Getting High on Your Own Supply

[RaleighNC]

Come on, admit it - we all have our guilty pleasures with a garage or storage unit full of goodies. You can try and avoid taking a candy bar or bag of chips here and there but we are mere mortals incapable of such discipline. 

I’m a peanut m&m guy, especially late night when packing for a big fill the next morning. Sometimes I’ll go honey bun if I’m really needing a sugar hit. I’m pretty fine passing on drinks, but maybe a dew or sprite can if I need something carbonated and sugary.

How about you?

[AngryChris]

Believe it or not, I don't hit up my inventory much except when I'm pressed for time.  I have a building now so everything is there, which means I have no convenient access to it when I'm not there.  But my latest routine involves prekitting in the morning.  If I'm done around lunch time, I'll grab something out of the freezer (jalapeno cheeseburgers are a favorite) and a bottle of coke.  Then I'll watch something entertaining in my office for about 10 minutes while I eat.  It's unbelievably nice and convenient for me.  Otherwise, I sometimes grab a bag of chips if I'm really needing something to hold me over, especially if they are freshly expired.

[Zachsea]

I can probably eat my body weight in freshley pecan twirls.

[AZVendor]

I regularly ate from my machines/trucks when out on routes or from inventory in the shop when I was in the office.  Nothing out of the ordinary but since I have a high metabolism I just ate when I was hungry and, at the time, drank Mtn Dew.  My keeper-wife now feeds me very well and I eat much better but I always have cookies and pastries in my lunch bag too.  My favorite route foods were chocolate donuts, apple pies (the real Hostess ones), bear claws, Grandmas Choc and Apple, Twix, other random cookies, and Mtn Dew (lowest carbonation.)  Now that I look at that list it makes me look like I should be 300 lbs.

[Vendo Mike]

3 hours ago, AZVendor said:

I regularly ate from my machines/trucks when out on routes or from inventory in the shop when I was in the office.  Nothing out of the ordinary but since I have a high metabolism I just ate when I was hungry and, at the time, drank Mtn Dew.  My keeper-wife now feeds me very well and I eat much better but I always have cookies and pastries in my lunch bag too.  My favorite route foods were chocolate donuts, apple pies (the real Hostess ones), bear claws, Grandmas Choc and Apple, Twix, other random cookies, and Mtn Dew (lowest carbonation.)  Now that I look at that list it makes me look like I should be 300 lbs.

I know what you mean.  I could assemble some sort of large mammal from all the beef jerky I eat.  Being on the road a large part of the year, most of my meals come through a window of some sort.  My wife-keeper tries to make sure I get some "people food" when I'm home...but I'm still gonna have some cookies.

[ABCVending]

gaah - after 10+ years at this I can hardly eat any of the stuff we put in machines - used to grab a bag of chips here or a candy bar there but really lost interest in most of it - nature valley granola (crumbs!) bars still get tossed in the golf bag but that is about it.  My kids went nuts for the first year or so - but they got tired of it as well, hardly ever see them grab a bag or bar.

My brother on the other hand.....he'll eat ever single bag of pistacios he can find and golpher if I run out....he also drinks all the beer out of my shop Dixie and golphers that he has to put $.50 for each beer even though he steals that out of my change bucket anyway....family

[tblake05]

You guys CANT eat your own inventory! You didn’t pay sales tax on it! That’s cheating your local sales tax as well as federal and state income tax! Total no-no!

my wife and I will only do it in a pinch or if something is expired will put it in the cupboard. Some nights after dinner we’ll split a pack of mini donuts from the freezer. But in all honesty, we’re both pretty healthy and don’t really gorge on junk food. Since before this biz, we probably purchased 10 items combined from vending machines combined our entire lives. Just no interest in it.

[AZVendor]

Please, eating from your inventory is no different than it being a stale product which you throw away.  It is just a cost of doing business and no one is cheating anyone.

[darkinthepark]

22 hours ago, AZVendor said:

I regularly ate from my machines/trucks when out on routes or from inventory in the shop when I was in the office.  Nothing out of the ordinary but since I have a high metabolism I just ate when I was hungry and, at the time, drank Mtn Dew.  My keeper-wife now feeds me very well and I eat much better but I always have cookies and pastries in my lunch bag too.  My favorite route foods were chocolate donuts, apple pies (the real Hostess ones), bear claws, Grandmas Choc and Apple, Twix, other random cookies, and Mtn Dew (lowest carbonation.)  Now that I look at that list it makes me look like I should be 300 lbs.

I'm surprised by this answer AZ....it seems out of character for you.  Did you let your employees eat from the machines?

[AZVendor]

Yes.  It was a perk of the job and a way to ensure they didn't take substantial times for lunch. We ran 10-12 hour days.

[darkinthepark]

37 minutes ago, AZVendor said:

Yes.  It was a perk of the job and a way to ensure they didn't take substantial times for lunch. We ran 10-12 hour days.

Would they have to list what items they took or it didn't matter?

[AZVendor]

I never worried about the snacking as long as it was onesy twosy because it was no different than handing out a free soda once in a while to a customer as goodwill.  Besides, you'll never know when the driver eats anything anyway, you just know it will happen so you deal with it up front.  When you move 10s of thousands of products each week through machines it doesn't matter at all.  Heck, it wouldn't even matter if it was just hundreds of products through one machine.  In vending the income minus the expenses is the gross profit, simple as that.  You do an inventory at the end of the year, if your accountant asks for it, and it's always an estimate anyway. 

[tblake05]

13 hours ago, AZVendor said:

Please, eating from your inventory is no different than it being a stale product which you throw away.  It is just a cost of doing business and no one is cheating anyone.

Difference for us is we write off the stales.

[AngryChris]

1 hour ago, tblake05 said:

Difference for us is we write off the stales.

I don't know how it's possible to write off stales.  I have never seen someone explain how that's possible.  You write off the COG.  There is no "stale" item in accounting I have seen.  I think it comes down to a bit of manipulating the expenses to write off stales... That, or your accountant just agreed with you to please you but nothing actually gets entered

[AZVendor]

Right.  Stales just go to the bottom line after you deduct cost of goods sold.  I learned years ago that you can't "write off" bad product.  Now, if you donated product to a charity then you could write it off, for whatever that's worth.  We used to take crates of stales (two to three every week) to various food banks but we never accounted for it as it wasn't worthwhile to do so.

[tblake05]

Hmmm. Didn’t realize that guys. Learn something new every day.

I suppose we’ll keep keeping track of stales just to see what’s not moving the best. Plus if the IRS ever audits us. They’d probably like to see what we’ve tossed from being expired.

[Golfdogs]

On 2/4/2022 at 12:56 PM, AZVendor said:

Right.  Stales just go to the bottom line after you deduct cost of goods sold.  I learned years ago that you can't "write off" bad product.  Now, if you donated product to a charity then you could write it off, for whatever that's worth.  We used to take crates of stales (two to three every week) to various food banks but we never accounted for it as it wasn't worthwhile to do so.

I tried dropping stales off at a shelter once.  Bottom Line, they wouldn't accept anything that was out of date.

[AZVendor]

Stales only have to be monitored so you know if a driver is overstocking machines. This in itself will tell you also what isn't selling.  In 35 years of vending I was never audited by the IRS. It pays to keep honest books.