Automatic Merchandiser serves the business management, marketing, technology and product information needs of its readers including vending operators, coffee service operators, product brokers, and product and equipment distributors in print.
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have only machine related keys on it and the ring should be welded shut so that nothing can come off unless you take it off to replace a broken key or add another type key to that route. The operator should always have any keys related to vehicles on a separate ring. An operator may want to incor- porate a procedure that will stop keys from walking by having the drivers turn in their personal vehicle keys in order to get their route keys. At the end of the day they can't leave without exchanging their route keys for their vehicle keys. There should also be spare keys for each route and vehicle locked away so that in an emergency the operator or manager can get to them easily. Set dollar amounts for changers All vending machines have chang- ers in them and the drivers should be replenishing them every service. Operators may want to set up the changers to a certain dollar value depending on the makeup of the pricing in the machine and the com- bination of change it will dispense for each purchase. For instance, if the changer fund is at $35 level, divided by $20 in quarters, $10 in dimes and $5 in nickels, when you fll the tubes with those amounts make a mark on the changer to show at what level each coin should be. The driver then knows to fll the changer to those levels without having to count anything out. To save them time, instead of having them go into the coin box to get the various coins needed, start a system whereby you provide for the driver each day bags of nickels, dimes and quarters, again at a set amount, so that during the day they go into these bags to fll the changers. The operator can even color code the bags so there would be no mistak- ing which bag has what coins. To do this, create a company change fund to draw the coins from and then for Little things make a BIG impact By Dominic Finelli, Contributing Editor Tips to better business from a vending industry veteran, in two parts. T Part 1 here are a number of things that help you run a better vend- ing operation. Some seem to be common sense stuff. Then there are others that are learned over time through experience both good and bad. I'm going to try and give you some pointers for the small vend- ing business owner that I learned by trial and error during the 43 years of working for a vending company. Part one will consist of practices dealing with the route driver. Part two will appear in the March issue of Auto- matic Merchandiser, and will focus on techniques to use in back of the house management. Have individual keys Let's start with vending machine keys. If a vending operator has more than two routes he or she should think about having a different key for each route. Make sure to use a key that can't be duplicated at the local hardware store. The key ring should 18 Automatic Merchandiser VendingMarketWatch.com February 2014 S M A L L O P ADVICE TAILORED TO THE 1 TO 4 ROUTE OPERATION S M A L L O P autm_18-19_0214SmallOp_F.indd 18 2/4/14 8:27 AM