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Service


Joe101us

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The ideal service schedule is when your machine is 60% sold out with hopefully no empty selections.  This should apply to every machine you run, with some exceptions and schedule tweaking, in every account and on every route.  You accomplish that by putting more facings of of the best sellers in.  This should be the goal of every successful vendor in order to control route costs.

With that said, I'm sure a municipal location such as this will not warrant daily service.  It's rare for any account to warrant that so they are being selfishly overbearing, probably because a prior vendor seemed to never service them.  You need to show them what good service is while not being there every day.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Haha Canteen came once a month and now they want their machines serviced every day. Good joke. I feel bad for accounts that get ignored like that but some one there is obviously paranoid now or is just joking. Anyways, you usually want to double up on your 2 or 3 hottest selling items in the snack machine in order to go less often. Let them know ahead of time they have nothing to worry about as servicing time is up to the vendor as long as the machines get serviced properly on time. I am curious as to what kind of gross sales this place must do. I know Canteen sucks and all but even for them once a month would mean it can't be doing that great anyway. It probably isn't a solid account but sometimes you don't know unless you try. 

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If the city is giving you the machines to use then does that mean that they once bought them and ran them themselves?  It could be that a blind vendor ran them before Canteen did though municipalities don't buy equipment for the BEP - the Feds do.  I would wonder why isn't the BEP (Blind Enterprise Program) running them?  Their sorry entitled azzes don't let these accounts get past them.   Do you get to put your own locks in (the only way I would do it)? 

Be prepared for business dilution to come if the economy keeps improving.  I had an identical city account in the mid-90s with 600 employees.  The city began adding new buildings with tax money and kept spreading out the same 600 employees.  What began as 18 machines ended at 28 machines doing the exact same dollar volume.  I was glad when BEP demanded to service that account and put an end to my misery.

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Sales dictate service cycle...youve been on here long enough to know that :)

I would bet those are bust accounts tho. Firefighters are in shape. Police departments never did us well. Hopefully you'e experience is different.

Who owned the machines?

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The drink machines should do fairly well. I do well with water, Red Bull, Gatorade, and various iced teas for the public safety folks. Not too much carbonated, but some. The city hall folks will probably drink almost anything. Snacks are a crap shoot. Experiment and see what sells. Talk to the client, maybe they will let you send an email survey for suggestions. Get a free SurveyMonkey account.

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You may have one or two that require weekly service, parks and rec might be a "home run" if the machines are available to the public (and also secure enough), and public works locations have proved out pretty good for me, but the rest will probably be slow.  Police officers don't spend much time in the station, only support staff; fire stations have their own kitchens and refrigerators; city hall depends on size.  If the drink machines are bottler owned then you can probably get with the bottler and get them assigned to you, but I too would worry about  machines that the city does not own but thinks they can "give" to you... If the true owner shows up and removes them - locks, money and all - you won't have much recourse, and may even be liable.  Someone owns the product and money currently in the machines.  I would get more info and maybe even try to contact the current vendor - they know who he is, even if they claim otherwise.  If this is how they treat him, how will they deal with you down the road??

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