Most companies look for a vending service that will meet the needs and desires of their employees. On the other hand, the owner of a vending business is interested in making a profit. A good vending company will marry these two objectives and will attempt to make a profit while providing your employees with a quality service at a reasonable price.

When you invite a vending company to discuss a potential vending account you will normally be visited by the owner of the company or a sales representative. They will evaluate your company and your needs by asking a variety of questions that will help them decide on the best vending program they can offer your company, such as:

1. How many employees work at the site?
2. Are the vending machines accessible to visitors and walk-through traffic?
3. What hours is the business open? (a business open 24 / 7 makes a big difference to a vend operator)
4. Do you currently have a vending service?
5. What are the reasons for changing vending services?
6. What products are you looking for?

With the answers to their questions, they will likely offer you a vending program. That program could be a single soda machine or it could be a whole bank of equipment including coffee, frozen, snack and beverage vending machines.

Determining the Equipment for Your Location

There are a variety of reasons for the type of equipment a vending company will offer your company. Remember they are in the business to make a profit. Offering a snack and soda machine to a company with 15 employees is probably not a good business move on the part of the vend operator.

Most vend operators have a sliding scale on what type of equipment they will offer a company, based on projected sales. If your company has less than 50 or 75 employees then you may find that most vend operators will only be interested in offering your company a single soda machine. If you look hard enough you might find an operator that will install a snack machine, but they will not exactly be jumping for joy that they landed your account.

The type of business can play a part in the types of equipment a vending company might offer you. There is a big difference between a manufacturing company with 150 employees and lawyer firm with 150 employees. Manufacturing companies have environments that are conducive for vending, while a law firm with 150 employees can sometimes be challenging because of nice air conditioned buildings, various food options such as delis, Starbucks coffee and restaurants can result in slow sales at the vending machines.

Costs Associated with Vending

In most situations a vend operator will offer vending machines free of charge and he will make a profit from the products he sells from the vending machines. If he has analyzed your account properly and equipped your location with the right mix of equipment, he should be able to make a profit.

If the facility manager insists on a particular mix of vending machines and the vend operator has determined that the account will not be able to generate enough profit off that particular mix of equipment, he might charge a monthly fee for the machines. This fee plus the sales he generates from the machines will help the vendor become profitable.

Also in some large metropolitan areas like downtown San Francisco, where the costs of running a vending business can be extremely high, the vendor might have to charge a monthly fee in addition to sales from the vending machines. If the vending machines are on the 30th floor and parking is difficult, it will likely take a lot longer to service that account, thereby increasing vend operator's costs.

The bottom line is if a vendor can make a profit from selling the products out of his machines he probably will not charge a fee.

Subsidized or Free Vending

Subsidized or free vending are especially popular in the high technology industry, where some companies want to offer their employees either low prices or in some cases no charge for vended products.

A good example of subsidized vending would be selling cans of soda to the employees for $0.25 where the vend operator has determined the soda price to be $0.65. The vend operator will set the vending machine price at $0.25 and then bill the company $0.40 for every soda that is sold.

Google in Silicon Valley is an example of free vending. Google offers it’s entire refreshment program to its employees at no charge. The vendor fills the equipment and bills Google for everything sold.

Companies often look for ways to boost employee morale and increase production. Offering a subsidized or free vending program can be a very inexpensive way to do that.

Take Care When Negotiating a Vending Contract

You should be careful when negotiating your vending contract. For exampl, you may have received 4-5 different quotes from competing vending companies and selected a vendor that offered you the cheapest prices and a high commission. You should realize, however, that In order to make a reasonable profit the vendor might have to buy old refurbished equipment and stock the machines with inferior products since you have beaten his price down. He's very unlikely to tell you that when he submits his quote, but it may become apparent after you are a month or two into your contract, when it's too late to make a change to your long-term contract.

Continue... Types of Vending Equipment