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So are we all agreed that you should place all your machines before replacing low performers?


westlakevending

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Place the back stock prior to replacing poor performers except:

  • When the poor locations are far away
  • The location owner is a pain in the........
  • You need one of the back stock for parts
  • The poor location is so poor, product is going bad.
  • There a chance of the poor location going out of business and you losing a machine.
Just my thoughts
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Westlake, where are you located?  How many machines do you have on locations?  How many in your garage?  What is considered a poor performing location to you?

Sorry for all the questions.  I'm a newbie.  I've done much research and will be purchasing my first machines next weekend.  I'm going to get the DBA and Tax ID on Monday.  Any tips or ideas for a business name?

Cheers,

JHR

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Another thought. I did this recently. Not sure how it will turn out. The place is a restaurant / tanning salon, yea, I know. weird.

Anyway, poor candy sales, but kind of a health / yuppy place.

Well, I had a DI machine not placed, so I switched it out and will see how that does.

My thought would be, if you have a triple in a porr spot, and have a single in your garage, try changing the two around. That gives you another triple to have out and gets a single in a place that "may" be worth it?

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I am now following this method of thinking, see if it works for you:

1.  Set a minimum amount of sales you need to see at a location (for example, I am using $10).  If you go two services (for me, that's 2 8-week cycles) without seeing $10 in the machine, and I have tried a product change, I pull that spot immediately.

2.  After pulling those machines, try to use them to upgrade spots as either permanent or temporary upgrades.  A single toy with a gumball, a second double, etc.  Get permission to put racks in if you can and say "for right now, let's use this double until I get the rack ready."  Anything to keep as many machines out in service as long as possible.  Its extra moving and lifting, but if its a full-time gig or potentially full-time, I will suck it up and do it.

3.  Take the rest back and clean them up and get them ready.  You may want to take doubles and take those heads and make 4-ways and rack setups if necessary.  Always keep thinking about ways to get machines out of your garage NOW.  Don't think in terms of having singles and doubles that have to leave in the form of singles and doubles.

It is unrealistic to think that you will push out all of your backup machines before you pull bad locations.  You will always have business failing, closing, changing hands, people kicking you out, etc.  The key for me will be to follow techniques #1 and #2 to reduce the amount of chasing lost machines, closed business owners, etc. to try to recover machines.  If a machine isn't doing $10 for me, it is either is a bad spot for vending, a business that is faltering, the customers don't use it, something else or a combination of all of them.  I am not the type to be passive and think as long as a machine is out of the garage it is OK.  Not true.  You have to watch them and the businesses they are in, if you see bad numbers and signs they are going under, get them out.

Also, a handful of machines in the garage is OK for building bigger setups if you need them in a pinch, you want to experiment with vend sizes, testing coin mechs, and a number of other reasons along those lines.  Do you need 50?  No.  I am taking advantage of the realism that I will nearly always have machines in the garage and take the chance to know the machines inside and out.  You never know when you will need this knowledge to do your best MacGyver to fix something on a location and can't afford to drive an hour back home.

If by chance I do get all my $10 and less spots out, I then will increase the number to $15 minimum and repeat.  Churning out spots in this way will make the best uses of your time when out servicing your routes.  This gets again into my preaching about upping your averages (avg/head, heads/spot, etc.)

You do not want to have just 300 spots, it is way better to have 300 good spots. 

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The only exception to keeping your machines on the field would be if your product is going stale and you're losing money because of having to toss product. In that cause I would keep changing the type of product you're selling. Sometime it has been the 3rd, 4th, or 5th change that was the charm.

Mark

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Available storage space is another thing to consider on this issue. I have a number of dud locations, but I don't have other locations for all of them yet. So rather than clog up my storage area, I just let them sit for a while. In my mind, that location is giving me free storage space (somtimes even paying me $5 per month "storage fee") for my machine. Just keep a small amount of product stocked in it so when you eventually pull it out, you have minimal product waste.

Jax

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Storage space is also a problem for me. If I'm going to relocate a machine, first I have a location for it to go to.Then just pull from the non-producing location right over to the new place.Even if the machine has only a quarter in it, that's more than it would have sitting in my garage waiting for that "gravy" location.These are just my thoughts.

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Jax,

You bring up a great point. I do the same thing as I have quite a few I need to pull and replace. The great thing that has happened a number of times while I had the machine in a "storage" location was that the machine resurrected itself and took off becoming a great performer. Usually, someone who loves gum starts working there and starts a gum habit.

Mark

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