Soda/Snack Combo Machine

[buddy]

After a year of negetive cash flow on my Coke Vending Machine from Coca-Cola I have severed my ties with them. They will be removing the coke vending machine in 2-3 weeks from my MAT.

Now I am in the market for buying my own vending machine. I am leaning towards buying new Soda/Snack Combo machine.

Does anyone have any thoughts on that? Has anyone tried Combo Machine? I would like to hear good/bad experience anyone has with combo machine.

Any other suggestion regarding soda vending in general would be greatly appreciated as well (Buy my own versus partnering with vender etc.).

After I bought this MAT over a year ago, I tried contacting Coca-Cola several times to change over the account to me but to no-avail. I haven't seen a single check from them while It continued to use my utilities. On the contrary I have refunded customers many times when they lost the money in coke vending machine.

Finally, I sent them a notice via certified mail to remove the machine, which got their attention.


Thanks,

[Anonymous]

How do you have negative cashflow on a machine from Coke? Coke and Pepsi will both normally place a machine in your location for no cost, all you do is buy the soda from them at slightly higher cost than you could buy it elsewhere and then vend it at whatever you want to sell it for. As long as you vend it for more than you buy it you have to have positive cashflow. What are you not telling us?

[Duane]

Buddy,

I have a CB 700 Cold Drink Vendor from USI (U-Select-It). It can vend cans or bottles and holds 12 selections and two selections have double hoppers for your fast sellers. I can even vend the 24 oz bottles along with the 16.9 water bottles and 20 oz gatorade bottles. The capacity is 728 12oz cans or 322 20oz bottles or a mixture of both cans and bottles. I am a Coke drinker, but they are unfriendly to small vendors so I stock Pepsi products. I buy 24oz bottles around 41 cents and vend them for $1.05

I also have a SM 5700 Snack Food Vendor from USI with capacties of:

834
Chip - 288
Candy - 372
Pastry - 60
Gum/mint - 114

I use the gum slots for candy bars and I also put chips and pretzels in the pastry slots. This machine has so many selections I usually double up and have two rows of each variety of chips. This keeps the amount of inventory I need down and less stocking time since the machine will last for a little over two weeks before needing to refill.

USI also has a Satellite Deli food vendor that plugs into your snack machine and a hot drink vendor.

There is also a combo machine if you don't have space for a snack and soda.

I like the looks of mine and you don't have to clean under them since they go all the way down to the floor and not on tall skinny legs.

Check out their web site:

http://www.uselectit.com/main.html

I have some new coinco 9302 coin mechs I am willing to sell. They charged me $275, I used them for about 6 weeks and then I installed my card system. I'll take $100 (shipping included) if you are intersted.

Also, this subject was discussed earlier.

http://www.coinwash.com/mb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1198&highlight=combo

[buddy]

Thanks for the info Duane.

Kirby,

The deal previous owner had with Coca-Cola was that Coca-Cola controls the machine, they fill it up and they take all the cash and send us a check for about $20 /month.

However, they never sent me a check and I was paying the electric bill as well as ocassionaly refunding customers the money they lost in coke machine and therfore I had negetive cash flow.

[mike]

Buddy,

The previous owner is still getting those cheques !

but seriously, how many drinks do you sell a day ?

cans or bottles ?

[buddy]

Mike,

During Summer the coke machine runs out of all sodas every couple of weeks.

Upon further investigation with Coke, I discovered that my salesman not only never returned my repeated phone calls to change the account over to me and send me the checks instead of old owner, but the jerk changed the machine over to my account with "No Commission" option back in June 2002 and never notified me.

Nobody was getting any checks from them while they were making 100% profit on that machine and I was paying for the electricity.

[Anonymous]

That sounds like good news - once they do an account review you should be getting a large check from them soon!!!

[buddy]

Kirby,

I am going to get ZIP- Nothing. They say they have lot of accounts with "No Commission" which means you get nothing from them.

[Anonymous]

But you say they were collecting the coins. Where they charging you for the soda, or were they paying for it. Something sounds plain wrong here.

[buddy]

Kirby,

The machine is owned and operated by Coca-Cola and they pay the sales tax and periodically come and fillup the machine and collect all the money from the machine.

The deal they had with previous owner was that he would get a check from coke towards his commission every month. When I took over the MAT I tried contacting the Sales Rep at Coke to change the account to my name and send me the commission check instead of the previous owner. I left several messages to him over 2-3 months back in May 2002. He never returned my call nor did I see any commisssion check from them.

Finally I sent them a notice last week to remove the machine. Upon further inquiry I found out that salesman had changed over
the account to my name but with "No Commission" option and never contacted me or notified me.

[Coinwash]

This was almost what happens to me, so what I did was rolled the machine out the door and told them they better get it before someone steals it.
I ended up buying an old used one for 75 bucks.
I added a bill collector to it and that baby paid out big. I got sodas for 23 to 27 cents a can and sold it for 65 cents.

[JSVLaundry]

Buddy

I had the same problem with the candy vendor that was in my mat when I bought the place from my mom last year. I was trying to get in touch with him for a couple of months with no success. At this point, the candy was getting old.

So what I did was disconnect the machine, broke the chain and stored it outside.

When he eventually decided to come by, shocked that his machine was gone, I directed him to the rear yard, and there it was.

In my opinion, you could only take so much from these vendors.

As for the combo machines, I bought one right after I got ride of the candy machine

It is a mechanical, 10 slot machine. 4 for bags of chips/cookies & 6 for candy. It also has 3 slots in a refrigerator for can soda.

It is enough for now. I really don't sell much. I only gross about $20 - $40 per week so it is sufficient enough for now.

My best suggestion is to check on ebay for used machines. I lucked out with mine. I selected a local search and I found a guy who had 4 that he was getting rid of and he was located 5 minutes from me

Good Luck

Vinny

[Duane]

Buddy,

Send them a bill for $100. One years worth of electricity.

[Anonymous]

Buddy, I still say something smells here. If you talk to the regional manager at Coke I'm sure he will agree to give you the $20/month back "rent". I cannot believe that they actually have accounts where they place a machine somewhere, fill it, collect the money, and give the store owner nothing. I'm sure if you mention that the local TV troubleshooters would probably want to do a story on how big Coke corporation is ripping off small merchants they would be very quick to write you a check.

This was their mistake and they should fix it.

[CharlieS]

Yes, a couple of approaches here. One aggressive approach is to remove the machine and lock it up in a storage area, pending completion of a new contract and backpayment for previous commissions. The other is to be nice about it, and just throw it in the yard, like others have suggested. Personally, I'd lock it up.

Then call Pepsi. Tell them you want to remove the Coke machine and add a Pepsi machine, it the deal is right!

I have machines in 2 of my mats. All things being equal , I'll take less money and let them do the work.

In fact, I have two machines that I just received with my new store, that I need to sell.

Charlie

[kyle mcpeck]

We are in the vending biz as well as laundromats. There are accounts that don't warrant a commission. I've got a few that aren't allowed to accept commission (government agy) I can't imagine a laundry being setup that way though...

[srhaz]

I have a very small mat, 20 washers / 20 dryers and I am able to pull in $100 to $150 weekly gross on one combo soda/snack machine. I figure 50% profit.
My trick.... The Flamming Hot Cheetos. People buy one bag and then buy several drinks to wash them down.

I also only charge 50cents for a can of soda.

[mike]

It's true that you can play coke off against pepsi.

I wasn't happy with my pepsi machine, (and they were giving me grief over the fact that I had BOTH coke and pepsi products in the same machine.)

I called up coke, and he started out with the "policy line" that "you can't have coke and pepsi products in the same machine"

I told him that was not the question, I already had coke and pepsi products in the same machine, the only question was whether that machine would be a coke or a pepsi machine !

Coke decided to sell me a machine. (after telling me that they didn't "sell" machines, I had to have some kind of rental plan !)