Tips for Choosing the Most Profitable Vending Machine Location
Vending machines can be a great source of steady and reliable income that will require very little effort from the owner. However, if you are investing the time and money into placing a vending machine in your business, it makes sense to take the time to choose the right machine and place it in an ideal location. The location of your vending machine will make a difference as to how many people buy products from it.
So how do you know where to place your machine? Take your time and think about the decision carefully, because once you have placed the vending machines somewhere they will be difficult to move! Here are a few tips to keep in mind when you are choosing a location for your New Jersey vending machines:
A Cat on a Vending Machine by ykanazawa1999, on Flickr. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Do a Survey of Your Entire Business
Take the time to look around your business thoroughly and examine every possible location where you might place a vending machine. Take the measurements of how large the machine will be and look for potential spots where it would fit easily and not impede access or be in the way of traffic. You might even want to make a list of the possible locations that you find on this initial survey or mark down your ideas on a map of the building’s layout. It can also help to take photographs of possible locations, so that you can review them all later at your leisure.
Consider Foot Traffic Routes
The next step is to find out what are the main foot traffic routes – where people are most likely to walk through your facility. The more people who walk past the vending machine, the more potential that someone will choose to buy something. The busier the environment, the more sales your vending machine will make. This is why vending machines in airports, offices, malls and other busy public places perform very well.
Where Do People Sit and Wait?
Another tip for choosing a profitable vending machine location is to look for a setting where people will be sitting and waiting for a long time. This increases the possibility that, out of hunger or boredom, they will treat themselves to a chocolate bar or a bottle of fruit juice. Examples of places where people have to wait include doctor’s offices, nail salons, barber shops, airport lobbies and oil change centres.
ZuluZulu / Pixabay
What if There is Another Machine There?
If you find a great location for your vending machine but there is already another machine there, this doesn’t automatically mean that you shouldn’t still place your vending machine in that spot. If the vending machine that is already there is older and not as well maintained as yours or doesn’t offer a great selection – your machine will likely win business away from it. Also, if the vending machine is completely different than yours and none of the selection overlaps, you might find that both machines can occupy the same location and still be profitable.
Choosing the Right Food for the Location
When you are deciding where to place your vending machine, another important consideration to make is what kind of food to serve in the machine. The food that you choose should correspond with the location that you have chosen and what people are more likely to eat there. For example, if the vending machine is right outside of a gym – it should have healthy snacks like cereal bars, protein bars and dried fruit as well as bottles of water and sports drinks. If people will be eating and drinking from your vending machine right before or after a workout, they will not want to eat fattening snacks and sugary chocolate. However, on the other hand if your machine is located near an area where there will be a lot of children, such as a school or a video arcade, you should choose a machine with plenty of child-friendly snacks including sodas and candies with cartoon characters on them.
Placing your vending machine in the right location is very important and when you find the right spot it will ensure that you get as much profit as possible from the machine. Take your time and choose well, because the location of your vending machine makes a big difference!
Tim Grimshaw is a blogger as well as the owner of a small business. He writes for a number of blogs about business tips and other practical advice.
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