Booted from Wal-Mart

[Faith Vending]

Midwest got me in the WalMart in the Tire & Lube Dept ok'd by the store manager. In for 10 days and the District Manager comes and and sez get this thing outta here!!:X I don't know how to say no to a Wal Mart when you get to the store manager who OK's it. I can't say lets call your district manager first!! Guess I should know Wal Marts are off limits for us small timers. Oh well.

[nam]

Jim,

Just curious, how much did you make in those 10 days?

The Walmart closest to where we live got a Buzzbite put in the Tire and Lube center and the same thing seemed to happen to it. It wasn't there I doubt 30 days and it was gone.

nam

[Faith Vending]

$20 Nam, I'm still crying in my beer.

[Faith Vending]

It must be that store managers will say yes until their bosses come in and boot you. I don't know if anyone here has managed to stay in a Wal Mart. I remember T-Bird's story a while back.

[Jax Snacks]

You just never know what the mood or attitude is of the "higher ups". Some may have had a bad experience at another store. Some know that they are prohibited and are just following the letter of the law. Others may not really care and have bigger fish to fry and will let it stay. K-Marts are more tollerent of bulk vending, but every vendor and his brother is slamming them in right now.

I lost a chain of banks and a bunch of Pep Boys the same way. Such is life with charity vending.

Jax

[BluePlate]

The wife used to work for Wal-Mart, the hierchy is a real power struggle.  They work in a real store within a store model.  The Store Manager is called Division 1.  Tire & Lube, photo center, pharmacy, ect has it's own manager.  The District Managers for the specialty Divisions are always in a power struggle with the Division 1 Managers. 

The power stuggle gets dirty.  My wife said she wouldn't be surprised if the store manager OK'd it just to make the Tire and Lube District Manager mad. 

[T BIRD]

Thats a bummer Jim. Sorry to hear that.

[ghostridergt]

I've got a friend of mine who used to manage a walmart out here,an dhis brother still does. Anyway the point is from what he told me to STAY in the store you have to go through wal mart corporate and get a vendors number. Once you have been given the ok by corporate not even a district manager can boot you, thats why you see so many different machines at walmart, the managers hate it but cant do anything about it. This is also on a commission basis he didnt say anything about charity locating.

[Jax Snacks]

Some corporations are more concerned about the charity being represented than the actual candy machine itself. In many cases now, charity sponsorship must also be approved by corporate. No corporation wants to be associated with an inappropriate or policically incorrect charity. Your charity label at their location gives the message that "we support charity XYX" and that may really not be the case at all! There is also the argument that "if we support your charity, then we have to support them all". I had to remove some charity machines because the corporate office did not want "my charity" competing with their charities' latest fund drive.

I know of another vendor that tried to penetrate a major chain. The corporate office had two decision makers to go through. One for the charity and another for the vending machine. The two parties could not agree and seemed to not communicate. The HR person could authorize the charity, but not a vending machine. The Operations person could authorize the machine, but not the charity. According to this vendor, neither party wanted to talk to the other and it ended right there.

I also know of a chain that has no policy againt charity machines, but does have a policy against any commission "for profit" machines. So if I am sponsoring a charity, it's Okay to have it. But if I give them a commission, then it's against corporate policy! Pretty crazy, but that's life in corporate America! Soooo glad that I don't deal with corporate bull crap any more!

Jax

[lurtsman]

Laziness and bureaucracy never cease to amaze me. I hope I never become that kind of lazy person who refuses to speak to the other department.

[nam]

lurts,

You won't need to worry about it. You're gonna be the head of all departments of your own business. 

nam

[Faith Vending]

Amen, Jax!! I don't understand why a place like Wal Mart would care about getting a commission on a candy dispenser placed in a lunchroom or breakroom. It would be like offering Bill Gates $20/mo to let you put a machine at Microsoft. You would be shown the door immediately:shock:. I am tired of the objection; if I let one in I have to let them all in. No you don't!! Mine is the best and you only need me:D

[T BIRD]

I guess I will see how long my Walmart breakroom lasts. Its a good spot. It averages about $57 a month.

[Beer980]

Midwest almost got me a Walmat location but the manager wanted 75% to go to the charity. I really wanted to meet the manager and ask if they donate 75% of their weekly pay to charity.

[Jax Snacks]

Wow! I have never heard 75% before! The highest request that I ever had was 10% to be donated.

The problem here is the sales pitch. With locators, the pitch is 100% focused on helping a charity. The manager sometimes gets the impression that you work for (or volunteer for) the charity and most of the money goes to the cause.

Jax

[kawoodard]

After reading your post the first thing I thought about was losing a name brand location to machine failure. People who have used 8 column energy chew machines know that they can jam and the energy chew gets squished and it looks like they melted. Costco has a national vending contract and they sub out contracts to local vendors. Working with Courtesy Vending here in Portland we were able to get an energy chew machine in the lunchroom at the Costco in Troutdale as a trial. Courtesy only does snack vending, but agreed to do a trial with Buzz Bites because it was in the energy category. I got a call after about 6 weeks that the product had melted. It had been at Costco about 30 days in the employee lounge. What happens is if the energy chew machine is jostled or isn’t filled very well the foil wrapping can catch on the product wheel and they get squished in the wheel. You can probably vend 3-4 times before it is completely stuck and it make a big mess, which is why we now sell them in capsules. When we picked up the machine it had $80 in quarters. By the time I could pitch the owner that the product wasn’t bad and didn’t melt, the person who I was working with had left the company, and I don’t think the owner even knew how much the product had sold. But the decision was they didn’t want to create any problems at their existing customers and my contact wasn’t there anymore and there wasn’t anyone to work on this… blah, blah, blah. So because of a machine failure I might have missed out on a good deal.