Can someone explain 3rd party to me?

[JEREMYTINA]

Can someone explain third party to me?  It seems like it can be a real pain, but may be the way to go to avoid outlaying a bunch of cash up front for machines.  Who do I contact?  What brand is the best to work with? Etc..

[s.weir]

I have interest in this as well.  A fair amount of people have mentioned using this, yet there is very little information on it. 

[alyssamma]

If you do a search, there are several in depth posts about this. Some even explain the pros and cons of Pepsi vs. Coke.

[s.weir]

I read through a few and I am pretty glad I was able to buy my own machines off the start.  Even if it is a bit slower i don't have to deal with alot of the stupid stuff that it sounds comes along with 3rd party vending.  Here is a thread on it http://vendiscuss.com/forum/index.php?topic=467.0

[mxer518]

a great deal of the pros and cons will be different depending where in the country you are from, I have seen that quite a bit in my area with the different bottlers.

[JEREMYTINA]

Guess I will just stick with my plan, and buy the equipment and have Eddie place them.  I have a new 2 year contract location in a nursing home that I am starting in June when Tampa Bay Vending's contract expires.  Based on the complaint that they constantly run out completely of soda and 90 % of the snacks every 10 days (I verified this),  this will be a solid location grossing $1500 or more a month.  I do not even have to pay a commission.  All they want is to be serviced weekly on the same day.  I am thinking of putting 2 soda machines and one 5 wide snack in here.  They currently have a frozen food, but no one seems to use.  The only thing I can't do here is the wireless credit cards.  I will work my way up to that from the profit at the location.

[mission vending]

3rd party vending programs can be both a blessing and a curse. I was really big into using the third party stuff until about 5 years ago. Since then I have been gradually reducing the number of machines and replacing them with owned equipment. I'm down to less than 10.

It seems that the bottlers have been making it a lot harder to participate in third party programs for any number of reasons during the last year or so. If you can get into a third party program it's worth looking into, just don't get to the point where the survival of your business is largely dependent on the continuation of the program.

my .02

[JEREMYTINA]

Perhaps they realize the machines are a huge expense for them, and that they are doing a lot of work for little return?  I don't know, I guess I was being cheap.  After digging into some old threads, this just doesn't seem like this fits well with my business model.

[mxer518]

A lot can depend on the location and what they are requiring from you, for example that new account that you are taking over in June sounds like a glass front machine would work well and can be justified in that location, they will set you back almost 10K new or third party for just an increased product cost than you can still pass along to the customers.

[JEREMYTINA]

The location wants cans, they currently have some nice USI equipment in there and they are vending at 0.65 a can.  I told them my equipment won't be new, but I will maintain it continuously, and keep it well stocked.  This location has almost 200 employees and I believe from the information I have, that they go through approx 1200 cans a month.  Would Coke be able to vend at that price with that volume?