May 18, 2012

Two Vending Machine Location Ideas

So we’ve established that the most important factor for a vending machine business is the location.  Here are two solid location ideas for vending businesses.

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THE most important factor in determining the success of your vending business

What could it POSSIBLY be???

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Tracking Your Diet

Making a commitment to eat healthier foods is pivotal to shedding extra pounds, gaining muscle, or just feeling refreshed.  It’s not easy, but there’s plenty of help to get started.

One of the tools that I love to use is Daily Burn.  Daily Burn is a free-to-use site that allows you to track your daily nutritional intake, not to mention your workouts as well.  I use Daily Burn to combine the number of foods I eat in a day, so I can get a rough estimate of how many calories, protein, carbohydrates, and fats I am consuming.  This way, I can easily tell if I’m eating too much bread, and if I need to instead shift to a more protein/fat based diet.  There’s also a neat little water tracker that lets you see how many glasses of water you are drinking in a day(there’s a “myth” that every human being should drink at least 8 glasses a day).

A snapshot of breakfast. The progress bar at the bottom of the page and the water tracker are helpful tools.

So how exactly does this all work?

It’s actually pretty simple.  You can search for the foods that you consume, and the nutrition facts will show up.  If you eat something regularly, like Subway sandwiches or other healthy snacks, then you can add them to your favorites.  If your food isn’t on the list, you can simply add it and name it yourself.  Daily Burn keeps a calendar so you can go back and keep tabs on what you’ve been eating.

Have fitness goals that you want to achieve?

Daily Burn has a cool feature that helps you determine how many calories you should be consuming based on your activity level and the amount of weight you want to gain/lose.  After you have set your preferences, your settings are automatically plugged into your nutritional tracker. This way, you can see if you are overeating or undereating.

Oh yeah, and if you work out? No problem.  You simply search for the workouts you have done and plug in the data.  Daily Burn will deduct the amount of calories you have burned and update your nutritional tracker.

Go ahead and check it out for yourself, it’s an awesome tool I use everyday and it motivates me to eat healthier and work out harder.

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Healthy Vending vs. “Typical” Vending

Much like Homer Simpson, most people generally don’t give a damn about what they get from a vending machine.  “As Long As It Tastes Good” is the mantra — most vending machine consumers don’t care about the future, they just want to satisfy their cravings for greasy/sweet foods.

Well snap out of it, fatty.

Much like your professional or personal life, only YOU know what’s best for YOU.  Owners of businesses only really pay attention to the $$$ they bring in. Most vending machines vend goods that are sure to make your loved ones cringe when they see your plump belly.  Some examples:

  • Sweetened, high calorie drinks — virtually no nutritional value in these.  These pass off as empty calories that really don’t serve the body well.  Oh yeah, you can go ahead and forget about those “Diet” drinks too.  They actually do more damage to your body than regular sodas. Fantastic.
  • Fatty, greasy chips — What are you trying to do? Look like your pregnant wife?
  • Cigarettes — Yep, believe it or not, they’re in vending machines.  Unless you want to have yellow teeth and stink mouth for the rest of your life, I’d advise against this.

OMG Eric OK OK I get it, I don’t wanna be FAT and USELESS.

K fine — If vending machines are a part of your daily lifestyle, then start looking for healthy vending machines.  These machines are stocked with items that have been researched based on nutritional value and taste.  Take a look at some comparisons.  FYI, the first item in each sample is the “typical” vending good while the second item is the healthy vending good:

With a 50 calorie differential, 1g less fat, 9g less carbohydrates, and an equal amount of protein, the difference initially looks small.  There is also a sodium disparity that is not noted in the pictures, with the Corn Nuts coming in at 410mg sodium and the Pita Chips coming in at 220mg sodium.  Controlling your sodium intake is critical because you do not want your body working harder than it should.  Every little bit helps when you are watching your diet.

90g calorie difference, 1g less fat, 22g less carbohydrates — Mr. Nature’s Trail Mix takes the cake here.  And if you were wondering…the sodium differential: Mr Nature’s has 10mg of sodium vs. the whopping 350mg on the Chex Mix.  Unless your goal is diabetes or high blood pressure, I’d go with the Trail Mix.

The point to all this? Start looking for healthy vending machines or at least educate yourself on the healthier goods — It’ll pay off in the long run.

Til’ next time!

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Starting A Vending Business Pt. 2

We’re going to reveal why a certain healthy vending company is LIGHT YEARS ahead of other vending machine franchises.  We’ll simplify this exercise by comparing different vending machines to different women(if you like men, just replace the image of women with men).

Think about the last broad you were attracted to.  What started your attraction towards her?

The way she dressed.  Her hair.  Her body.  Her smell. Her accent.

Whatever it is, it’s guaranteed that something superficial sparked your INTEREST.  After all, virtually all relationships start from physical attraction.  You want the Sexy Sandy, not the boring, uninteresting Plain Jane.  A person that takes cares of themselves conveys different stories — they are INTERESTING.  Plain Janes look DULL — they have put little effort into their looks and therefore receive little attention from men.

Eric… what the hell does this all have to do with VENDING?

These concepts apply to the Vending Machine Business.  But let’s take it a little further, you don’t want your machine to just STAND OUT.  You want it to be SEXY.

Eric… what the hell is the difference man?

Well…

Option A or Option B?

I hope you picked Option B.

How about these two?

Option A

Option B

Again, I hope you picked Option B.

In both cases, Option B had the SEXIER option.  So who is the SEXY option in the healthy vending industry?

HUMAN Healthy Vending has the most attractive machines that boast the latest technology.  They are the FERRARIS of vending machines and do not come at absurd prices.  Interestingly enough, these vending machine beasts also open up paths for ad revenue – which can generate even more income per machine.

Some reasons to go with HUMAN(helping unite man and nutrition).

  • Aesthetically pleasing, ATTRACTIVE machines.
  • Conveyor Technology that allows for MORE ROOM for your vending goods.
  • 23′ LCD screen that allows for ad revenue and nutritional information — MORE $$$
  • Credit Card reader allows for consumer CONVENIENCE — it doesn’t get any easier than scan and press.  Forget your wrinkly one dollar bill rejections.
  • CHARITABLE giving — added comfort of understanding that HUMAN is committed to providing a healthier lifestyle for Americans.  10% of all HUMAN’s proceeds go to charities.
  • and MUCH MORE!

With machines starting at $6,999, it’s a no brainer to purchase this machine over a used $5500 generic machine.  When money is being spent on your own business, you are looking for VALUE.  Here’s some food for thought regarding used car purchases:

Would you rather purchase a $25,000 certified pre-owned Toyota that will last you 10 years or a $15,000 privately-owned Mercedes Benz that will last you 4 years?

Which is the better value and why?

Figure out the answer to this question and you will see why HUMAN is by far the best choice when choosing a vending franchise(fyi highlight the answer below..it’s in white).

The answer is the $25k Toyota because you are paying $2500/year versus $3750/year for a car that goes down in 4 years.  There is more VALUE in buying the Toyota because it lasts longer.

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Starting A Vending Business Pt. 1

Ah, the joys of business.

It’s a love/hate relationship.

It’s cutthroat.

It’s a huge gamble.

But — You’ve made your decision.  Healthy Vending Businesses have caught your eye and that’s the path you’re going to take.  After all, you don’t want to go all-in like Will Smith in the Pursuit of Happyness and lose almost everything.  You want to be prepared, you want to have directions, you want to minimize the risk.  Good.  Let’s get started by talking about the many vending franchises that you can purchase from — this will be a two part article.   More importantly, let’s talk about the one company that you SHOULD purchase from.

Today, Craigslist, Ebay, and other vending machine industry titans all offer the relatively same, generic vending machines that we are all familiar with.  Here’s an example of a $1600 machine taken off Craigslist.  Meet the Dixie 2145:

Looks familiar, doesn’t it?

The catch? Well, it looks plain to begin with.  Secondly, it can only vend drinks.  Considering that you are in the market for healthy vending machine franchises, this isn’t exactly what you are looking for.

Let’s do a little more searching then… how about “The Office Deli” at $5500?  It vends everything that we want it to vend — chips, drinks, microwaveable foods, and more:

But again, the machine looks generic.  People don’t like to be BORED.  And at $5500, are you really willing to fork over all that dough for a machine that looks DULL?  Why not use that hard earned cash for a machine that has many more perks?

We’ll venture into the world of this new, groundbreaking machine in the next post.  Stay tuned.

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The Pros to Starting a Vending Machine Business

You’ve gone back and fourth on this decision many times.  Hell, you still don’t know what to decide.

“Why should I start a vending machine business?”

“Do I even know what I need to do?”

“What are the perks?”

“Did I even wipe after I came out of that stall?”

These questions will be addressed in this post.  Well… except for the last one.

So… what exactly are the PROS of having a vending machine business?

  • You can be your own boss.  YOU decide how much you want to put into this business.
  • The vending machines work for you — they are your employees.
  • You can stock your vending machines to your own liking.  This includes, but is not limited to:

- Healthy vending snacks

- Coffee

- Toys      

- Microwaveable foods

- Chips and other bagged foods

and more.

  • The comfort of knowing that less than 5% of healthy vending businesses fail, according to the department of commerce.  This is definitely better than the 65% failure rate of new, independent companies.
  • The amount of resources available to help your vending business succeed.  Companies such as HUMAN can give you a step by step guide to help your vending business get on the right track.
  • Vending can allow up to a 100% to 200% return on investment in the first year — way more than what you would get from a CD Account.
  • Hold on to your day job and work part-time on your vending machine business.  The vending business yields great flexibility.
  • With Americans shifting towards new diet crazes, workout routines plus the explosion of new gyms being built everywhere, it’s no secret that America has grown more health conscious.  There’s never been a better time to dive into the vending industry, especially healthy vending, to take a market share of the large demand for healthy foods.

So… what are you waiting for?  Hop on the train to the promised land. There’s money to be made.

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Tips to Starting A Vending Machine Business

You’ve done your research and you’ve seen that the vending machine business pulls in over $21 billion a year.

Wait. How much? That’s $21,000,000,000.

Whether it’s the opportunity to take a share of that $21 billion market or simply the prospect of trying something new, starting a vending machine business is no easy feat.  Many steps need to be taken to ensure that your business has the best chance of succeeding. Let’s jump into a quick tip to get your new vending machine business on the right track.  We’ll be talking about location in this post.

Location

Location is critical to the success of your vending machines.  As an example, let’s say I decide to start a healthy vending business and go with healthier foods in my machine.  Looking at the next two pictures, where do you think I should place my new healthy vending machine?  The fitness center or the theme park?

The better location here is the fitness center.  Here’s why:

- Regular gym goers are very observant of their health.  They have already made the conscious decision to look and feel healthier — they have decided to change their lifestyle.

- For the most part, most gym goers know that diet is a very important factor in determining their health.  This means at one point or another, they have tried to alter their eating habits to avoid junk foods.

- Most gym goers also do not have all the time in the world to cook for themselves all the time.  Eating out is a risky option because there aren’t many healthy, convenient fast food chains out there.  Subway and El Pollo Loco come to mind, but after that the list starts to dry up pretty quickly.

Here’s why the theme park doesn’t work so well:

- People at the theme park are generally there to just have fun and let loose — they don’t really care about what they are eating.

- A lot of young teens and kids frequent the parks — at that age, health and nutrition is probably the last thing on their mind.  I know I definitely didn’t care about nutrition when I was 15 — I just wanted to chow down on some Doritos and get to the next ride.

- Furthermore, there are so many tasty, fatty food stands that the vending machines tend to be neglected.

The Bottom Line

In the case of my example, placing my new healthy vending machine in the fitness center is a no brainer.  As a matter of fact, if I strategically place my vending machine right outside the mens and womens locker room, my vending machine is likely to generate more revenue because people walking out will be hungry for a snack and see  Clif’s Protein Bars, assorted fruits, Unsweetened Tea, Muscle Milk, and other healthy goods that they know will fuel their body.

Remember though, this example just applies to healthy vending machines.  If I were to use the typical vending machine stocked with the standard Doritos, Cornuts, Popcorn, and candy, I’d choose to place it elsewhere.  Location is critical to the success of your vending machine business because each location caters to a specific crowd.  In short, don’t overlook the importance of location — do your homework.

Stay tuned for more tips.

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Start a Vending Machine Business — But Not Just Any.

So you’ve kept your eye on the vending machine industry for awhile.  You think there is promise.  You think there are big bucks to be made.  You think you have a plan to slay all the competition like how a fat kid slays his triple cheeseburger pumped with four times the mayo.  You are ready to start a vending machine business.

Hold it right there, buddy.  Let me be the one to tell you that the vending machine market is no longer what it used to be.  Things are changing.  The old method of stuffing random assorted goodies into vending machines is starting to take a backseat to today’s demands.  Consumers are now more selective of what they eat: wheat bread instead of white, brown rice instead of white, and lettuce wrapped burgers instead of regular burgers are just a few examples.  This change is carrying over to vending machines as well — people want to eat healthier snacks.

Some numbers

Statistics today show that over 34 percent of Americans are obese — quite a staggering number considering that this percentage was at 17 percent thirty years ago.  What’s even more alarming is the percentage of obese children has more than tripled, jumping to 17 percent.  Imagine what the next generation will look like if this number continues to increase.  Word gets around fast, and eye-popping statistics like these prompt swift action from Americans.  Today, there are a plethora of health gimmicks designed to attract the average American.  Punch lines for these products can include: “Get a toned abs in 5 weeks” or “Become Shredded in 2 Months!”.  Americans blindly buy into these tricks, shelling over their hard earned money for products that will most likely end up collecting dust; or even worse, products that will do nearly nothing to eliminate that sagging gut.

The point? Stop throwing away your dough on these useless products and do things right.

P90X? Hold that thought.

It all starts with Diet.

Most people usually see some advertisement on television showing how some fat dude got ripped all of a sudden.  They look at the before and after pictures and decide that they too can easily achieve rock solid bodies if they just buy the program.  This is unrealistic for most people.  If you are already obese, you most likely will not be able to  just simply dive into a 6 day a week program for 90 days.  I am by no means knocking the P90X workout itself — I think it is a tremendous workout.  But you need to think baby steps.  You can’t run before you learn to walk and you can’t walk before you learn to crawl. Losing that obesity tag starts with 80% diet and 20% working out.  Anybody that tells you that working out or cardio is your ticket to shedding those pounds is a blatant fraud.  Remember, it all starts with GOOD NUTRITION.

So let’s say Dumb Debra decides to finally go to the gym.  She has devised a new diet plan and has committed to working out four times a week.  Great.  Debra finishes her workout at the gym, but has a meeting to get to.  She has no time to pick something up or put something together.  However, she sees a vending machine stocked with an assorted mix of usual goods plus some new healthy snacks.  Being the dullard that she is, she quickly inserts two dollars to pick up some Pop Tarts and a bottle of Coke.  Great move. Not.

Conversely, Smart Sally runs into the same scenario, but she decides to choose the bag of mixed nuts and a bottle of water.  Great choice.  The nuts provide good fats and a nice source of protein to help the body recover.  The bottle of water naturally has no calories and helps recharge the body.  This is a great snack for Sally to grab on the go and certainly will pay dividends down the road for the beach body she desires.The same cannot be said for Debra — deciding to drink empty calories as well as load up on carbohydrates and sugars means Debra has essentially negated her workout.  Again, GOOD NUTRITION.

Healthy Snacks in Vending Machines

By now, I’ve already beaten it into your head(I hope) that achieving that sexy body comes from mostly diet.  Americans usually follow current trends — and the current trend is eating healthy and battling obesity.  What does this mean? This means no more Doritos, no more Corn Nuts, no more Pop Corn.  Food trends are shifting to the healthy foods, which means a sharp decline for the old vending machine staples.

If you’re looking to start that vending machine business, be mindful of new consumer demands.  Achieving that sexy body is mainly about good nutrition.  Stock up your new vending machine with healthy goods and avoid the sweets and fats that will damage the body.

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Healthy Vending Machines – Another ally to the war against obesity?

In recent years, America has opened its eyes and taken up arms to combat the growing obesity problem.  Restaurants like Cheesecake Factory are now including full nutritional facts and recommending “healthy items” on their menu.  Fast food chains such as Mcdonald’s have added premium salads, lettuce wrapped burgers, and apple dippers in an effort to conform with the recent craze to “go healthy”.  Subway has turned almost exclusively to marketing itself as a healthy fast food chain, dropping the marketing for its high calorie Italian BMT, meatball subs, and higher calorie chips and turning its focus to healthier sandwiches, low calorie chips, and yogurt.  Subway’s napkins even show how its healthy sandwiches compare versus competitors the Big Mac and the Whopper(from Mcdonald’s and Burger King, respectively) – the bottom line is restaurants all over the world are getting their hands wet in the war against malnutrition.  What is to say that this war can’t use another ally in the form of healthy vending machines?

A Healthy Vending No No

America is finally beginning to notice its obesity problem

Many fitness gurus, health freaks, and gym rats mention that eating six to seven times a day is better than eating three to four meals a day.  This is because the body’s metabolism speeds up slightly each time food is consumed.  Think of the human body as a machine – the body continually needs high quality foods throughout the day to keep the metabolism going.  A quicker metabolism means food and sugars are broken down faster so they do not become fat.

Now let’s say we are given a scenario where a businessman in corporate America wants to eat healthy, but does not have enough time to prepare his own meals.  This man relies almost exclusively on Subway and Mcdonald’s – however, he only eats the healthy items on the menu.   Even if he chomps down on those foot long turkey sandwiches and grilled chicken wraps, he is only going to be eating three or four meals from those respective places – not enough to keep a fast metabolism running.  This poor businessman is still missing two to three more meals in order to keep his machine of a body running at its peak – he still needs foods to snack on. Enter our hero, healthy vending machines.

Imagine an environmentally friendly machine stocked up with snacks such as: low calorie Gatorade, Almonds, Muscle Milk, Water, Apple Dippers, Yogurt, and more.  Gone are the unhealthy sodas, chips, and candies that make the body cringe.  Now, our hero, Mr. Corporate America, can rest easy knowing that his quest to become Captain” Sexy” Corporate America has gotten that much easier; that his dreams for bulging arms and washboard abs are not so distant anymore.

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