Target number?

[Doug G]

Despite what the title might suggest, no, I'm not looking for the phone number for a Target store 😁

New to this board as I'm not actually in the business... yet.  I've been doing research on it; trying to learn as much as I can about the business.  There's one question/thought that has crossed my mind that I don't think I've seen much guidance on.  For those of you who have been vendors for awhile, do you have a target number of employees you'd like to have at a location before considering putting in machine(s)?

[savend]

My general rule is 40-50 people on site, at least before I’m willing to set a snack machine. With soda machines, I’m willing pretty much anywhere. I’ve have locations with 3 or 4 people on site that do very well. 

[Randymire]

I’ve been in business for 18 years . 
when I started I would take a drink account with 20 people. 
now , I won’t take anything for myself with less then 50 people unless they have high traffic and I definitely won’t set a snack machine for less then 50 people. 
You have to consider that you have a lot of cost associated with setting an account , you’ve got to pay for the machine, repairs, your time , moving fees ( when I move onto the location I consider the moving cost onto and off of the location) . 
I also find locations for other vendors and I have clients that want anything but then I try to discourage this because while you can be successful with small locations , it’s more difficult. 
Once again, consider the traffic on the location, how many people have access to the machine?, will the machine possibly be used 8 hours a day or 24 hours? There are many factors involved in my accepting a location. 

[Southeast Treats]

The type of location is important, a blue collar factory or physical type work environment will usually do better than a white collar office, so a smaller number of employees is OK as long as they stay on location. A service business where most of the employees are on the road all day may not do very well. Any other available outlets within a short distance (C-store, etc) will depress your sales to some extent.  The the other hand, an office with no other options can do very well.  Single work shift or multiple shifts, etc.  Note that some locations will have played the game before and will lie about employee counts to get you to service them.   Count cars in the parking lot, etc to help verify stats.  If a location says it has 40 employees but the parking lot only has 10 spaces, warning!! 

Like Randymire said, snacks are different than drinks, you have to consider that smaller locations will usually generate more stale snacks that have to be thrown away for a dead loss.  Can drinks generally have long shelf life except for diet drinks, so it's easier to keep a good stock in the machine without having stales.  With small accounts having sufficient service intervals is important to serving them at a profit.