I headed towards to one of my strong location. I was surprised that the snack machine is empty.
Towards the end of the week is the happiest for me.
I don’t know what to feel either to be happy or suspect something. I have a strong gut feel that maybe someone was fiddling my machine or have a duplicate and opened the snack machine. To my surprise the snack vending machine was totally empty.
In my years of doing this location i never had an incident that it was totally empty.
Normally there are still a few pieces of chocolate bars and chips.
I instinctively pressed the selections and to my surprise all the selections are priced 0.50 cents ! Deep inside i was raging and feeling that i got ripped off.
The location is a sort of community center where people gather every day for games and food. This is the first time that happened to me when a machine reset itself to default value of 0.50 cents for all selections!
The crowd inside the community center didn’t even tell me that everything was 0.50.
Whenever there is a problem with money being eaten they complain a lot and wanted money back. Now with the machine having a glitch and never bothered to call me and have it looked immediately to have it remedied.
I called my trusty technician and he told me that the building is old and there must be a power surge.
My technician suggested to me to buy a power surge bar immediately so that this will not happen again.
He suggested buying at Home Depot with the highest rating type of power surge protector.
I wish this incident will not happen anymore since i pay a substantial commission on this location. This location is creme de la creme in terms of sales and revenue.
This location has a regular type of snack and pop machines and the sales is equivalent even to my other 4 to 5 locations located elsewhere.
If this incident happens again, i have to find a replacement machine. Maybe its time to bid farewell to the older snack machine.
For now i will just consider buying an inexpensive power surge protector.
To be truly making money on vending machine business, it would be ideal to visit the location when it is 1/4 empty. But the problem is if the locations are far apart, you will be loosing time, money and gasoline. Customers don’t understand this, they always expect you to be there even if 2 rows are empty.
That’s why it is important in grouping all locations together when visiting. Some small locations can be done with the bigger locations in one single scheduled visit in the same area.
In this vending machine business it is not all the time that when you visit your location you will be expecting profit all the time. At times there are a lot of expired products. Sometimes your very happy to have at least half of the machine is empty.
Rarely that it will be empty !
