Vending bottles of water for a dollar?

[ghearn77]

New to the vending business here. Im considering buying some refurbished machines, get them wrapped or something to make them look nice, and only sell waters -for $1. Its a low cost but still 90% markup. Has anyone heard of someone doing something like this? Any feedback is much appreciated. 

[orsd]

The issue is that most bottles of water are not vendable because they will squish badly in a stack vendor and jam the machine.

Most vendable waters are going to need to sell for more than a dollar due to the high cost of product.

[ghearn77]

What about something like the Dixie narco bev max? 

[orsd]

A bit finicky but most waters should vend ok. The only issue is that Bevmaxes are really expensive.

[AZVendor]

The Bevmax will still have problems with a soft bottle that won't vend in a soda machine.  If Nestle or whoever bought them still make the vending 16.0 oz bottle then that's what you want.  You'll need to find the regional named product in your area such as Arrowhead, Zephyrhills, Deer Park, Ice Mountain, Ozarka or Poland Springs. 

[ABCVending]

I have a lot of bottle drops - cheap water vends out of them ok - aquafina has pretty squishy bottles but they cost like $.20 ea and we sell em for a $1.

For Hotels we usually fill the top 3 shelves with nothing but water - if shimmed correctly and the gates are smooth and not sticky they do pretty good - sometimes customers get a two-fer but most of the time they vend successfully - need the tall pushers and short diving boards.

City of Seattle enacted a hard core sweetened beverage tax years back - tax on a 12 oz can of coke is $.25 - so we converted the few machines left in Seattle to water only, 2 of those are still in play and make pretty good $$

[divot]

I sell the Dasani 16.9 oz out of my royal GIII's. When I load them I set the squishiest ones aside- usually about 5 out of 36, and those are the ones that go into my elevator machines. 

Since I started doing this I have not had many issues with my water bottles jamming in the columns. I found Dasani is the firmest ( as far as water bottles under 20oz). 

I have also had good results in my V-max machines, assuming the correct side shims are in place.