Of all the factors that will determine the success of your vending business, location is the most important. Indeed, the decisions you’ll make on other essential variables, such as product selection and type of vending machines, also depend on the location where the vending machine will sit.
Business owners must find vending machine locations with reasonably high traffic to get above-average sales for your vending business. You can find such vending locations yourself or outsource the job to a vending machine locator.
What Are Vending Machine Locators?
Vending machine location services help a vending machine owner win great locations. They scout for high-traffic locations for your vending, sell the vending location owners on the benefit of adding vending machines to the property and negotiate the terms of the deal.
Such a vending machine placement service can do this job in person or remotely by making cold calls. A good vending machine locator is primarily a salesperson. They should be able to articulate the benefits that will accrue to the location owner if they install a vending equipment on the property. In case of healthy vending machines, they'll find the most fitting property owners and communicate the right benefits for the targeted foot traffic looking for healthy snacks. The same goes for snack machines, gumball machines, sticker machines, soda-snack machines, or vending of honor boxes and snack boxes. They are seeking a win-win scenario for vending company and the vending location business owner.
Things You Should Know About Locators
Finding locations for your vending requires excellent research skills, salesmanship, and the grit to make hundreds of cold calls or location visits. Something most people aren't ready to do. Expect to pay $50 - $100 for each candy vending location a locator secures. For full-size snacks, drinks, bulk candy machines, or combo vending machines, locating services will typically charge north of $200 per location.
Before parting with cash to hire a vending machine locator, take the time to assess if they can actually get the kind of locations they claim they can deliver. Below are some of the things you should know about a vending locator.
The Terms of Payment (and Guarantees)
Ideally, you want the vending machine locator to accept payment based on performance. If they are charging per location secured, that’s a good sign. Where upfront payment is required, there should be clear guarantees on what percentage of the payment will be refunded if they don’t deliver.
Some vending locators offer additional services such as website building and help with branding for business owner. These services are then bundled with their location placement services and presented as a package. While some of these packages are reasonably priced, most are outrageously marked up and are a rip-off. You can secure these services independently for cheap.
Their Track Record and the Markets They Have Served
A vending machine placement service is essentially an outsourced sales job for a vending machine owner. To get good results in sales, one needs proper training or on-the-job experience, a deep understanding of the market, and a robust professional network. It would be unwise to pay vending location services upfront if you cannot verify their ability to secure vending machine locations.
Luckily for you, this is an easy thing to verify. If the vending locator has been in business for a while, they should have testimonials of vending businesses they have helped on their website. When in doubt, ask them to provide this information. Further, ensure they are familiar with the markets you want to serve.
The Kind of Information They Ask You to Provide
A new location for vending machines is only as good as the type of people who traffic it. When you’ve already decided on the kind of vending business you want to run, it is vital that the vending machine locator takes this information into account and directs vending operators to only those vending machine locations that are a good fit. This is crucial to vending business owners.
The more information the vending locator uses to make a decision, the more profitable locations they are able to land. As a general rule, you should have minimum requirements on the following metrics.
- Demographics: factors such as income levels, age, and interests, among many others, influence buying decisions. Demographics will influence what kind of products you carry and how much you can mark them up.
- The amount of traffic: vending machines do well in high-traffic vending locations. Make it clear to the vending machine locator that you want more locations with high traffic.
- Existing competition: the more vending machines there are at a new location, the less revenue you’ll earn. You want to be at vending machine locations with few vending machines or where there are vending machines but with a different product selection from yours.
The 6 Best Vending Machine Locators in the United States
The vending locator you choose will depend on how much of the scouting job you want to outsource, your budget, and your specific business needs. Below are some of the vending locators in the US fresh vending entrepreneurs and businesses moving to more locations can hire.
If you’d rather negotiate with location owners yourself instead of having someone else do it for you, you’ll love vendinglocator.com’s locator service. The vending machine locator service will give you a list of potential high-traffic vending locations in your area with their contact information so that all you have to do is reach out and ask if they are open to adding a vending equipment to their property.
You will get a list of 50 to 200 location recommendations based on your requirements and zip code. With a list covering a 15- to 25-mile radius, you will have plenty of good potential vending locations to reach out to.
Further, since you will be doing the outreach yourself, the service is very affordable. Starting at just $19 per list, it is the most fairly-priced vending location list-building service.
Kick Start Locations, a largest vending locating company on the list, will find quality locations for your vending and charge per location. The company founded by Robert Patterson back in 2007 specializes in finding locations for candy machines, gumball machines, toy machines, sticker machines, honor boxes, snack boxes, soda-snack machines, combo machines, healthy vending machines and more. For snacks, drinks, or combo vending machines, you must call them to get a custom price per location. To get an idea of what you may end up paying, below are some of their prices per location for various vending machines
- Pringles machine - $119 per location
- Spiral gumball - $99 per location
- Sticker machine - $59 per location
Robert Patterson backs his vending service with warranties. If your machine is kicked out of a location within 90 days, they will replace the location free of charge. Further, for every three vending locations you order, you get one free replacement location (offer valid for 90 days after the location is secured, and you can claim it for any reason, including not being happy with a location).
Kick Start 360 will get high-traffic locations for you on a package deal on either of two plans, gold or platinum. Under the gold plan, you will pay $1,699 for two best places / locations, an attorney-written location contract, a $100 Google Ads credit, a customized website, and a logo. They guarantee you will get the two locations within six weeks. On their platinum plan, you will pay $3,249 for five locations, an attorney-written contract, a customized website, a logo, and a $250 Google Ads credit. They guarantee you will get the five locations within 12 weeks.
There is a caveat, though. The maximum refund is only $400 on the gold plan and $1,000 on the platinum plan. Therefore, if you are tight on cash and can’t afford to lose a dollar, you should probably look for an alternative vending machine locator. Also, you can use Vendinglocator.com to get a good list of potential high-traffic locations for only $19 and call/visit the locations yourself.
Vending Business Services has decent reviews but is vague about prices. You will have to get in touch with them to get a custom price based on your needs. First-time customers get a $100 per machine discount.
You will be communicating with a locator assigned to you. This locator will send you names and addresses of locations to visit to close a deal. If you visit a location and there’s no deal, they will make adjustments and find another location for you. They don’t give a guarantee as to how long this process will take.
Space Coat Locators operates from Central Florida and is active in California and the North East. Howie, the proprietor, has been in the vending machine business for 37 years. He frequently travels for locator work and takes a hands-on approach to find good vending locations.
If yours is a sizable vending machine business with multiple vending machines, it makes sense to hire Howie, as he will travel to meet and interact with local businesses. Notably, big national vending locator companies always outsource the work to people like Howie. If you want to learn how he finds good locations, you can ride along, and he’ll teach you the skills and tricks he’s learned over the years.
AMD Vending has a team of professionals who can help you secure snacks and drinks vending machine locations in any area in the United States. They will assign an account manager to you to tailor the location search to your specific vending needs.
The pricing will depend on how you structure the request. AMD Vending can find locations and set appointments for you to meet the decision-maker to assess the location. They can also do everything for you so that all you have to do is take the vending machine to the location on a pre-arranged date.
DIY: Should You Be Your Own Vending Machine Locator?
No one understands the goals you want to achieve with your vending business better than you. If you are in it for the long haul, you may benefit more from looking for high-traffic locations yourself. Meeting different location owners to build relationships that may turn into future partnerships, even if they are not looking for a vending machine at the moment, is how vending operators build an effective network in this business.
When you are just getting started, there are some key insights you need to consider to ensure you always choose the right locations. Below are some useful pointers.
- At any particular location, it is always good to have a snack and drinks vending machine or a combo vending machine.
- You can sell a greater variety of products at a location where lots of different people frequent. (For instance: in front of a restaurant on the main street is one of the best locations.)
- Have irreducible minimums on traffic per location. Consider whether the location is open to the public and for how many days in a week.
- In a high-traffic location, you can have more than one vending machine. This reduces the possibility of a stockout and the number of trips you make to restock.
- If a grocery store or convenience store is nearby, your prices should be closer to theirs. Do not price yourself out of the market.
- A location on an upper level with no elevator is probably a bad idea. It reduces the chances that someone just pops in to grab a drink or snack.
- Leave a business card or flyer behind when meeting location owners.
- Most terms, including the commission to the location owner, are negotiable.
- Location owners with very old vending machines are likely to be open to replacing them with new modern vending machines.
If you decide to get started today and call or visit potential best locations yourself, it is more efficient to use a list-building service so that all you have to do is visit or call the locations on your list. You will save a lot of time as a result.
You can get started today and use our Vending Locator service to do this. We will research high-traffic locations in your area and recommend 50 to 200 potentially profitable locations. With a good list of possible vending locations, you can jump straight to the pitching.
