Rescue Squads ? --- are they good vending locations?

[andyinchville]

HI Guys,

I have  a chance to get place a snack machine in a small town's rescue squad building.

Just wondering how sites like this typically do.

The site is in a small nearby town (the stop would be about 8 miles one way from my next closest stop). The site will be manned 24/7 by a minimum of 4 people at all times and they will have meetings every 2 weeks for all the members (about 50).

I do not have anything else currently in this nearby town BUT I have driven around and there seems to be several "interesting" possibilities.

So what do you all think?.....4 people is not a lot (plus they are subject to being out on calls BUT at least it is open 24/7 and other leads may come in from them)...

Any ideas on what kings of $$ to expect from this set up?....Anybody else out there have experience with rescue squads? (I tried a search but nothing came up),.

Thanks!

Andrew 

[TGL Vending]

i would guess 20-40 a week if your lucky.

[Poplady1]

If you have a retiree machine (one that doesn't look so good but works well) this might be a good home for it but it needs to be a small snack.  Even then you would need to have other stops in that area to make it profitable.  I would see if I could get some additional business before promising these guys anything. 

Blue Moose

[soco]

Why not an honor box if you can't get anything else short-term?  Seems like rescue squads are trustworthy types...

[soco]

BTW, my buddy made me a couple of wooden frames with hinged plexi lids (keep the mice out) based on the dims of the cardboard tray that "Munchies" come in.  I partition the tray with a Welch's fruit snack box (has 3 sections) in which I put all the candy, granola bars etc. and then the rest of the tray is snacks etc.  I use a small cardboard box for $.  The 2 accounts these are in love them and don't rip me off.  Cost almost nothing, but looks nice.

[mission vending]

i would guess 20-40 a week if your lucky.

I would put it on the lower end of that estimate unless it's the week of the meeting with 50 people. I would not buy equipment for a location like this, if you have something sitting idle, something else nearby and the time to do it with no expectations then sure why not?

[mxer518]

I personally have 6 EMS type places, they are all decent accounts once you figure out what sells, I have found 20 oz to do nearly twice the volume as cans mainly I believe due t the fact they grab them and want to bring them in the vehicles with them and bottles travel better than cans. but even my best EMS account only does about 500$ gross a month which is still fair to poor.

[mission vending]

I personally have 6 EMS type places, they are all decent accounts once you figure out what sells, I have found 20 oz to do nearly twice the volume as cans mainly I believe due t the fact they grab them and want to bring them in the vehicles with them and bottles travel better than cans. but even my best EMS account only does about 500$ gross a month which is still fair to poor.

How much is drink and how much snack?  The original post mentioned snack only.

[mxer518]

I would say its a 70-30 split with drinks doing 70% of the gross income but remember that its 20oz so the retail will be between 1.25 and 1.50

[mission vending]

So splitting your best account, approx $500 on a 70/30 basis that attributes $150 monthly to snacks. Divide that by 4.33 weeks a month and you get 34.64 a week in sales at your best location.

That's right about in the middle of the 20-40 a week in snacks previously mentioned.

[mxer518]

I would say it again, its not place to invest money but could be a nice storage facility for an idle machine.

[andyinchville]

HI Guys,

Thanks for all the replies and insights......The machine I am putting there is a machine that I have in storage anyways so hopefully it will do better than just gathering dust!

I am hoping that as time goes on I will get at least a few more stops in the town to make it more worthwhile....

As far as drinks go, they already have a Pepsi machine....Maybe I can get them to consider a coke machine (I haven't placed any drink machines yet nor do I own any but I am set up with both Coke and Pepsi to earn a commission if I can get a location for them).

I'm going to try to place the machine later this week and I'll let you all know how it does.

Thanks again!

Andrew

[mxer518]

I would place it yourself, do not allow them to place the machine and just pay you commission. From my experience talking to several people you will never get a commission check unless its a very large volume account, they typically only cut commission checks for 50$ and above on a quarterly basis.

[coinvestor]

I would place it yourself, do not allow them to place the machine and just pay you commission. From my experience talking to several people you will never get a commission check unless its a very large volume account, they typically only cut commission checks for 50$ and above on a quarterly basis.

Yeah.......  Its 110 cases or more per year in my area. If it sells 109 cases you don't get a thing.

JD

[mission vending]

I would say it again, its not place to invest money but could be a nice storage facility for an idle machine.

A machine that pays for its own storage........ I like that

[nosebreaker]

I'd try to put the machine near the front of the garage, that way if anybody is walking by on the street and they see the machine they could buy something.  or if you can put it outside in front of the building (people won't want to walk into the fire station/EMS, even for a drink).  This is presuming they are on a main road, if not then nevermind.

[vvs1man]

Why not try it!!!! If you don't have to put a lot of money into the machine or if you already have one. Even with 4 people 24 hours a day and 50 twice a month sounds like it could be a small pick up but like you said there seem to be other opertunities in that town that will make the 8 mile trip worth it. Let us know how it goes. Also if not that kind of investment I think the honor box would do well also.