I will tell an unusual story that it all happened in a day on my vending machine business.? Most of the days I have to drop my kids to school.? I was normally doing this without any problem since there are speed limits approaching the school.
I was dishearten when I saw a pick up truck and a Nissan SUV rogue.
I hope everyone is fine since the guy was on the street confronting the other guy in the pick up truck.
I headed towards to one my locations in Downtown and then I saw an out-of-order sign. Everyone was frustrated and sounded like cursing to me at the back of my mind. I took out the coin mech and saw a small dried fruit inside the coin mechanism.
Disgusted from the loss of sales and having to drive all the way underground and park at the loading bay. And always have the adrenaline rush to go back the van since it is only allowed for 15 minutes.
It was all thoughts in my mind. Of course I was lucky and the dried fruit did not damage the machine and everything was working after checking it with ZERO sales partly to be contributed dinner food on the table on that day was not fulfilled.
Another location happened to have ZERO sales too and the power cord was unplugged from the wall outlet. It was raining that afternoon and I happened to see that the coin mech is getting wet. So maybe the rain caused the malfunction of the pop machine. Talked to the operations’ manager and agreed to let the owner know if possible for the pop machine to be moved to a partially covered area to avoid future problems.
Then I was thinking maybe my investment on the coffee machines which I visited my last stop before heading back. I at least ended with a smile on my face that day.
I was trying my luck on the coffee business and I had some sales which is not significant but maybe this is the start of another business in the making ?
Coffee business earnings outranks snack and pop vending machine big time.
Will it be too late to enter the Coffee Arena ?
Business pays to be patient and ever enduring. In the vending machine business one is constantly looking for a location or a backup plan.
Such a backup plan works out quite well if you have been receiving calls from moving out and renovations recently.
Getting back from the renovations on your vending locations topic. Sometimes your vending machine doesn’t return to its location after the renovation.
So in such scenarios, you should be able to be flexible and find ways on utilizing your existing locations on added value service that you can provide.
For starters the coffee machines is astoundingly giving me a thumbs up.
On such cases if your vending machine doesn’t go back to its location after renovation then utilizing other contacts with locations must be executed.
I quickly headed out and contacted my prospective existing location which is a hotel and requested for an additional machine at one of the floors, since the location is performing extremely well and I was giving very good commissions every month.
A quick response was expected and just hoping on their next meeting that my request will be in their agenda.
Another prospective is that there was one location that I was not able to fulfill their request for a vending machine last year on a 100 occupants office.
?I emailed and I hope for the best.
Yet my final candidate was another existing hotel with a beat up combo machine that I just have to swapped it out and im 100% that my sales will increase by 50%.
This all happened to me in a day which was both nerve wrecking, challenging and fight to survive stimulus response.
For a veteran self-employed small businessman such thing is already instilled into one’s system.
Vending machine business have developed this sense and ability to have several fallback plans.
The worst case would be to shell out some capital resources to secure another location in replacement. But that will be the last resort.
