Bevmax 4

[MNvending]

I just bought my first bevmax 4 for a new location that I picked up. I’m playing around with it at my warehouse and I’m wondering how you’re supposed to rotate stock on these? I mean it looks to me like you’re just supposed to just push it in in front of the drinks that are already there. Are you supposed to pull the drinks in each column and then restock it? 

[allen watson]

You can stock from the front on fast moving items but you better stock from the rear on the diet drinks with short shelf life. It’s a pain in the but sometimes. I mostly stock mine by just pushing the New in front of the old but I’ll have to dig thru and double check dates now and then. Also if you have a few columns in a row with the same thing it’s easier to shuffle them around and get the new ones in the back. On the cans I can reach over the top to drop in the new ones but not on the bottles. Hope this helps. 

[MNvending]

Thanks for the response. I’m actually a bit disappointed about that to be honest. Putting warm drinks in front, and not easily being able to rotate stock is just simply ridiculous. I’m surprised they didn’t design these so you can pull he shelves out, that pretty much solves the problem. Kinda crazy man. 

[allen watson]

I agree. The 5591’s are the same way. A pull-out shelf would’ve been brilliant. 

[Golfdogs]

The Royal Vision has pull out shelves, but it has other issues that detract from that small benefit.  

[Southeast Treats]

I have Royals and Bevmax both, and I don't use the pullout feature on the Royal at all.  The shelf is too heavy and it's not that helpful.  Generally, you have multiple lines of each SKU, so I start with one that is empty or low, pull that row if I need to and it goes usually on top.  Then I start putting warm/new stock in and fronting it with cold product from the next row.  The last row of that SKU is fronted by the cold I put up top from the first row or extra during the process.  It cuts down on multiple handling of the same container and keeps a pretty good rotation.  If I have an item with only one row, I will try to rotate it at least every other visit, in between I pull 1 or 2 cold to front the row after stocking.  All of my glass fronts are on line so that I can plan my prekitting and also keep them optimized.  Yes it's extra work but I grew up stocking coolers so I'm no stranger to rotation, and the glass fronts do pump the sales while providing a better selection and customer experience.

[AngryChris]

It's really not that difficult to rotate stock.  As others have mentioned, you can move the cold soda into an empty column so you are free to restock the fresh/warm product in its particular column.. and then simply move the cold one in front so it's still FIFO (first in first out).  I can probably stock a bevmax with product in it only slightly slower than stocking a bevmax that needs no rotating (but the same number of sodas).  You can also do what I do on occasion which is put the cold sodas on top of the machine from ONE selection... then you use that empty selection to rotate everything.  Literally, if you have a single selection of sunkist, and that sunkist has 3 cold in it and needs 5 more, you move those 3 cold sunkists to the empty selection and put 5 fresh/warm sunkists in there respective selection and put the 3 cold ones back.  It really doesn't take much time at all when you get used to it.

More than ANYTHING, I don't like dealing with expired soda due to customers preferring one selection over the other of the same flavor (ie. c9 but not c8 for pepsi).  This can easily be remedied by using STS (space-to-sales) but I am too lazy to mess with that.  I end up getting used to knowing which selections are popular and I put the oldest soda in THAT selection.

On a side note, I wouldn't get a bevmax unless it was for a stellar location.. and I am referring to the type of location where you don't need to worry about any dates on products almost ever.

[Lake Cities Vending]

For some reason on mine they usually buy from the left side first. So I just move drinks from right to left and put new product on the right side. That only works on the multi row items.

[AZVendor]

That's unusual because the rule of thumb has always been that the best seller is almost always what's closest to the coin slot because people don't look far from there.  That's why the most popular items should be farthest from the coin slot forcing customers to shop the machine.  Since you have the same thing in the entire row it may be the habit of looking left to right as we read.