AngryChris Posted March 14, 2015 Share Posted March 14, 2015 Most of the newer Royals will have 12 columns but only ten selections. Your best two sellers will have two columns assigned to that selection, for most of us that will be Coke and Pepsi but you won't know until you get the machine placed. I have one account with a Merlin IV 768 that sells three times as many Dr. Peppers as Coke so the Dr Pepper gets the double column. You'll know after your first service cycle. In regard to what Chris mentioned, while the 721 will hold 70 more 12 oz. cans than the Royal, it will only hold 72 of your best sellers while the Royal will hold 108 with the space to sales option. With the Vendo, if you found that you needed more of your best seller, your only option would be to set two selections to the same product thereby reducing your choices to nine instead of ten. The space to sales allows you to extend your service cycle thereby making the machine more profitable. And going even further, you can dedicate 9 of your selections to one column per selection and three columns to one selection, enabling you to hold about 162 cans on one selection. This programming function is called "space to sales" and it is excellent when you know what you're doing but it can be a bit confusing at first. A fellow vendor of mine wants to dump his royals because too many of his drivers stock them wrong. If he's willing to sell them for say... $1,000 or less as-is, you better believe I'll buy them! By the way, royals usually have a diagram of different sts (space to sales) configurations on the inner door. It's just a little tricky to program. I think almost any vendor out there that knows what they are doing enjoy the versatility of a royal but Dixie's tend to be easier to operate (from an employee's perspective). Don't let what I say sound scary. I agree with pretty much everything everyone has said. All three machines are great and they all have their pros and con's but overall very good machines. A single price machine would be the better way to get your feet wet but given those options, there is no clear winner between the royal and Vendo in my eyes. The Dixie is good but unless it was under 1800, it wouldn't hold its own. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CajunCandy Posted March 14, 2015 Share Posted March 14, 2015 As for programming the Royals, if this cajun raised out in the middle of now where deep in the marsh lands of Louisiana learned how to, you can learn too! Ok, moondawg take your best shot! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vendgirl Posted March 14, 2015 Author Share Posted March 14, 2015 Good to know. This all will help me lots. I'll learn how to load the machine right away lol. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moondog Posted March 15, 2015 Share Posted March 15, 2015 Good to know. This all will help me lots. I'll learn how to load the machine right away lol. If you end up buying the Royal from a dealer, he will set it up for you. Usually column one is pared with column seven which is directly behind column one and column two is paired with column eight. The machine will vend evenly between the two columns which makes it much easier to load. Have him show you how to set the prices and vend depth (one can or two) for some of the bigger stuff and your done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
allen watson Posted March 15, 2015 Share Posted March 15, 2015 She's not building sand dunes Allen The DN selection switches and the Vendo motor switches can't take sand storms. Do not own a single Royal. Hmmm...I better change that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vendgirl Posted March 15, 2015 Author Share Posted March 15, 2015 Why not own a single Royal? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
allen watson Posted March 15, 2015 Share Posted March 15, 2015 Why not own a single Royal? I bought a route with only DN and Vendo's. No offense to Royals, I just don't have any. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vendgirl Posted March 15, 2015 Author Share Posted March 15, 2015 ohhkay I got it now. One more question off topic. How much net profit would you consider to be "good" with a drink only machine. When do you consider the net profit to be too low that you should move the machine to a differnt location? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngryChris Posted March 15, 2015 Share Posted March 15, 2015 To me, anything under $500/year in net profit (or about $10/week) is too low for a soda machine. If you're selling basic cans (Coke, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, etc...) and you're buying these cans from a grocery store for roughly 35 cents/can, and you sell these cans for 75 cents each, your profit should be roughly 1/2 of your revenue. With that said, you need to collect a minimum of $20/week from a soda machine to even make it somewhat profitable. You on the other hand, you're spending at least $1600 on a higher-end model stack vendor. I like to break even in 2 years or less, so you would need to shoot for over $800 in revenue or about $30/week in revenue. The reason why you want to break even sooner (rather than later) is because things like coin mechs, validators, and refrigeration decks can go out eventually. Sometimes, even if they don't get used a ton, they need to be rebuilt anyway. Refrigeration decks need regular maintenance (getting rid of any dust or debris around the condenser). What you need to know about stocking vending machines is that, generally in our line of business, drive time is constant no matter how good the account does. If it takes you 15 minutes to drive to a location, and 5 minutes to go in, open the machine, collect the money, stock one case, then you've invested 20 minutes for 1 case worth of cans (about $18 in revenue). If that same location needs 6 cases of cans, that might take you no more than 15 minutes to service (and probably less when you're faster). So that location with 6 cases took 30 minutes to service and you collected 6 cases worth of revenue (about $108 in revenue). See the difference? Stocking a soda machine doesn't take a lot of time, it's simply getting there, opening the machine, collecting money, and other shenanigans that take up your time. The better the account, the more money you make obviously.. and from my experiences, refrigeration decks go out whenever they want and that has nothing to do with how much soda you sell. So you should try to pay your machine off in 2 years or less. Also keep in mind that when I mentioned how much time it takes to stock a machine, it is worth your while to stock a machine less often IF everything is working properly. So, on a royal 650 that holds over 24 cases of cans, an account that only sells 3 cases per week should easily last 4 weeks without needing to be restocked. The downside to this is that sometimes people don't call you when it isn't working. Sometimes, being a beginner, you may have done something to prevent the machine from working when you left, and you might not find out until you go there to service the machine and you find that people bought their own cases of soda because your machine hasn't worked all month and no one bothered to call and tell you. It happens! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris in bc Posted March 15, 2015 Share Posted March 15, 2015 I would go with a VENDO 720. About $900, live display, 10 selections, will vend 24 oz bottles, 12oz cans, 20oz bottles of water and even 500ml ( I think that is 16oz or 16.9oz) which can be bought at most grocery stores, parts are cheap, tech support is GREAT and the machine looks professional. Second choice would be a Royal Merlin live display, but not all columns will vend 24oz bottles on royals-at least that is my experience with Canadian 24oz bottles. BUT, after spending your money-buy a MEI 7512i coin mech.......this is a smart investment! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris in bc Posted March 15, 2015 Share Posted March 15, 2015 You can purchase a new vendo live display 721 from the manufacturer for $2000USD they are excellent machines and come with a 6 year warranty on the compressor! That is $2800 Canadian with the stupid conversion rate! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vendgirl Posted March 16, 2015 Author Share Posted March 16, 2015 Thanks for all the great advice!! I'm hopping I can find a couple more inexpensive machines, because only one is kinda a good deal (the Royal). I'll have to keep looking around here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nvb Posted August 5, 2016 Share Posted August 5, 2016 You can purchase a new vendo live display 721 from the manufacturer for $2000USD they are excellent machines and come with a 6 year warranty on the compressor! That is $2800 Canadian with the stupid conversion rate! Vendo 721 new for $2800 CDN I'm not seeing them anywhere near that price.. am I missing something? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AZVendor Posted August 5, 2016 Share Posted August 5, 2016 I never thought that price sounded correct. If it was it was without coinage and freight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RBEvending Posted August 5, 2016 Share Posted August 5, 2016 Hope there refurbished for that price. If not you can prolly find way cheaper on craiglist. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amigo Posted September 3, 2016 Share Posted September 3, 2016 The only machine out of the three to buy is the Vendo 721. The Dixie and Royal are good machines but the Vendo is the Cadillac. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngryChris Posted September 4, 2016 Share Posted September 4, 2016 6 hours ago, Amigo said: The only machine out of the three to buy is the Vendo 721. The Dixie and Royal are good machines but the Vendo is the Cadillac. I love the Vendo 721 but it is not what I would consider the Cadillac in this situation. It looks nice and it works great, but when it comes to getting parts and service, Royals and Dixies are the best. Again, I love the Vendo 721, but at this point, I really tend to lean toward Royals due to their capacity, versatility, and serviceability. I can get parts for Royals and Dixies all day long, but not Vendos necessarily. I can also swap out refrigeration decks for Royals and Dixies within the same day, while Vendo refrigeration decks must be sent for repair and can take several days. It's not that Vendos are bad, but getting parts or repairs often takes more time because distributors don't always have them on hand and you even have to wait on Vendo to RECEIVE the part before they can send it to you. I think it took me 2 weeks and several phone calls to get a harness for a Vendo 720. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amigo Posted September 4, 2016 Share Posted September 4, 2016 Well I guess I am a little bias on that point as I am certified in refrigeration and do my own repairs. As far as parts go, bypass the distributor and go straight to Vendo as I have purchased from them before. I don't like Dixies because of all the problems with 20oz and the motors and oscillators just don't hold up. I do like Royal GIII's, easy to repair and hold a lot of product. But, for versatility, I like 721's because you can vend anything from it and if set properly doesn't break. I have fewer service calls on Vendo than any other stack vendor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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