Healthy Snacks And Sales

Healthy snacks can be a profitable item for vending machines and let’s talk about the different ways. If they are profitable why not fill your machines with healthy items and help us overweight people eat healthier?

Here is the answer: we don’t always feel like a healthy snack. Sometimes we just plain and simply want a bag of potato chips or maybe a candy bar.

A doctors son that was the plant manager at my largest vending account once told me his fathers favorite phrase was: You can eat anything and everything in moderation.

How Does It Affect Sales

Many venders tell me that the healthy items are hurting their sales and are the cause of too many stales. I would agree with the statement that it could hurt if you are not careful on the stales side of the equation.

So how can you service the healthy snack food people without cutting into your profits? I think that most people will purchase a healthy item from time to time even if it is only one time in a month when they are feeling like they need to lose weight.

In a large facility there are always some people that are eating healthy even though that is not a large number. So, how do we take care of them and still make a profit?

Offering Healthy Snacks And Stales

If you are worried about stales and the account is not a large account that can handle a full column of snacks cut your par level down to half a column per healthy snack.

If you want to make sure your drivers know how full to fill the column take some masking tape and place it at the desired level. This way your driver knows not to go beyond that point when filling the healthy snack.

How many healthy snacks should be available in a snack machine is a question some venders ask. That really depends on the account. I think that a few items should be offered in every machine. To hold down on stales, (as major manufactures are raising the point that they want healthier employees) come up with a game plan.

The Game Plan

Use the healthy items to land more of the large accounts that are rightfully yours. Take the right or left side of your snack machine and offer the employee a choice of healthy or regular snacks in each machine.

A snack column is usually twice as wide as a candy column. So give the account from the top of the machine to the bottom of the machine on the left or right side one snack column wide filled with healthy snacks.

When you get to the candy column you will give them two columns on that side of the machine. This makes a nice look to the machine especially if you mark the healthy items with a green pusher or label.

Now you have given up 16% to 18% of your machine to healthy choices and by limiting the par levels you should be able to keep stales under control.

Summary

Take the initiative and keep healthy snacks under control. Pick up new business by being able to say your machines have a healthy blend of items. Who knows, there could come a day when healthy items are the larger selling items in your machines.

I remember when the seat belt law came in to effect, at first I resisted buckling up, but now it is just the norm. As with the seat belt law, choosing a healthy snack could also become the norm.

Price Increases

What Will A Price Increase Do?

Price increases will help improve your profit margin. It will also help absorb the wholesale increases.

Here Are The Most Common Reasons To Delay A Price Increase

You are afraid your customers will notice the increase and be angry or disappointed in you. You feel comfortable with your current level of income. You don't know how much you should raise your prices. You are not seeing your competition raising their prices. You're afraid you will just have to work harder to sell the same amount of merchandise.

Five Ways You Can Smoothly Handle Raising Your Prices

Increase your prices regularly. Slowly raising prices at regular intervals will help you keep up with inflation and may even keep you ahead of inflation. By raising your prices once a year in small increments you won't attract much attention.

Pick A Month You Will Raise Prices

So many vending companies get out of the habit of raising their prices. Then they find themselves forced to make a major price increase. A major increase draws the attention of your customers and will come as a surprise to them.
It is much better to raise your prices more frequently in smaller amounts. Raising the price of chips one year, candy the following year and pastries the year after that helps to lessen the shock of a price increase.
In the vending business your wholesale prices will slowly increase. Many times a wholesale increase will be as low as .25 cent per unit. Many vendors are lulled to sleep with such a small increase but over time they do add up.
After a few years without a price increase the vendor finds themselves without the capital to make needed improvements. Take the philosophy that the wholesaler takes and increase more regularly in smaller amounts.

Establish Quality And The Price Will Follow

Quality needs to be established before a price increase can be warranted. When I speak of quality I'm speaking of both product quality and quality customer service. In the vending business service and product quality must go hand in hand.
Quality of your service comes in the form of deliveries being made on a regular schedule. This includes the machines being kept clean, filled to the prescribed fill level and, of course, working. As the owner of a vending company you need to have a program in place that ensures the driver is doing a good job and not cutting corners.
Name Brands Sell. An example of this would be Baby Ruth and not Baby Ruth Crisp. The crisp bar does come at a lower price but with the limited amount of space a vending machine has it's not advisable to try saving a few pennies this way.
Establish quality in your service and the products you carry. By doing this you have a winning combination that is hard to beat and customers don't mind paying for.

Offer Different Sizes

You can add new sizes of product to your machines to enable an increase. If you are only handling the vend size chip add the LSS (large single serve) bags to your line up. When you add the bigger bags it is a good time to raise the price on your vend size bags. By giving your customers a choice of sizes they will respond more favorably to the small bags new price.

Serve Your Customer Better

As we talked earlier, give the customer what they want: quality products and good service. You will find the price issue just goes away. People enjoy doing business with people they like and trust. Remember, always listen to what your customers want and over deliver. They will be willing to pay for it.

Let Your Customers Know Why You Are Increasing Your Prices

There are different feelings on how to let your customers know of an increase. I tell my contact at every location in person. I then like to put a sign on the machine that reads like the statement below:

Notice

We value our customers and appreciate the patronage that you have given us over the years. However, due to manufacturer increases our suppliers have increased their prices. To help offset some of the costs we will be increasing our prices.

Thank You

ABC Vending Company

Large Vending Companies

Is it possible to enter the vending business today and compete against the large vending companies? You will not get as good of pricing as they do from the suppliers. Your machines will cost you more. So how can you compete?

Service and never forget it. The large corporations have their problems and in most cases it is giving good service. Give me your thoughts.