Office Coffee Service

[4twcorp]

Hello Community. First time poster here. Anyway, my vending business has been growing steadily and I'm now at the point where I need to incorporate Office Coffee Service based on the types of accounts I'm beginning to get into. I've seen several firms in my area who "gift" the coffee machines in exchange for either ordering the coffee product from them, or in exchange for doing the other venbding through them.

My question is, how are they able to do this? Do they hook up with coffee distributors that wind up eating the cost of equipment in exchange for the product ordering? Help me understand. I'm really careful about not overexposing myself on the expense side. I'm not interested in buying all this coffee equipment, and not really interested in managing a coffee program. But I'm finding more and more that the services go hand in hand with other vending.

How are you doing this? Please share as much as you can about doing this the right way, and profitably.

Thanks!!!!

[mission vending]

There are many solutions to the OCS questions, limited only by your creativity and ingenuity.

Here are a several ideas:

1. I charge commission prices for vending and provide the brewer and coffee and don't pay commission to offset the expense, client responsible for the rest of supplies at my regular price.

2. Provide brewer at no cost and invoice client for all items used, coffee, sugar, cream etc. They must buy all supplies from me.

3. Lease brewer to client and they can purchase supplies from me or wherever they can get better deal.

4. Install a coin operated coffee machine, set on free vend or discounted price and invoice the difference between your price and discounted amount based on meter readings. I do this with several locations on drinks as well.

Let me know if you need anything else.

Mike

[MrEen]

I've seen several firms in my area who "gift" the coffee machines in exchange for either ordering the coffee product from them, or in exchange for doing the other venbding through them.

I'm betting the other firms are "providing" the machine at no cost, not "gifting" it (which implies it has become the property of the location.) You may have simply misunderstood what someone was telling you. Then again, you may have been intentionally misled.

The most common set up, I believe, is you provide the brewer, and the customer must buy all their coffee for use in that brewer from you. Most times, the location will also buy cream, sugar, cups, etc. from you as well.

The profits in OCS are usually very decent and can pay for they brewer in a few months in decent locations (we had one location where the profit from the initial supplies at set up paid for the brewer immediately!)

Mike (mission vending) offered some great alternatives to this idea (well, except for #2 which IS this idea )

Just a heads up to anyone reading this, flavored creamers really rock for us (usually at least 2-1 over half and half, and sometimes up to 10-1)

Hope that helps and welcome to the forum!

Scott

[mxer518]

Just my 2 cents but form my experiences this has been a great way to get into the right locations, but some things to keep in mind are that if it does enough volume (usually 100+ cups per week) it makes more sense to put in a vended coffee machine, the locations will usually agree with this notion because it will be a lot less hands on for them and it will still provide the service. The drawbacks to this is if you are using a good machine like a Brio it will set you back about 3500 for a decent referb. What I have done in a few cases is get just a standard Bunn brewer and placed it to see what kind of volume it actually does based on the amount of supplies used. It has been my experience that you need a decent amount of OCS accounts to really make it very much your while to operate this type of business. For example I only have 2 Bunn brewers and their only purpose it to install in an account a decide if it will do the volume to put in a vended coffee machine.

[MrEen]

I really like your plan mxer but I have had one major problem with that idea. I've have never worked with a vended coffee machine that was reliable. I've worked with Brio's, Progema's and full size machines including Wittern POS's. The best equipment I've dealt with was much older full size stuff which unfortunately, looks old!

Maybe we just continually got machines that were made in the late afternoon on a Friday. No idea.

Scott

[mxer518]

I have several brio's that I bought new upwards of 5-7 years ago and have never had any major issues with them. They have become my only coffee machine I will  use for vended coffee applications. The only bit of advice I can give with most vended coffee machines is if they are in a controlled environment remove the hopper for sugar and just provide sugar for the customers, by doing this I have removed the most common thing that will go wrong with a coffee machine.

[coinvestor]

I will never do vended coffee again. I have tried multiple brands of coffee machines (never had a brio) and had twelve of them at one point. I converted them to OCS accounts, or sold off the locations to other vendors. I don't like emptying slop buckets, I don't like cleaning mold from mixing bowls, I don't like having control of the actual ingredients in the product (since nobody will ever like it), and I don't think that mechanics, electronics, and plumbed water have any business being in one place at the same time:)

Just my thoughts!

[midtenn]

Try one of these. You and the customers will be happy.

http://www.nationalvendors.com/Nv/products/hotDrinkCenter2.cfm

[spdydre]

I wanted to bump this up because I am looking at a 3 stop route and two are coffee accounts but I have never done coffee.  Is this something I should avoid while I am still small or take on? What are the downsides to coffee accounts?

[soco]

As I've said before, I do OCS 3rd party with Poland Springs.  They provide the Bunn or Thermos based coffee brewer for a modest monthly rental which I mark up and charge the client.  Ditto coffee supplies.  But I also source coffee supplies via Sam's etc.  Don't think it matters whether you have a small vending route or not Spydre, just whether you are interested in "diversifying".  Going through Poland Springs is pretty effortless, especially as I can up-sell water too as their prices are competitive.

[mission vending]

As I've said before, I do OCS 3rd party with Poland Springs.  They provide the Bunn or Thermos based coffee brewer for a modest monthly rental which I mark up and charge the client.  Ditto coffee supplies.  But I also source coffee supplies via Sam's etc.  Don't think it matters whether you have a small vending route or not Spydre, just whether you are interested in "diversifying".  Going through Poland Springs is pretty effortless, especially as I can up-sell water too as their prices are competitive.

It seems to be becoming common practice for OCS companies to charge a monthly rental for the brewer. One of the local companies just recently went to a $5 monthly rental plus the coffee and supplies from them.

[dogcow]

I wanted to bump this up because I am looking at a 3 stop route and two are coffee accounts but I have never done coffee.  Is this something I should avoid while I am still small or take on? What are the downsides to coffee accounts?

i hate to bump this old thread but any info on how i can get set up with them?

[AZVendor]

Um, you're not in the US, are you?