I have noticed that everyone is itching to get out of holiday here in Vancouver, BC.
It is towards the long holiday workweek and sales had a slight drop.
It seems that whenever I go to some locations I hear people saying and trying to plan visits to Europe when I’m in the west side of town and mostly travels to the United States border for the much-needed R&R. While here in Richmond and Vancouver a lot of Asians was heading back to Hong Kong, Philippines, China, and Japan for a few weeks.
I as a self-employed person for the longest time is constantly avoiding the peak traffic on summer holidays, so I plan it towards the latter part which is close to fall season.
For vending machine operators, summer season is not the time to spend holidays since there are more pop sales and surely you do not want to lose out on sales.
Didi mention to you that my work van was broken into before the Xmas season last year?
All my vending keys were stolen that time and there was a bunch of keys that have tags on locations.
The locations were in the vicinity of Surrey. Of course, during the early part of the year in January, it took me about 2 months to completely change all the locks on all the machines that is servicing.
It was physically draining and I can confidently say that I’m very good at breaking in on any kind of vending machine now especially after breaking more than a hundred locks!
I was in Surrey about a couple of weeks ago and visited the large factory in a secured building. It was on a regular weekday that I serviced the location.
The reception was surprised to see me and mentioned that the repair guy was here a few minutes ago to fix the vending machine and mentioned that you are on summer holiday.
I suddenly was astounded and told the reception that please do not let anyone in again because the thieves are trying to use the bunch of keys to try to open the vending machines.
The staff freaked out and they mentioned that who got the nerve to pretend to be you and try to service and vending machines. I really do not know the psychology of how the mind of thieves works.
The thieves even had a car running around Surrey and even bypassed the reception and tried to open both vending machines located in the lunch room full of people!
The picture taken above was taken when I’m servicing the location after lunch break just right after the thieves left the place full of people!
Of course, nothing was taken from the machines since I have changed all the locks on all locations.
Imagine what would happen if I have a duplicate and did not change the locks the vending machines? The thieves would have continued to go to the stolen key tags locations.
Money seems to be very tight here in Vancouver, BC since the thieves will go all the way to visit this location which is full of people and try their luck in opening the vending machine and steal a few bucks. This location is not a strong one and the maximum collection will just be around $60 in coins on my monthly visits. The machine is very old and non-MDB capable and the coin mechanism holds around $40 maximum.
I swing by in Vancouver on one of my locations and I remembered that I upgraded a new coin mechanism to accept the new loonies. The man in charge called me to fix the problem immediately since a lot of tenants are losing money.
Lessoned learned that you need to make sure that after installation of a new coin mechanism be sure to test it before leaving the location.
The picture above shows the new coin mechanism that was not installed properly because it did not give the correct change and I found out one of the quarter columns was jammed which was an easy fix.
So far all my locations are performing accordingly it was that I get some calls again on some jamming problems which I have to have it resolved or else it would result in another location ticking time bomb.
During summer traditionally there are lots of places that are doing their renovations.
I have a downtown location which I was servicing it for the longest time, I think it is close to around 5 years already and the manager called me and said that they are renovating the lunch room and will not be needing the machines back anymore.
This location believes it or not was just around $50 per month and I have a bag full of expired chips after servicing. I just feel bad that I will be spending 2 moves which are about $120 each machine to a warehouse and another $120 X 2 for moving to a new location if I find one in this small city.
To me Vancouver, BC is a very small city because I have mentioned so many times that i originally grew up in Makati City the financial district of the Philippines which has a population is 1.78 million including metro manila.
It is a city that never sleeps and it is full of action! Makati City Link
He was mentioning that if I had a contract agreement which them. I said that there was no contract since I got it from a retired vendor a long time ago when he moved back Okanagan.
In this vending machine business, locations come and go
I also mentioned that whenever there is a slight setback in my small business, seems that a greater blessing is on the way. After I got the bad news on the downtown story.
I had one location which was located in Coquitlam in a 100 man strong location which are into vending machines.
They have previous vending machines which are getting old and wanted a new addition and luckily I had an extra healthy max combo machine.
I was also in the process of obtaining another location here in Downtown with around 150 strong tenants establishment which will be realized in the coming weeks.
