What I Learned About Soda Vending Machines
By Mike Corbin, Thu Dec 8th

Soda vending machines come in all shapes and sizes but the mostcommon style are the stand-alone full sized machines.

Soda vending machines have lots of capacity. Even my old onethat I paid too much for had a capacity of over 500 cans with 7total selections. That's a lot of soda which also means that itcould be possible that you don't have to visit a location toooften if you are looking to vending as a part-time business.

The large capacity of these machines coupled with reasonableproduct costs and retail price can produce a decent businesswith healthy margins. I was paying an average of $.40 for a canof soda (tax and deposit included) and retailing that same canfor $1.00. So with a $.60 margin multiplied by 5 machines eachselling 200 cans of soda a month = a pretty nice little monthlyreturn that doesn't require a lot of work because the machineshave lots of capacity!

In theory at least.

Here is what else I learned about soda vending machines...

All soda machines plug into a wall because that's how thecompressor works to keep the soda cold.

Older machines may not be multi-price! They may have a coinmechanism inside the machine but that doesn't mean that you canchange the price of your product easily. If you insist onstarting your vending business by dealing with Rip-off BizopVending Company because they give you the location with yourmachine, ask the salesguy to show you how to change the price ofyour soda machine.

Newer soda vending machines can sell bottled product that iseither glass bottles or plastic. The glass bottles don't break.

Soda vending machines that allow you to change the price of anyselection is the way to go. A can of pop where I live sells for$1.25 and bottle of juice will sell for $1.65 and up and bothcan be sold side by side out of a vending machine.

Lots of capacity and lots of selection is the way to go. If youare looking at a bubble front soda vending machine that has 12selections and 500 can capacity (not including bottles in thisexample) you don't have to fill up the machine until it'stotally full.

You might be able to get free soda vending machines if you knowwhere to look. This was too late to save my business but I knewof a bottled water company that gave away free soda vendingmachines (that were good ones too!) with very reasonablerestrictions on the operator.

You can get 27 cases of 24 cans of soda into a 1994 Pontiacsunbird. I don't recommend this at all. A car is not a goodvehicle to use for transporting soda and I would expect that avan is likely the best vehicle to use even though I never used avan when I had my business.

I needed better storage space. Apparently cans of soda will"pop" the seal in warm conditions like a top floor storage roomthat get really hot in the summer.

But the number one thing I learned about soda vending machineswas that having a relationship with a company that was anauthorized distributor for several machine manufacturers was areliable way to avoid vending scams. Although this lesson was tolate for me having a relationship with a local authorizeddistributor is the best way to educate yourself about all typesof vending machines.

About the author:Mike Corbin's website http://www.no-vending-secrets.com challenges would beentrepreneur's to think differently about vending and avoid thevending business opportunity scams entirely!