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How would you spend $1,500?


W1zzy

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Hello, newbie here who is planning on purchasing and donating a bottle vending machine for my local church. I have a budget in mind of $1,500 and want to buy a good, dependable machine. Based on the popular opinion here, it seems Dixie Narcos are the way to go - I can purchase an older refurbished model. A bevmax 4 is nice, and I’m wondering if it’s worth saving up for that instead. In either case - I thought I’d open up the discussion to the more experienced members of this great forum:

How would you spend $1,500 today if you wanted a reliable and easy to operate machine?

 

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Welcome.  If you want to know about a soda machine, you should post this question in the full-line section.

As for my opinion, don't bother at all with a bevmax 4.  It's a good machine but you are essentially asking if it's worth it to save up for a Ferrari to use as a pizza delivery vehicle.  Sure, it will do the job but you'll spend WAY more than you would ever need to.  On top of that, repairs are a whole different animal with a bevmax vs. a standard machine known as a "stack" vendor (as most soda machines are).

Forget the bevmax and stick with a dixie narco.  Finding a good used DN 501E is a good choice but just about any good location-ready dixie narco can be a suitable choice.

In addition to what I have said, if your church is an average-to-small sized church, you might never recoup your investment if you place a machine there.  I'm just warning you in advance.  Also, when you say you are purchasing or donating a "bottle" machine for the church, you need to be aware that 20 oz bottles are usually only purchased through bottlers depending on your region, which can create another complicated matter.  Selling cans is 100x better for your application (in my opinion) but if you have to use bottles, stick with 16.9 oz bottles since you can often get those at grocery stores.  Pepsi and Coke usually won't come out unless you order a minimum quantity of cases and bottles usually have a short shelf life compared to cans.

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Thanks for your insight AngryChris. Yes, 16.9 oz bottles are preferred as the church goes through a lot of bottled water. We want to be able to buy inventory through Sam’s/Costco and avoid bottlers. I also agree with your statement on cans and would like the option of vending both - the 501E seems to be the most recommended option. 

I’m not too concerned regarding recouping my investment, and I appreciate the warning. I’d like to leave something in place that is easily managed without too much difficulty. 

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16.9 waters don’t vend (they jam) if you stack more than 10 bottles in at a time. I use a local company that bottles in thicker plastic, or 7up makes Deja Blue which is pretty cheap as well. I second the no bevmax, you need some experience to keep them running. Not too hard but probably more than a church wants to deal with. Plus they usually go for 2000+. And yes, the 501e is probably the easiest to use multiproce machine out there. Single price machines from DN, like the 368 are also a great option, and cheap too. But everything in the machine has to be 1 price.

In any case I have a couple 501Es sitting around that I could sell you for a decent price, where are you located?

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Thanks for the tip orsd - I didn’t know there could be issues if you stack more than 10 16.9 bottles! This might be an issue as water is expected to be the #1 seller, however we did want to sell cans of soda as well. Given this limitation, what is the max amount of water bottles the 501E can vend?

I appreciate the offer! I am located in NYC - please shoot me a PM (if we aren’t too far location wise, I’d be happy to pick up)

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16.9 soda is perfectly ok, but most water has the thinner bottles which crush under the weight of the ones above. 10 high is the max like I said, but the 501E does bottles 2 deep, meaning each column has two vertical stacks end to end, so max load is like 20.

As for the machine, I’m actually in Southern California (probably as far as you get from NY) so probably not worth it, as just freight will be 4-500+

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