by Abco | Mar 23, 2012 | Vending Business Show
How the Vending Business has Changed An interview with Jimmy Bryan of Eagle Vending
Jimmy has been in the vending business for 29 years and runs 18 routes in the Atlanta area.
How the Vending Business has Changed What changes have you seen in the vending business?
Over the last 10 years there’s been a gradual decline in buildings and stores being built, so fewer opportunities are available to place our equipment. There are a number of issues:
- Reduction in work forces
- Down turn in the economy has been tough
- Healthy snacking and nutritional issues has had an impact
- Sales are stable now, so no more reductions but no growth either
There’s more going on with technology now that will have a positive impact on our business:
- Validators now accept higher bills with bill recyclers
- Credit card fees aren’t justifiable yet
- Micro markets – the unmanned stores are coming
- Handheld computers that download sales data for better merchandising
- Reducing energy consumption and recycling is a new trend for vending machines
What do you see in the forseeable future?
- Remote monitoring brings the ability to monitor real time data so the operator knows exactly what sells at a location and what doesn’t, but it’s costly right now
- Yes the marketplace is changing and those who can grow with it will adapt How the Vending Business has Changed You can see another episode of the Vending Business Show School Vending Machines Have A Healthy Option
Listen to the interview:
Episode Transcript:
Tom Shivers: I’m Tom Shivers with the Vending Business Show, here with Jimmy Bryan of Eagle Vending. He’s been in the vending business for 29 years, and runs 18 routes in the Atlanta area. Today we’re going to talk a little bit about how the vending business has changed.
Tom Shivers: So, Jimmy, thanks for being here.
Jimmy Bryan: Great, glad to join you.
Tom Shivers: What changes have you seen in the vending business, especially I guess more relevant in today’s market?
Jimmy Bryan: Well, over the last 29 years there’s been huge changes. Back many years ago, there was almost continuous growth and new buildings going up, and companies adding employees, and lots of industrial blue collar locations. And we’ve seen over the last 10 years or so, a gradual decline in many of those. You don’t see too many home depot stores being built, or plants, or factories going up. It’s just the opposite. You’ve got closings and reductions in workforces, and shopping centers closing down.
Jimmy Bryan: So, there’s just fewer places for us to place equipment than there was years ago. The downturn in the economy we’ve seen over the last three to four years has been particularly tough on us. We’ve probably lost 15% of our base of accounts because of what we’ve gone through. And in addition to that, we see issues with healthy snacking and drinking, that’s had an impact on our business. And schools look like they’re going to be addressing some of their concerns with childhood obesity, which is also going to have a negative impact on vending sales.
Jimmy Bryan: And I think the per capita consumption at the average location is down as far as money that goes into vending machines, and that’s just because of the workplace, and concerns over nutritional issues, and they way people stop on the way to work and get a cup of coffee. So, all those things combined have had a downward pressure on our overall sales.
Jimmy Bryan: Currently where we’re at, it’s fairly stable, just like what you hear with the economy and the stock market, it’s kind of leveled off. So, we’re not seeing reductions, but we’re not seeing a lot of growth either. There’s probably more going on now as far as technical, or technology issues than any time in the past. So, I think that’s going to have a positive impact on our business.
Tom Shivers: Oh, really? What do you mean in terms of technology?
Jimmy Bryan: Well, if you go back many years ago, we started putting validators on all machines. Now we’re seeing just about the majority of our machines going out of our warehouse take ones, twos, fives, and in some cases take tens with bill recyclers. Credit cards are growing, but the fees that we get hit with on the credit card sales make it somewhat difficult to expand that in all areas, which is a problem, because so many young people today don’t carry much cash with them, and it would be great if all vending machines took credit cards. But the fees are so significant that it would almost require an across the board price increase.
Jimmy Bryan: So, I think as time goes on you’ll see more and more credit cards, and hopefully the fees will become more manageable, and more accepted. And you know, then there’s issues, the micro markets is a new thing that’s coming out. The unmanned C Store concept, I think that’s going to be a growing area going forward where vending operators are going to have to add that to their ability to service locations. And I think there’s some exciting things with that, but you know, you’ve got to be able to handle that technology and that merchandising.
Jimmy Bryan: We’ve recently moved into handheld computers, where we’re downloading sales data, called Dexing. And we think that’s going to help us in terms of being able to [inaudible 00:04:33] at some point in time, and also merchandising gives you great information in that regard. So, a lot of smaller operators might find that difficult to start off with. But I think that’s going to become more and more commonplace.
Jimmy Bryan: And then there’s areas like customers will come to us wanting options on reducing energy consumption, and recycling. And I think those are becoming key areas of concern along with some many of our accounts have someone in charge of nutrition, or wellness. And we’re seeing more and more requests for what can you do to provide our employees, or our associates, with healthy options for their drinks, and their snacks, and their cold food, and all? So, those are areas that are also of concern, that we can address.
Jimmy Bryan: But it’s tough to grow a vending business, because of the market place and the competition. And it’s just not an overall growing business, where a lot of new accounts are sprouting up. Most of the business we get now, we actually take from another operator, because there’s just not a lot of new accounts moving into our market.
Tom Shivers: Well, anything else you see in the future? What else do you see there?
Jimmy Bryan: Well, I mean remote monitoring is an interesting concept, with the ability to obtain real time data from your locations, Cannon is kind of the leader in that area. And I think that it’s certainly exciting to be able to get that information, but it’s also very costly to be able to harvest that data based on the cost hit with the fees and all. So, it would be nice if everyone in the industry could pull their vehicle up to the location and know exactly what they needed to take in on that first trip. But a lot of the equipment is older and won’t accept that kind of technology. And the newer equipment that will, it’s expensive to do it.
Jimmy Bryan: So, it’ll be interesting 10 years from now to look back and see how much of that is going on, and how much more efficient routes can be come, where drivers are not spending as much time in elevators, and going back and forth to trucks. But they’re spending more and more time actually in front of the machine, loading it. And they have that merchandising information, where they know exactly what sells at a location and what doesn’t.
Jimmy Bryan: And I think those are the exciting things that will allow the vending industry to compete with the other food service channels that are out there.
Tom Shivers: Yeah, maybe the price of that Cannon date will be coming down over the years as more machines are made with it. Who knows?
Jimmy Bryan: Yeah, yeah. I hope that’s the case, and you hope technology becomes more efficient. And we just recently went through a transition from our former software system to an upgraded Cloud based system called Census. And the transition was so much easier than it would have been a few years ago, because of the ability to transfer data.
Jimmy Bryan: So, things are changing, and the old concept of just a vending machine that takes coins and dollar bills, and spirals turn, and the guy with the vehicle that pulls up there. Certainly that is changing, the marketplace is changing. And you know, the people that survive longterm and are able to grow and be efficient, they’re the ones that are going to adapt. And it’s an interesting process that we’re all going through right now.
Tom Shivers: Good stuff, thanks for sharing, Jimmy. Anything you want to share about your business and what you do?
Jimmy Bryan: We’ve been in business 29 years, and we’re in Marietta, Georgia, just north of Atlanta. So, we’re members of USG, and enjoy that relationship and the benefits that come with it. So, we’re alive and well and learning, and hoping to survive and grow in a tough marketplace. So, I’ve enjoyed being able to talk with you for a little bit about it.
Tom Shivers: Great. You’ve been listening to the Vending Business Show, a publication of A&M Equipment Sales.
by Abco | Nov 25, 2011 | Vending Business Show
AN INTERVIEW WITH LARRY TOWNER, VENDING CONSULTANT.
An interview with Larry Towner, vending consultant.
Larry is a veteran vending operator who has had success in all areas of the vending business. Listen in as he answers another good question.
“Ok, so somebody says yes, I want your vending machines in my office, then what do I do?”
With vending accounts This can make or break a lot of vending companies.
B2B sales involves an agreement, be careful what you agree to do.
A good rule of thumb is to under promise and over deliver.
Give yourself enough time to arrange the move.
Have everything ready to go ahead of time.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
A VENDING ACCOUNTS CONVERSATION
Tom: All right. Well, do we have time for another question here?
Larry: Sure we do.
Tom: Okay. Well, yeah. Let’s see, somebody says, “Yes,” and they want … They’re saying, “Okay. I’m ready to get started with your machines.” Then what do you do?
Larry: Yeah. This is a great question because this can make or break a lot of companies. If you go out and you have to be real careful in your presentation as to what exactly you’re agreeing to, I guess I want to say.
Larry: This is a business to business sale in general. It’s a business to business sale. You’re going to be placing your business inside of somebody else’s business. That can get a little … I don’t want to say touchy, but people want the right things put into their business. They have a preconceived notion of exactly what’s going to happen and how things are going to go. You have to be very careful with what you say when you actually do the sales presentation and what you’re agreeing to in your vending account.
Larry: As somebody says, “Yes,” so here’s the thing. This is one of my rules. I was taught this in selling many, many, many years go. That’s under promise and over deliver. That’s one of the first things.
Larry: So whenever I’m talking to a customer and the customer says to me a question like, “Hey, that sounds great. We’d love to get started right away. When can you move the machines in?” I always counter back and say … I usually ask questions with a question. It’s an old sales technique. But I say, “When do you want them?” And they say, “Well …” That’s the first question. That’s the first question. It’s like when do want them because if they have somebody in there, they’ve got to make arrangements to get them out of there and things like that. All of this takes a little bit of time.
Larry: The second thing is, “Do you have your equipment ready? Is it ready to go?” If it’s not ready to go, how much time is it going to take you to get your equipment ready to go and your inventory and all the things that you need?
Larry: As you know, these vending machines don’t fill themselves and walk into the vending account. You have to have a means to move them. If you don’t happen to have the equipment that it takes to move vending machines, you’re going to have contact one of your local suppliers who will probably have several choices of machine movers for you to contact so that he can move equipment into the account because it’s not easy. Soda machines weigh 600 pounds and getting one through a door can be a very interesting experience. I’ve done it many, many, many, many times. I did move most of my own equipment.
Larry: One of the first things is give yourself enough time to get done what you need to get done. That is arrange for the move. Make sure if you’re trying to schedule somebody else’s move time, be really, really careful of when they can get in. We always told people because we never moved machines in the rain. We say, “We can do it at such and such a date provided it doesn’t rain.” We always gave ourselves an out because if we did have inclement weather, rain or snow actually, too. But anytime that you’re moving big piece of equipment, you got a safety factor you have to worry about. Anyway, that’s just a little bit of an aside. But I always gave myself enough time.
Larry: Then what I would do is I would go in and say … I would have the equipment ready to go and hopefully I would have it ready to go much … Probably a week before they actually needed it. At that time I would call the customer and I would just say, “Hi, Mr. So-and-So. This is Larry from, my company’s name.” And I’d say, “We’ve got your equipment ready. When you’re ready for us, we’ll be there.”
Larry: Sometimes what you’ll find is you say, “The guy came in yesterday and picked up the equipment.” So he is now without vending and your equipment’s ready. You go and you move it in. Now you bring your equipment in a week before you were supposed to and because the customer actually has the need for it at that time, you’re already starting off a long way towards getting very positive referrals because you delivered before you said you would.
Larry: If you think about that, Tom, when you do business with somebody you like to get a little more out … If you make a deal and you’re satisfied with the deal, but they bring you a little more, doesn’t that mean something to you?
Tom: Yeah. I had the expectation of getting what they said, but then they gave me something additional? That’s always cool. You got to love that.
Larry: Yeah and what that does is, is that builds the confidence in you as a businessman from your company standpoint into their company. He says, “This guy’s all right.” Even if you start off on that foot. Now, you come in a week late, then what happens?
Tom: That is like, “Uh-oh.” I’ve lost my time. I’ve got to reschedule things. Stuff like that.
Larry: Exactly. Exactly. That’s where when somebody says, “Yes,” it’s critical that you absolutely make sure that you’re i’s are crossed and t’s are dotted. I mean, your t’s are crossed and your i’s are dotted. I went backwards there.
Larry: But just you want to make sure that you can deliver at least on time. Now, in a worst-case scenario, say, who knows? Something happens and you can’t get the equipment. You’ve planned for the equipment to be there two weeks from today. In your mind you say, “No problem. I’ll have it there for a week from today,” but something goes wrong. You don’t get it there until that week. At least you’re still on time.
Larry: That’s why you want to as we say, promise, extend out how long you can do it, but deliver it early. Promise … Make your promises small, but deliver big as it were. If you do that, you’re on the right foot.
Larry: One of the other good tricks in the vending business is to at the time that somebody says, “Yes,” you say, “Hey,” and you make up a form. It’s really just a real simple form. You take your inventory list or what you think you’re going to sell there. Just make up a list and say, “Hey, can you pass this around? We want to make sure that people get what they want.” You put your product list on there. Your Lay’s potato chips and Hershey’s candy, Snicker’s candy bars and M&M yellows and things like that. You write all that down. They just make check marks by it. “Yeah, we want this. Yeah, we want this. Yeah, we want this.” That’s a really good tip. That starts you out on the right foot. These are all marketing concepts, by the way. This is marketing. This is not sales. This is actually vending machine marketing.
Tom: There at the bottom, do you put a little blank line for add your own or something?
Larry: Absolutely. You are always open to take suggestions. Doesn’t mean they’re going to get it. But you’re always open to take suggestions because they might have one item there that you’ve never thought of that you buy and you find out it sells really well there. You take it off to another location. You find out it sells there. All of a sudden you’ve got a sleeper unit that generates you extra sales that you might not have known about. We’ll get into some of that. That’s a lot more of what I call machine marketing.
Larry: Marketing at the machine level because you can market at the machine level meaning your product selections and things like that is a different type of marketing. That’s how you generate the most profits out of your machine.
Larry: Just from the general account sales standpoint, you put that stuff out and it helps to build your credibility. It also gives them what they want. Giving people what they want is how you make sales. You don’t walk in and dictate to them because they’re going to say, “Right. See yeah.”
Tom: Yeah. Good stuff thanks for sharing, Larry. Tell us a little about your consulting business.
Larry: Well, like I say, some of the tips and tricks that you’re seeing here are a lot of what we offer in our consulting business. We specialize in making vending companies very efficient from a sales and marketing standpoint and how to generate maximum profits both operationally and via the various different marketing means. That’s what we do.
Larry: We are available at [email protected]. If you have any questions and we are working on a website that will be up pretty soon. At least we hope.
Tom: All right. And you’ve been listening to the Vending Business Show. A publication of A&M Equipment Sales.
by Abco | Nov 11, 2011 | Vending Business Show
Placing vending Machines An interview with Larry Towner, vending 
business consultant.
Placing Vending Machines Larry reveals numerous tips for identifying a good vending account. Listen in as Larry describes:
- Identify what type of accounts you want to be in
- The sales plan to land new accounts
- Referrals are the life-blood of your business, so know and take care of the key people in each of your accounts
- Minimize windshield time by focusing on a specific geographic area for your operations
- Just because you have a location doesn’t mean you should have a vending machine there
- It’s a numbers game that is focused on ROI, otherwise you lose
- Call on friendly competitors to share leads in the areas where you do not focus
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Placing Vending Machines Tom Shivers: I’m Tom Shivers with the Vending Business Show, here with Larry Towner who has been is the vending business for many years. Before we get going to far I just wanna point people over to the blog where you can see more podcast and the Vending Business Show, it’s amequipmentsales.com/blog.
Tom Shivers: Larry has been in the vending business for many years and he sold the majority share of his vending business a few years ago, today he provides consulting. And last time, well be fore we get going there, Larry thanks for being here.
Larry Towner: I appreciate it Tom.
Tom Shivers: We talked about the vending business, whether it’s a reliable venture or not and got into a few questions like what’s the history of the vending industry and you’re pointing out it’s a numbers game and we also got into the question of how would you know you’ve got a good location for a vending machine and you gave a lot of good tips on identifying a good vending account. What are some other good tips for finding a good vending account or a good location?
Larry Towner Placing Vending Machines : Well good vending accounts are, I wanna like, any business. It’s really more or less a sales and marketing effort. In the vending business you have two different areas that you do sales and marketing. One is the end consumer which is the person that actually purchases the product that you actually get your income from.
Larry Towner: But before that you have to actually do what’s called place the machines and in the process of placing the machines you have to create a marketing plan, we’ve already talked about doing a business plan. But there’s a marketing plan that goes along with that and that is what type of accounts do you wanna be in. And when I say that is, pick up an account that you have an idea of what it is that you wanna be. Do you wanna be in the amusement park because, do you wanna be in the apartment business, do you wanna be in the commercial business where you’re in people’s offices or their plants, do you wanna be doing street vending? There’s a very large number of types of accounts that you can get.
Larry Towner: So the first thing you do is you kinda decided where you wanna be and what you think you’ll be successful at. And then you go out and you start a sales process on getting these accounts. And a sales process is as simple a walking into an establishment or walking into your potential prospect of where you wanna place your machines and basically asking a few questions.
Larry Towner: I’m big in my sales processes to ask a lot of questions about what they have now and are they happy with it and how is their pricing. And I do things like I look at their machines, I wanna see what they have and sort of products they’re running and things like that. So that’s the beginnings of an actual sales process and we’ll talk about sales and marketing through this whole series of blogs or podcasts, I guess, that we’re gonna do because sale and marketing is the crux of all business really at this point.
Larry Towner: And you have to learn, if you’re not comfortable selling, you have to learn how to sell a little bit. Now that doesn’t mean that you go out and you become a professional salesman, what it means is if you just get comfortable with some of the basic sales steps that it take to get business.
Larry Towner: One of the big things I would say is consistency. And one tip that I tell a lot of people that aren’t sales people in general, is look, you don’t have to go talk to 25, 30 people in a day. A true professional salesman needs to talk, in the neighborhood, needs to talk in person to 10 people and he needs to talk on the phone anywhere from 50 to a 100. So you don’t need to do that necessarily. You might do that in your initial stages of your business, but I always say once you get yourself up and running and you’ve got yourself a few accounts, if you can do as little as stopping and seeing one or two people when you’re starting in a day, and as you get busier and busier it’s more like one or two people in a week and sometimes even one or two people in a month.
Larry Towner: At the end of my run in my vending business I would spend about three whole days a year selling, that’s all I needed to get me enough business to replace whatever I had lost or what had gone out of business or what had just needed replacing in a year. So at the end of my full-time vending career, I guess I wanna say, I’d sell three days a year, which is pretty nice actually.
Tom Shivers: Yeah, that sounds very convenient and I assume if you’re doing a good job you may have some residual from referrals.
Larry Towner: Referrals become a huge portion of marketing effort. What happens is, a lot of what happens is, is you’ll get key people in your accounts and the key people are, they’re just your end consumers and as long as you take care of them, you’re there and you’re talking to somebody in the break room and they ask you for something and you take care of them and you get them the product that they want or I give them a refund because they one that was bad or whatever, any of the number of things that encompass taking care of your customers and they remember you.
Larry Towner: Well they switch jobs, and they go from ABC company to XYZ company, and they get in there and the vendor that’s there isn’t doing as great a job, and they remember you or they call somebody in their former company to get your phone number, and you’ll get a huge amount of business that as long as you take care of your customers. And so it’s that, it’s also that business owners talk. Gee, I’ve got this vending guy, he’s just not doing it. Well geez, my guy does a good job, same thing, here’s his number.
Larry Towner: Really I also got more business from my end users. They would go from place to place and they would drag me in with them. Especially mid level managers, in general, the people that you deal with a lot, they’ll take you with them. Even end users, we do a lot of stuff with truck drivers and truck drivers are job jumpers and we would end up with going from this trucking company to that trucking company, to this one to that one and it all would be one or two people and they’d just be moving around and taking us with them and then we’d go in and give great service and we wouldn’t lose anything. So referrals do play. They’re really the life blood of your business.
Tom Shimmers: Yeah. It sounds like as long as you’re providing great service and you’re getting along with the mangers there, you’re gonna get referred by other … You’re gonna get referred out.
Larry Towner: Yeah, if you’re doing it right you will get referred out. There really is no doubt about it and it’s not all that difficult to do really well, we’ll go into that on a another show sometime, just some tips and tricks on the actually operate in a vending account pre say, what od you do when you actually show up, actually what do you do when you get there.
Larry Towner: We spent, I don’t know, 20 years figuring it out and basically we took all of the tips that we had learned from every vendor we had ever come in contact with which is a very large number of vendors and some from other countries and other states as well. So we tried to come up with a system that works really well and then we also list on the national [inaudible 00:07:37], but we’ll talk about that ina future show, that’s a whole show in and of itself.
Tom Shimmers: Okay. Well yeah, getting back to the good location for a vending machine, I know you were going over some of the things to avoid and the things you oughta be looking for that gives you a good indication. I imagine you have to say no a certain amount of times to stores or places or locations who really wanna a vending machine there but just aren’t a good fit.
Larry Towner: Yeah. It happens relatively often. There’s a large number of factors that go into choosing a vending company. Much of it goes back to your initial planning. We set ourselves up in kind, I’m gonna say geographical areas, we didn’t wanna operate outside of a specific radius from our main base of operation because for driving reasons, windshield time is unproductive time. And so our job really … Your most productive time is when you’re actually there filling machines, taking care of customers and selling product basically which is what filling machines is actually all about.
Larry Towner: So we always worked in a geographical basis. And probably our biggest reason for turning down businesses, we’ll get referrals from places that are outside of where we deem our area of operation. If it’s a single account that’s way across town and unless it’s extremely large it just doesn’t pay to go do a small account or even a medium size account if you have to spend 45 or 50 minutes in the vehicle because the other side of it is that you will have service calls and so it’s 45 minutes out and 45 minutes back just to unjam a coin or unjam a dollar bill.
Larry Towner: So that would be the biggest reason why we say no. The other ting that does come in is everybody thinks that just because they have a location that they can get a vending machine. And this is kinda something that a lot of the … Well a lot of vendors have done it to themselves. We’ve done it to ourselves in the vending business. Not everybody can justify having vending in their locations. And it has been, in the past, very much the case that if you got a phone call, somebody would take the account.
Larry Towner: Fortunately, I guess, in this tough economy, that is starting to be less and less and in fact even Coca Cola and Pepsi won’t place machines everywhere like they used to anymore. And when the big boys won’t do it it means that the small guys should be paying attention and should be understanding why not to do it.
Larry Towner: And basically it comes down to return on investment or gross sales or however you wanna look at it, you can’t just, if you have two people, you can’t place a machine there or if you have five people that won’t eat, you can’t place a machine there. You just won’t do enough business to justify your costs. It’s really not a magic formula, it’s just a numbers game and that’s what people don’t do. They go oh yeah, I put it in, I drive by there every day. Well you drive by there every day but if you go there every six weeks or every two months and you pull a 100 dollars out you’re really not paying to even have it there. You’re actually paying to have it there by the time you count your maintenance on it and your wear and tear on the equipment.
Larry Towner: So those are some of the things that you kinda have to avoid or reasons why you would turn down an account. Basically it’s not big enough, it’s outside your geographic area.
Larry Towner: Back on obtaining accounts. One of the things that I did is I had a lot, I called them friendly competitors. And what they are is they would be people that were in the vending company because I was primarily a small account vendor, had some mediums, and had a couple of big accounts, but primarily small account vendor, and what I got to do is I got to know some of the vendors that were around town that worked the other areas that I didn’t work because Atlanta is a rather large city and I basically broke it up into about four or five quadrants and I got to know a few guys that if I got an account, I was up on the north side, if I got an account call on the south side, I’d call up my buddy down there on the south side and say hey, I’ve got a lead for ya and it’s here, and I’d give them the description and who to talk to and all that sorta thing.
Larry Towner: And then they make the call [inaudible 00:12:03] but what ends what happening is if you do that with somebody and it’s somebody that you can trust, he will start sending you leads as well for the calls that he gets on the north side or however your city is laid out or however your area of operations are laid out. But that worked really well. It’s kinda like a referral, it’s basically a referral, but it’s another way to generate leads and plus you get to learn a little bit of the system if you get talking to somebody, how do they do business?
Larry Towner: And you learn what works for them, what doesn’t work for them. And then you’ll also find, in my case anyway, I always kinda had a thing that I knew the guys that I chose did business the way that I did business and so I very rarely, we rarely traded accounts, very very rarely did I ever take one of his or he takes one of mine.
Larry Towner: Usually if that were the case the customer was the determining factor not the other company. And I say that because a lot of people say you’re talking to competitors, that’s crazy, they’re gonna steal your accounts. And I’m like well, no not really because it’s out of the area of operation, they don’t wanna drive far. We would occasionally trade accounts right on the fringes but usually that was driven by the customer, not by the other company. Meaning, because they would be on our fringe of operation, our service level wasn’t quite where it could have been just because of the distance involved. So anyway.
Tom Shimmers: All right. Well Larry thanks for sharing. Tell us a little bit about your consulting business.
Larry Towner: Well we do consulting.
Larry Towner: We basically, if someone’s interested in getting in the vending business, I like to work with new vendors and what I like to do is make sure that they understand what they are getting into. We try to be pretty reasonably priced.
Larry Towner: We can do everything from operational to sales and marketing to product development, business plans, the whole thing. We can take you from start to finish, give you some ideas of what kind of equipment you need or what kind of equipment works and what’s cost effective, what’s not cost effective. We’re trying to help everybody make money is really what we do. And try to be as efficient as possible.
Larry Towner: You need to be really efficient in vending to be really profitable. And so it’s very helpful to have somebody that kinda knows the ropes and can give you the tricks and that’s what we do.
Tom Shimmers: And people can reach you at, what’s that email address?
Larry Towner: [email protected], one word.
Tom Shivers: Okay, great. And you’ve been listening toPlacing Vending Machines at the Vending Business Show, a publication of A&M Equipment Sales. More Vending Blogs New To The Vending Business?
