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Made my first pull on Friday


raquel

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This was a double head I placed in a bar serving gumballs and Skittles. The total from both was $8.26 (someone dropped in a penny). The product had very little movement so I pulled the machine to put in another location. The manager suggested I try nuts or something salty. I may try it again with a single head this week. Any suggestions for product to sell in a bar?

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Well, I don't do any type of nuts, but I've had good returns on Chickle gum and mints. The drinkers want to hide the beer breath from the cops or momma.

Ditto!

As for peanuts, My suggestion based on experience, would be to not fill all the way full until you find out the popularity.  If you fill it full and go back a month later and it only sold $8, you pretty much lost money because the peanuts are going to be getting stale.

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And I  won't allow my machines in Bars or Liquor stores.

Because they are terrible locations?  Or because of your religious / moral / personal philosophies / personal addictions?  I believe it has been mentioned that this is a business forum, not a pulpit.  It's not Alcoholics Anonymous either.

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You could try changing the product out before pulling it.  Some locations are just bad, while others just need the right product.

But if pulling it, I generally try to leave it in a location, if the location is convenient that is, until I find another location.  Then it is just the trip to pull it, and immediately put it into the new location.  But until then, it is a practically free storage with a little income to boot.

Now this is good when getting started, but at a certain point, many vendors do not like to have any location underperforming, and find it is not worth it for them.  But that is a judgment call for each vendor to make.

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With candy you have the spoilage problem; the candy just sits there and spoils. So what to do? Put more in and hope it sells? So you could be losing money net net, not to mention the aggravation. I think it was Vince Lombardi who said about the forward pass, only three things can happen and two are bad. Of course that was in the Cave Man days, 3 yards and a cloud of dust. Same with candy vending not many good things can happen leaving a machine in a loser location.

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I would leave one machine and pull the other, this way you keep a location and gain a machine for another location while maintaining the national average. If I was in bars (which I am not) I would sell salty nuts, even though the salt corrodes the metal innards of the machine. salty nuts go hand in hand with drinking. <------- (ok leave that one alone guys) :D

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I would say it depends on how long it is there before a new location is found, how high the level of candy is, and how big the route is.

I have a dud location, but haven't been moving it yet.  I just keep the candy level real tight, and hit it every other service cycle.  I haven't had a problem with spoilage yet.  (I tested it recently.)  But I will be pulling it, not because I have a better location, but because it is so far off my regular route that I can cut out 30 min just by pulling it.

As long as I was keeping the candy from going stale, and I had machines at home that needed to be moved, I didn't worry too much about it.  Now that suddenly I had a rash of machines breaking, I suddenly don't have the machines at home like I did.

If the location is such a dud that the candy could go bad, then it definitely needs to be moved.  For $8 a month, I would just leave it currently, and hit it every other cycle.  I am trying to keep to a 6 week cycle right now, so that would be $24 each time I serviced it.  

And again, as my route grows the minimum number I would accept will climb.  My current plan is to pull 2 locations, reduce the number of heads at one location, and offer rubber balls at one of my commission locations.

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It was on location for almost two months. What length of time would you suggest?

Oh.  My bad.  I thought maybe you had it there less than a month.  Sorry.  You might try different items.  But if you already have a location but no machines, then yeah, I would probably yank it.

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