What else could you stock in a vending tower

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Tommyc9494
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What else could you stock in a vending tower

Post by Tommyc9494 »

Hi all the title basically explains the post what else could you stock and supply directly from your vending towers iv read somewhere that someone wanted to sell lighters but I can’t see that working without any age verification I myself have a couple of ideas but I wanna see if you lot come up with them also
OscarHarris
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Re: What else could you stock in a vending tower

Post by OscarHarris »

I ran a trial last year selling E-liquids in towers. It seemed like a good idea based on the exponential increase in the vape market over the last few years and predicted continued increase over the next few. After all cigarette vending machines used to make a killing. So it seemed like a no-brainer providing I could get the model right.

Realistically tower coin mechs have a limit of 3x£1 coins. I know in theory it's possible to do 2/3 x £2 coin mech. But as these are much less common than £1 coins, it seemed sesible to stick to the pound. So £3 a pop was the aim. I sourced a excellent premium E-liquid manufacturer with plenty of great flavours and strengths etc with a great reputation. All of the liquids usually retail at £4.99. I was paying just over 1 pound after VAT, delivery and the pot. So vending at £3 there was good profit in it.

As I was selling some of the best quality liquid available at the best possible price out of a machine where the customers would already be, I thought I was on to a winner.

I placed 10 towers in a variety of my existing best performing and most suitable sites. To help I had very professional posters and table talkers produced and placed them around each venue. These advertised the liquids and explained the flavours etc etc. In short, I thought I gave it the best possible chance and was waiting for the money to roll in. The results were so underwhelming it seemed like little point exploring the idea any further. I did run the trial for over 12 months in order to make sure that it didn't just need time to catch on. But had no better success over the longer term.

Funny enough you don't have to verify age at the point of sale via a vending machine. You do have to demonstrate that reasonable measures have been taken to ensure underage people can't buy them, but proof of age is not required. So by placing them in over 18 licenced premisis in eye shot of the bar seemed to cover this in the same way it covers over 18 gambling machines. This may give you a way to sell lighters via towers, although I'm not sure it's a money maker to be honest.

Apart from that I have a few snooker halls that sell chalk out of a tower for £1. This seems like a novelty for the sites though and not a viable business model on a bigger scale.

If anyone has any great ideas of vending anything for £3 out of a tower I have some almost new mechs you can use :50:

Jay.
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Re: What else could you stock in a vending tower

Post by Style »

You could put them in Pringles towers and Michael Oleary would let you place them in Ryanair planes Jay. He will want £2 quid commission per sale though.
OscarHarris
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Re: What else could you stock in a vending tower

Post by OscarHarris »

Funny enough Andy I would have probably lost less money with your Ryanair model :shifty:
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Re: What else could you stock in a vending tower

Post by Style »

Ive seen, golf balls, tees, squashballs in towers. I suppose you could do animal feed in a petting zoo, condoms, blue pils etc in a strip club.
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