If you are new to the vending machine business, you should know that you have a choice in the type of vending you will do. If you choose full line vending, you will be selling sandwiches, sodas and snacks in large, bulky machines that are very heavy. If you want to throw in some adult items, machines can also vend cigarettes or condoms. Bulk vending, which has more lightweight machines, offers you the chance to sell loose items like candy, gum and small toys in bulk. Bulk vending machines can be transported to different locations in your car, but they earn money much slower than full line vending machines – which do not need as many locations to turn an equal profit. Full line vending machines cost a lot, though. It is tough to afford them unless you are approved for a third-party vending program. Once you have your machines, though, you are in a small competitive club, since many vendors cannot afford the machines.
A common concern among vendors who must entrust the emptying and stocking of machines to subcontractors or employees is theft. They must always have people they absolutely trust to assist them with the machines. Vend counters, which can tell the vendor how many items a particular machine has sold, have helped cut down on the amount of money or snacks that go missing.
Full line vending has a couple of disadvantages, too. Moving the machines can be particularly burdensome if there are not enough people to make the move. Machines this heavy usually have to be moved by other machines. Troubleshooting, repairs and fixing coin jams also take a lot of time. There are so many slots and slide-through areas that must be examined to pinpoint the source of a coin jam when it happens. Vendors must explore every coin deposit or coin dispensing possibility to solve a coin jam problem.
Time is the major investment in a full line vending business. Inventory and stock must be consistently monitored for expiration dates. Otherwise, items in your machines expire and open you up for a flood of customer complaints. Restocking eats away even more time. Depending on how far apart your machines are, restocking could take from several hours to a full working day to complete. Vendors must pay attention to prices in the machines when stock items change, and they must ensure there is adequate variety. On the front end of stocking, there is shopping or ordering products to consider, and during the week, there must be time to respond promptly to customer complaints, requests for refunds and the ever popular coin jams.
Through the 1990s and into the early 2000s, the full line vending industry was controlled by national companies. These companies secured contracts to provide all the vending for targeted franchises and chains. Currently, the field is run mostly by small independent contractors who have the capability to respond more quickly to customer complaints and give their clients the varieties of snacks and beverages they demand.
If you are a patient person and can invest the time that it will take to operate this kind of business efficiently, then full line vending may be just the thing for you. You will need your highest level of energy and a good working knowledge of how the machines run so that you can manage small troubleshooting on your own. The quirkiest thing of all is the way that you earn your profit. It is mostly in coins. Weekly trips to the bank will find you lugging bank bags full of wrapped coins, but quite happy to have earned revenue.