Advice For Pop Up Vending

[All You Can Arcade]

We do a couple of flea markets each month, in order to promote our arcade services and since we tend to gather a decent crowd, we want to try and see if we can out flea the market by undercutting the food truck prices with a pop up vending machine and coke machine.  If we can't make enough to justify running the machines off a generator and lugging them around, well probably abandon the plan, but since the cheapest soda at the market runs $3 we think we can make a killing.

 

The great thing about the market is that we can experiment and get instant feedback, so we'll probably adjust prices in real time if demand is too low or too high, but we're not really sure what the best items to bring and how many of them we buy without over doing it.  If you were going to place a machine in this environment,  what would you recommend that we open the pricing at for an SF tech audience, what would be the best items to stock in our soda and snack machine, and what kind of quantities do you think we could sell if we have approximately 10,000 people who walk by the booth in a day? 

Is this just a fools errand or do you think that we could actually siphon a decent amount of money from the deep fried twinkle trucks that are charging artisan prices? 

 

[Southeast Treats]

That's an interesting spin on event vending, not sure how it will work until you try it!  Some thoughts...

- There is a reason everyone is charging "artisan" prices; it costs a lot of money to operate with only a short time to generate sales. 

- Will the markets allow you to compete against the food trucks?  In some markets selling food is limited

- Are you already set up to move the vending machines, or would you utilize machines mounted on a trailer to reduce your labor

- Running a generator?  That's going to increase your costs

- you need to plan for cool down time on drinks, or precool somehow before the event

- I would focus on drinks more than snacks, especially in the beginning

- Would it be easier/ cheaper to set up to do live sales vs. vending?

 

Good luck!