantly less durable than the older Cranes. And I also agree with the Coinco part. Coinco is absolute crap. I have had 13 Guardians fail on me with payout motor errors in the past month. I run mostly MEI 7512i mechs and have some NRI mechs and Cashcode validators as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris in bc Posted December 9, 2013 Author Share Posted December 9, 2013 I have 3 crane national 181 merchant 6 wides-love them. In the future though I will be buying 2 x 4wides...way cheaper. One for chips and one for bars. I run 99% MEI mechs and I have one Coinco left..just waiting for my MDB update kit. I use all MEi bill inspectors and I have ZERO service calls. Coinco was a disaster. I said bad things to the Coinco sales rep, he doesn't talk to me now! I am glad! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mission vending Posted December 9, 2013 Share Posted December 9, 2013 Glad to hear you have a plan that works for you. For me, I still use third party machines on a limited basis because I believe there is a place for them. I use them in multiple machine locations to reduce the capital investment in acquiring the location. For instance, we just set a 6 machine account with one Coke and one Pepsi bottler owner, the rest are ours so we can offer anything the customer requests but lowered our investment in equipment substantially. The other place where we use bottler equipment is in locations that typically have a high vandalism rate. Why should I buy a machine, even one as cheap as 500, if it is going to get vandalized? So I am happy to let the bottler take the risk so I can make the revenue. I have repeatedly, and will do so again here, state that I don't think its a good idea to rely to much on bottler equipment for the reasons mentioned on previous posts. If you couldn't replace most or all of their equipment with your own in 30-60 days then you are probably in too deep with them and need to start thinking about reducing your reliance on them. FWIW, in my area 24 oz drinks are rarely seen, I am lucky to have a good reliable source for the 23oz Arizona Tea though. If I could get 24 oz sodas with consistency I would probably do so as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jerry1973 Posted December 10, 2013 Share Posted December 10, 2013 chris in bc, your excitement and enthusiasm is just infectious. I am the same way, but I would be much more excited if I had 60 new vendo 721's. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chocolate Bar W / Nuts Posted December 11, 2013 Share Posted December 11, 2013 Thanks Jasonkw & Chris in bc for sharing your experiences with the Crane equipment. It's so cool to hear how you and other micro vendors like ourselves incorporate different technologies and equipment into our routes and businesses. Hey Jasonkw, are you in the state of TX?... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SkydiverBC Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 I had about 60 machines. I am seeing my last CHOKE machine go to coke heaven this week-if coke shows up? And on with the Vendo live display 721-10 select. Before I buy a quantity of machines I test them in high volume locations. The vendo passed! It is quiet ( great selling point for your customers) it looks great, performs well......ZERO service calls in a high volume account-around 1000 cans per month. I use MEI 7512i coin mechs and business is great! Coke machines were always a service call away once delivered. They were just junk. There performance failures were not part of my business plan. I even cringed and just did not want them anymore. I basically listened to my customers who wanted soda, cold, accepted coins, machine looks good, easy to use, live display, and very quiet. Vendo gave me a competitive edge-plus they vend 24oz bottles. Tech support was phenomenal, the machine just does what it was designed to do less the headaches. The warranty is 6 years on the compressor-but I turned my compressors off at night at a few locations so hopefully I will get some 8-10 years out of a cold pack before a tune -up! The most important part was now I can buy 24oz bottles for around .50 cents sell them for $2 bucks and everyone is lovin it! I took control of my business! I buy cans from grocery stores, I sell coke and Pepsi and other brands-so the machine will pay for itself and I don't have to worry! I take advantage of grocery store deals, points and my cost on cans is sometimes less than .10 cents a can! Vendo live display 721 + 24oz bottles + Coke/Pepsi/other brands =nicer profits combined with happiness! Well worth the investment! I was looking at Vendo 721's after reading this post and the manual says nothing about dispensing 24oz bottles. How many can you fit in a column? Is it a different model than I was reading about, or is it an unlisted feature? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris in bc Posted February 6, 2014 Author Share Posted February 6, 2014 The 721 holds about 12-14 bottles that are 710ml in size. I do not know the exact count cause I am half asleep. You can use other models to vend bottles like a 540, 630 or 840 or even a 720. The machines do not have to be a live display...in fact a vendo from any of the series just mentioned will give you great value and a reliable future. The manual does not say specifically but a simple phone call to vendo tech support does the trick. Good luck......vendos are real cheap in the states! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngryChris Posted February 7, 2014 Share Posted February 7, 2014 The 721 will vend as many 24 ounce as 20 ounce -- about 32 per selection. The 24 ounce coke fit but barely. The 24 ounce Pepsi do fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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