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Cold Drink Vending

Have you ever thought about those cold drink vending machines that you see virtually everywhere you go, and about the profit that can be made by having a business that owns and stocks those machines?

If not, you might want to start now because there are wonderful earning opportunities in each and every one of those machines. The trick these days is to find the right locations to avoid the competition and yet still expose your product offerings to a large enough number of people that you will still maximize your sales potential.

Where are these coveted locations? Not within the traditional companies that have between 100 and 150 employees. Though there were great opportunities in those places, the truth is that the majority of those chances have already been taken. That market is well saturated with machines and cold drink vending offerings. The places you'll want to find are within companies that are only slightly smaller, with between 20 and 100 employees. Indeed, there are fewer people, but these businesses are much less likely to already have vending machines on their properties and will be pleased enough with the ability to have one for their employees that they will not require you to pay a commission.

Once you've found the ideal spot, you have to make sure that you have the right machine. This means that you'll want to avoid the major complaints that people typically have about cold drink vending machines:

- That they are ugly, old, and don't work very well. To avoid this problem, buy a good quality new machine and maintain and clean it well.

- Poor selection of product offerings. Resolve this issue by making sure that you have several different flavors of cold drinks available and that many of them are available in both their regular and diet varieties. Don't forget to offer juice and water as well as the sodas in the product selection. This is because juice and water see much better sales in the morning while sodas sell more effectively in the afternoon.

- The products are either out of date or stale. Service your machines regularly, checking the dates on the products and keeping the latest items available.

- Inability of the machine to accept bills or make change. Buy a machine that has a coin changer and bill accepter so that your customers won't have to have exact change in order to make purchase. The more convenient it is to pay for the product, the more likely someone will be to buy something.

You may often find that when you begin stocking your machines, you might be able to obtain an offer from one of the major cold drink brands such as Coke(TM) or Pepsi(TM) to stock only their products within your machine. These allow you to receive product at a discounted price and be able to sell name brand items that are appealing to potential customers.

The one catch is that there isn't a great deal of flexibility in cold drink vending machine businesses in terms of when you should service your machines. This is because while with other types of venders such as bulk machines, you may not have to service them any more frequently than every two or three months, cold drink vending machines require regular servicing. This is not only to ensure that you have enough product (which is very important) but it is also to check up on the functioning of the machine.

Furthermore, the odds are that the people at the location of your machine will contact you if your machine is dirty, broken, out of stock, or otherwise needs servicing and you need to be prepared to take action relatively quickly to resolve the situation in order to keep your machine appealing to the location and to ensure that you're obtaining all of the sales you can achieve. If you miss several lunch and break times because of a machine that is not working or out of stock, you're simply letting your profits pass you by.

If you are willing to take the time to carefully service your cold drink vending machines, then you will likely find that this dedication is all you need in order to make significant earnings from a business that owns and maintains them.