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question about 1-800 Vending


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My name is philadelphiaman and I want to know if 1-800 Vending is a good company to buy a package from. I have no experience with the vending industry, but am eager to start my own route.

they have a pretty good deal, but just wondering if anyone has any experience with them. Their machines seem pretty good. Thoughts?

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I personally have never dealt with them. but if you are just starting out, you might want to consider buying used, that way you don't have to have as much start up capital and if something goes wrong and you find that vending isn't right for you, you are not stuck with thousands of dollars in equipment that is only worth hundreds on the used market.

IMO, Buying a new machine is like buying a new car. Once it leaves the store, it loses 25% or more of its value.

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My name is philadelphiaman and I want to know if 1-800 Vending is a good company to buy a package from. I have no experience with the vending industry, but am eager to start my own route.

they have a pretty good deal, but just wondering if anyone has any experience with them. Their machines seem pretty good. Thoughts?

You will be paying a very high premium for low volume equipment. These machines are fine for small low volume locations, anything with 50 or more people in it is going to have other vendors like me offering them full size equipment which provides more variety and more selections. I don't know the cost of this stuff but when you factor in the cost of the monitoring service and your cost to service (gas, time, insurance, taxes, depreciation etc.),not including debt service, your return on investment will be a very long time.

Doing some back of the envelope figuring to illustrate:

Assume it the unit costs around 3K for the unit, freight and taxes

Add another 500 for locator fees and another 250 to fill machine and coin mech.

Total investment 3,750

Now that you are set up and in business, lets say that you have a location that kicks an average of 60 a week X 52 weeks / 12 months = 260 a month gross revenue. Figure you meet industry avg of 55% cost of goods sold (includes out of date product losses). That leaves you with 117 profit per month. Now lets figure your cost to go service the location, an hour of your time for driving and servicing (your time is worth something, right?) Some miles driven, wear and tear on the car, insurance. Being VERY conservative lets go with 10 bucks each time you service. At 60 a week you will need to go 1X per week so thats 4X per month, not counting the months that have 5 weeks, thats an additional 40 from the 117 which leaves you with 77 a month. This does not include the additional monthly fees for the monitoring service and debit/credit transaction fees. 3750/77= 48.7 months to get your money back. That's also assuming that they stay happy with you and don't give you the boot, that the location does not close, that they don't move another 30 miles away etc. etc.

As NinnJinn suggested buy used, and stay away from debit/credit in low volume locations its not worth it.

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Thank you very much for the insight regarding the question. I will consider it in my business analysis.

Much appreciated.

Regards

philadelphiaman

You will be paying a very high premium for low volume equipment. These machines are fine for small low volume locations, anything with 50 or more people in it is going to have other vendors like me offering them full size equipment which provides more variety and more selections. I don't know the cost of this stuff but when you factor in the cost of the monitoring service and your cost to service (gas, time, insurance, taxes, depreciation etc.),not including debt service, your return on investment will be a very long time.

Doing some back of the envelope figuring to illustrate:

Assume it the unit costs around 3K for the unit, freight and taxes

Add another 500 for locator fees and another 250 to fill machine and coin mech.

Total investment 3,750

Now that you are set up and in business, lets say that you have a location that kicks an average of 60 a week X 52 weeks / 12 months = 260 a month gross revenue. Figure you meet industry avg of 55% cost of goods sold (includes out of date product losses). That leaves you with 117 profit per month. Now lets figure your cost to go service the location, an hour of your time for driving and servicing (your time is worth something, right?) Some miles driven, wear and tear on the car, insurance. Being VERY conservative lets go with 10 bucks each time you service. At 60 a week you will need to go 1X per week so thats 4X per month, not counting the months that have 5 weeks, thats an additional 40 from the 117 which leaves you with 77 a month. This does not include the additional monthly fees for the monitoring service and debit/credit transaction fees. 3750/77= 48.7 months to get your money back. That's also assuming that they stay happy with you and don't give you the boot, that the location does not close, that they don't move another 30 miles away etc. etc.

As NinnJinn suggested buy used, and stay away from debit/credit in low volume locations its not worth it.

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Like others have said buy used , stay away from combo machines for stand alone locations. Spend about 30 days reading and learning on this forum before you buy the first machine. Ask questions (like you already have) before you spend a penny.

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