weather a factor in vending?

[tasty]

will the weather affect the sales of vending?

[orsd]

Yes- who the hell wants cold soda on a freeezong day

Although coffee machine sales would go up

[VVS]

In addition, weather will affect quality of product. If you have a snack machine in a non-climate controlled area (and it isn't a chilled snack machine) the candy will melt and the other food will go bad faster.

[BlindVending]

Winter snacks summer drinks

[AngryChris]

Here is the long answer.  I am sure that I get a reputation for long answers so here it goes...

 

The seasons don't mean much necessarily, but the CHANGE IN WEATHER means a LOT.  Coincidentally, we generally have warmer weather in the Summer and colder weather in the Winter.  The biggest factor though is the CHANGE in weather.  Going from 60 degrees to 80 degrees (talking about the daily high) can cause beverage sales to spike and snack sales to fall.  Going from 80 degrees to 60 degrees can cause the opposite.  When it's really cold, coffee, snacks, pastries, and some other items go up in sales while cold beverages can drop significantly.  When it's really hot, cold beverages sales spike while seemingly everything else drops a little.  When the weather is REALLY hot, soda sales go crazy and snack sales sometimes drop off to nothing.  When it's REALLY COLD, snack sales may go up OR down, depending on whether or not people are ordering out.

 

Hot weather means your cold beverage sales go up while most other things go down.

 

Cold weather means most things go up but cold beverage sales plummet.

 

Generally, we vendors seem to make far more money in the Summer months as we do in the Winter months, but a lot of that has to do with the fact that people bring in a lot of food during the holidays and they also bring their lunch with them so they have something hot to eat.  

 

Christmas to New Years is absolutely horrible regardless of the weather.  January through February are the worst months, with November probably being the next worst month.  July, August, and September are usually the best months for sales.  Everything else just depends on what the weather is doing.  

 

By the way, when the weather doesn't change a whole lot, your sales either level off or may even go down slightly because people get used to the conditions.  It's the CHANGE in weather that causes your sales to change.