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How many m&m for $.25?


mbajohn1990

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I just started in bulk vending today.  I wanted to do just gumballs, but my first location is in an auto parts store breakroom.  I am going to wait and see how it does in a few weeks, but my thinking is the adult employees will not want gumballs. 

If I switch to m&ms, how many grams should i disburse per 25 cent vend?  I am using Rhino machines.  If you are not familiar with gram measurements, how do you determine how much to disburse?  Am i right in planning to disburse more in a breakroom than on the floor for customers because 100% of sales will likely be return customers?  For future reference, how much should i vend in a breakroom vs on the salesfloor?  All comments are greatly appreciated.  

Edited by mbajohn1990
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14 hours ago, mbajohn1990 said:

I just started in bulk vending today.  I wanted to do just gumballs, but my first location is in an auto parts store breakroom.  I am going to wait and see how it does in a few weeks, but my thinking is the adult employees will not want gumballs. 

If I switch to m&ms, how many grams should i disburse per 25 cent vend?  I am using Rhino machines.  If you are not familiar with gram measurements, how do you determine how much to disburse?  Am i right in planning to disburse more in a breakroom than on the floor for customers because 100% of sales will likely be return customers?  For future reference, how much should i vend in a breakroom vs on the salesfloor?  All comments are greatly appreciated.  

Don't jump ship on gumballs too quickly.......give it a couple of months before you change it especially if you are moving to an expensive candy like M & Ms. I have alot of auto parts places (in break rooms & on sales floor) and they generally do pretty well with gumballs. If you do move to candy do they have a full line (big machine) candy machine? If they do I will generally try to offer a candy that they do not have in the machine especially if the competitors vend price is at 1.00 or lower. If the prices are at $1.25 or higher you may be able to compete head to head with them on the same products.

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On 11/21/2019 at 8:15 AM, gumball guy said:

Don't jump ship on gumballs too quickly.......give it a couple of months before you change it especially if you are moving to an expensive candy like M & Ms. I have alot of auto parts places (in break rooms & on sales floor) and they generally do pretty well with gumballs. If you do move to candy do they have a full line (big machine) candy machine? If they do I will generally try to offer a candy that they do not have in the machine especially if the competitors vend price is at 1.00 or lower. If the prices are at $1.25 or higher you may be able to compete head to head with them on the same products.

There are no other machines in the breakroom.  It is in an advanced auto parts.  Should I be worried about it being kicked out if a district manager comes through?  I used a locator to find the store and they have a 60 day warranted for kickouts but im worried about getting the boot after 60 days and before i recoup the locators fees 

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11 hours ago, mbajohn1990 said:

There are no other machines in the breakroom.  It is in an advanced auto parts.  Should I be worried about it being kicked out if a district manager comes through?  I used a locator to find the store and they have a 60 day warranted for kickouts but im worried about getting the boot after 60 days and before i recoup the locators fees 

Vending, like any other business, is a gamble. I will try darn near any location if I feel the machine is not in imminent danger of being stolen because you just don't know how it will do until you try it. The one type of location that I generally balk at is the large corporate chain store because most have policies prohibiting vending machines. I have no idea what Advance Auto Parts vending policy is but the fact that the machine is in the break room and not on the sales floor improves the odds that it will be tolerated going forward. I would suggest that anytime you are using a locator and you receive a corporate location, talk to the store manager (not the assistant manager) and make sure it is allowed by the company. If he says yes you should be good to go and if he says no then get on the phone with the locator and tell him you need a replacement location because it was against corporate policy to set the machine there. Doing it this way helps reduce the chance of getting kicked out in 6 months if the scenario you describe occurs. Keep in mind that unless this place is a real world beater of a location you are probably not going to recoup your locator fees in 60 days so just keep your fingers crossed and provide great service. Finally I know you hear it all of the time but you really need to learn how to locate for yourself......especially if you are working on a limited budget. Good luck with the location.

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3 hours ago, gumball guy said:

Vending, like any other business, is a gamble. I will try darn near any location if I feel the machine is not in imminent danger of being stolen because you just don't know how it will do until you try it. The one type of location that I generally balk at is the large corporate chain store because most have policies prohibiting vending machines. I have no idea what Advance Auto Parts vending policy is but the fact that the machine is in the break room and not on the sales floor improves the odds that it will be tolerated going forward. I would suggest that anytime you are using a locator and you receive a corporate location, talk to the store manager (not the assistant manager) and make sure it is allowed by the company. If he says yes you should be good to go and if he says no then get on the phone with the locator and tell him you need a replacement location because it was against corporate policy to set the machine there. Doing it this way helps reduce the chance of getting kicked out in 6 months if the scenario you describe occurs. Keep in mind that unless this place is a real world beater of a location you are probably not going to recoup your locator fees in 60 days so just keep your fingers crossed and provide great service. Finally I know you hear it all of the time but you really need to learn how to locate for yourself......especially if you are working on a limited budget. Good luck with the location.

Thank you for your response, I am going to go ahead and try to market the machines myself once my two new ones arrive on Wednesday.  How long do most locations last, excluding franchise locations?  I would like to know in case I do poorly in finding locations myself and have to decide if hiring a locator will be profitable in the long-term.  I have some experience in telemarketing, but I was a low performer except in one role where i did b2b appointment setting 

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On 11/21/2019 at 6:42 AM, Mehehe said:

Avoid peanuts, they do damage the machine and the machine just ends up looking nasty really fast.

Here is what I set my machines at.

Peanut MM's 5 per vend.

Regular MM's 10 per vend.

 

Thank you for your response.  If the gumballs do poorly I will have m&ms arriving from amazon that cost just 19 cents per ounce

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41 minutes ago, mbajohn1990 said:

Thank you for your response, I am going to go ahead and try to market the machines myself once my two new ones arrive on Wednesday.  How long do most locations last, excluding franchise locations?  I would like to know in case I do poorly in finding locations myself and have to decide if hiring a locator will be profitable in the long-term.  I have some experience in telemarketing, but I was a low performer except in one role where i did b2b appointment setting 

There is no way to know how long a location will last. One thing that is generally a shock to bulk vending newcomers is the transient nature of this business. Businesses close, management changes, slow sales, fires, theft, floods, competition........these are just some of the reasons you lose locations. Consistently high performing accounts are few and far between these days so you have to be ready to move equipment when the sales don't warrant staying in that location. You are always locating in bulk vending so if you are uncomfortable knocking on doors or don't have the resources to gamble on a locator then you will be facing an uphill battle. I don't mean to sound negative but this is a challenging business and it will do nothing but get tougher in the years to come. A reduction in brick & mortar locations, less people carrying coins and rising product costs will continue to put the squeeze on this sector of the vending industry so be prepared to put in the time if you want this endeavor to be successful. Good luck.

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6 minutes ago, gumball guy said:

There is no way to know how long a location will last. One thing that is generally a shock to bulk vending newcomers is the transient nature of this business. Businesses close, management changes, slow sales, fires, theft, floods, competition........these are just some of the reasons you lose locations. Consistently high performing accounts are few and far between these days so you have to be ready to move equipment when the sales don't warrant staying in that location. You are always locating in bulk vending so if you are uncomfortable knocking on doors or don't have the resources to gamble on a locator then you will be facing an uphill battle. I don't mean to sound negative but this is a challenging business and it will do nothing but get tougher in the years to come. A reduction in brick & mortar locations, less people carrying coins and rising product costs will continue to put the squeeze on this sector of the vending industry so be prepared to put in the time if you want this endeavor to be successful. Good luck.

I will try my best to promote myself from now on since otherwise I'll be paying the locator to place the same machine many different times.  

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I am learning quick but new questions keep coming up.  I'd like to know on average how much a doublehead vending machine will gross in a month in a city of 100,000 versus a triple head.  I am avoiding the triple because of waste concerns.  By average I mean if someone had 1,000 double head locations in a similar sized city how much would the mean gross be roughly?  $20? $25?  I am using m&ms or skittles at and gumballs

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On 11/24/2019 at 7:42 PM, mbajohn1990 said:

I am learning quick but new questions keep coming up.  I'd like to know on average how much a doublehead vending machine will gross in a month in a city of 100,000 versus a triple head.  I am avoiding the triple because of waste concerns.  By average I mean if someone had 1,000 double head locations in a similar sized city how much would the mean gross be roughly?  $20? $25?  I am using m&ms or skittles at and gumballs

Doubles are a good choice. Most locations do not warrant three candy selections. Industry standard is $6 to $8 per head per month but you can't rely on that. Every location is unique and it is hard to say how a location will do until you are in it. You could put a machine in a small business with a handful of employees thinking "I'm gonna be pulling this in about three months" then come to find out you have one or two employees that love the machine and sales take off. High traffic locations are generally solid but those types of locations are tougher to come by and conversely are not always successful. To put it into some perspective If you had 1,000 locations 300 to 400 of those locations would be bringing in the bulk of your overall sales. Some people may disagree with that assessment but that has been my experience over the last 15 years. Socioeconomic factors also play a big part in sales. Lower income areas always seem to perform better than more affluent areas. My point is that you can't accurately project average sales just on the number of people in a city. 

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