Servicing New Vending Accounts Loading Drink Machines An interview with Larry Towner

In the last video in this series, Larry goes into detail about handling the money from your vending machines. In this video,Servicing New Vending Accounts Loading Drink Machines Larry explains how to efficiently load a drink machine.

Do a pic list of the drinks you’ll need. Now is the time to use your hand truck and you’ll want to load them in order from back to front or first in last out.

On average we walked 6-7 miles per day, if you can cut that walking time down you’ll be much better off.

You’ll develop a rhythm for what we call “flippin” bottles and cans.

In the next video, Larry talks about trucks and security issues.

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Episode Transcript:

Tom Shivers Servicing New Vending Accounts loading Drink Machines : I’m Tom with the Vending Business show, here again with Larry Towner, and we’ve been talking about what to do when you land a vending account and we just talked about how to handle the money and now what’s next Larry?

Larry Towner: Well, we talked about a snack machine and we talked about handling the money on a snack machine. We haven’t talked about how to service a drink machine and so let’s do a real quick session on a drink machine just as an addendum to the snack machine, they’re very, very similar obviously except you have a lot less product or a lot less choice in your number of products and you have a different set of concerns.

Larry Towner: We should be able to get a drink machine in one video, I’m kind of assuming. So first thing is you know you’re gonna need some drinks. If you do ’em separately, snack machine and drink machine together, you can do ’em separately. Let’s just assume you’re gonna do ’em separately, just because you’re, just because, you’re gonna do ’em separately. If you’re gonna do them separately, you’ve done a pick list of what drinks you’ll need, ’cause you got your snack machine, you then open your drink machine, you look in, you need a case of Coke, a case of Pepsi, a case of Mountain Dew, a case of Diet Coke, you run out to the truck and you go get ’em.

Larry Towner: This is where you really need that hand truck, you need that hand truck or some kind of way to move that product in.

Tom Shivers: Hey Larry.

Larry Towner: Yes.

Tom Shivers: Just real quick. Explain what a pick list is.

Larry Towner: See I’m using jargon and I’m glad you picked me off on that. A pick list is a piece of paper that you take, and it can be cardboard. I used to use three by five cards ’cause they fit in the pocket of my shirt but it’s a piece of card and you actually go through and you pick exactly what products you wanna put into that machine so in a drink machine case, I always worked from left to right so I would look over to the far left and I’d say that was usually diet coke, I’d go I need a diet coke, I don’t need any of the grape, don’t need any of the tea, I need a Dr. Pepper, a Pepsi, a Mountain Dew, and a regular Coke so I’d have those things listed down or say I needed two Coke, whatever the quantity was you could do the same thing in a snack machine. You write down what that pick list. That’s a pick list.

Larry Towner: What am I going to the truck to pick up is what it is. That’s where the term comes from.

Tom Shivers: All right. Great.

Larry Towner: So you got your pick list. You go out to the truck. So yeah and you need to know that. You need to know that that’s a way to do it. So we got out to the truck. We get our pick list. We put the things done the way you, remember if you write ’em out one way up then you’re gonna load them backwards. You always load them in order. I said that with the snack machine and it’s more important with the drinks that you know where each item goes, put ’em on your handtruck or your flatbed. You’re gonna need a way to carry ’em ’cause carrying ten cases of drinks in, that’s where you lose the gym membership really really fast with the amount of time it takes you, the amount of time it takes you is what kills you ’cause that back and forth, we did a study one time.

Larry Towner: This is just kind of a boring little aside but we did a study and we spent on average walking during a day, we walked six to seven miles per day. Our longest walk from truck into a machine was about two hundred yards and our closest one was literally you pull the truck up to the machines but on an average day, about six or seven miles. If you can cut that walking time down, I know it’s good for the gym membership, keeps you young, keeps you healthy, but if you can limit the amount of walking that you do, you’ll be a lot better off. It just takes a whole lot less time so that’s just a quick tip that we have for doing vending route.

Larry Towner: So anyway, you roll in with your stuff, and then you just start filling and you’ll develop for what we call flipping drinks. You’ll learn how they go in, whether they’re bottles or they’re cans, you’ll get into a real rhythm for how to load those drinks up and how to make things happen really smoothly so that’s what you’ll get into, load again from right to left or left to right, always do it the same. Do all of the motions that you make to be exactly the same every time when you’re loading your machines.

Larry Towner: Handling the money on the drink machines again it’s the same as you do with the snack machines. You wanna close out the door. You wanna fill that bag up. You wanna get the money out of the validator and you wanna keep it out of sight as soon as possible. Same thing. Put it into a box or something to take it out of that building and head on your way. Remember, as I told you in the last one, don’t lose the money when you put it in the truck. Make sure you remember where you put it. We’ll get into trucks and security issues and things that happen on your truck or vehicle, whichever it is, in a future show. Any other questions, Tom?

Tom Shivers: Yeah so I guess that’s where we’re headed next in the next video, right?

Larry Towner: Sure. Why not? We’ve gotta keep our audience entertained, don’t we?

Tom Shivers: You’ve been watching Servicing New Vending Accounts Loading Drink Machines at the Vending Business show. A publication of A&M Equipment Sales.  Check out other blogs at Acquiring New Vending Accounts