Having your own vending machine businesses can be a profitable effort and quite rewarding. But at the same time, starting this business will introduce more challenges. There are a few points to remember to make your endeavour easier.
Step 1.
Look for a potential location. The possibilities for your vending endeavour are endless. Seek out high traffic sites. The higher the traffic, the larger number of potential sales you will have. Place your vending machines in office break rooms, hospital cafeterias, school canteens, and other prospective outlets including restaurants, train stations, fitness gyms, hotels, laundries, department stores, markets, movie theatres, and more.
Find two or three high traffic sites to begin with, which are relatively free from other competing machines. Take time to observe the customer traffic and write the details in your planner.
Step 2.
Choose what to vend. With your data about the usual customers in your chosen site, decide what products you should vend that are relevant to their needs and wants. If your marked site is a fitness gym, your target customers will not get a can of soft drink and a bag of crisps from your machine. They would probably prefer mineral water, low calorie drinks, and whole grain snacks.
Try to make your vending presentation more personalised and unique from other competitors. For instance, if it is the Christmas season, dress-up your chocolates with red and green wrappers or something that says, “Hey! Merry Christmas”. And if you’re going to establish more than one machine with different products in the same site, make sure that you provide enough space to accommodate them.
Step 3.
Negotiate for your target site. Ask for permission to set up your machine in your target site. Haggle for options that are rewarding for you and the location’s management. One option is a direct lease rent of the space, but a better option is offering a share of the percentage of the income. Offering a percentage of the total income rather than a fixed fee protects you and the stability of your business against fluctuating incomes. The amount paid to the space’s management changes as the profits fluctuate, which will always leave some income for you.
Step 4.
Lease or buy vending machines from a reputable dealer. You can check out the classified section of your favourite newspapers or, look at online classified websites to choose the best deal on renting or buying vending machines. Choose a credible vending machine business supplier that will deliver good quality products. The best thing you can do is to rent or purchase from a company that also delivers the products you need and fixes the machine when there are any glitches. This is to ensure your commission is continuous every day to avoid losing money.
Be sure the dealer delivers the machines to the target location, or that other transportation is available to accommodate the machines. Choose machines with note acceptors attached, or consider leasing or purchasing a stand-alone notes changer so change for the vending machine is always available.
The key to any success in business is to plan things ahead of time and to assume inevitable circumstances that might hamper the attainment of your business goals. Try to remember the four steps in starting your own vending machine businesses and good luck!
