Vending Products That Work

[GoBuckeyes]

We have several self-serves all of which have the usual drop shelf vendors. However, at our latest wash, we installed a glass front Kleen-Vend vendor which we like very much. Our dilemma is what the hell to put in it. I am the proud owner of multiple cases of various products that look good, physically vend well but are total garbage. It seems most of the items beyond air fesheners and towels are little more than slick packaging and little else. Hopefully other operators will give their opinions of products so that everyone else need not buy a box of 100 whatevers that they will still own in 5 years.

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[GoBuckeyes]

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Here is a list items that I think are good products, that as a customer, I would purchase a second time and feel like I'm getting my money's worth. These products actually perform the duty they are advertised as doing: Basically any of the drying towels offered whether paper, cloth or microfiber. MDI's Wet Towel or California Wet Towel glass cleaners. Giant's Moistwipe glass cleaner. Quick Dry's 2oz Glass Cleaner & Towel. Little Tree air fresheners. Most products made by Armor All including their sponge packs, pump sprays and tire foams. Rain-X towelettes (work well but sell poorly for us). And finally, Simoniz Travel Wipes. This maybe one of my favorite items in terms of functionality. They work great for all sorts of cleaning chores including hands and face. Unfortunately, no one buys them

Here is the list of items not to waste your or your customer's money on.
Any Simoniz product. With the exception of the Travel Wipes, they simply DO NOT work. The packaging is great, but I've never seen a vinyl protectant or glass cleaner that worked so poorly in my life. The wheel cleaner and tire shine will leave your customers ****ed as well. My most recent let down came from North American Oil's Black Jack tire shine pump spray. The normal Black Jack sponge will leave a tire looking wet for a week. The stuff in their pump bottle simply is not the same; it's nothing more than alcohol. I used an entire bottle on one tire and watched it evaporate into dullness. A total waste of money.

Please share your experiences with products that work well or don't work at all. I would love to offer our customers tire shines, wheel cleaners, and protectants, however, I want to offer them good values not empty packaging.

 

[PaulLovesJamie]

yeah, my results have been very similar to yours - similar enough that I could have written your post. With the exception of little trees and towels, I view vending very much as a convenience item, not a big profit maker. I too would like to change that, we're slowly chipping away at it.

I'm finding that people like a choice in glass cleaners. The QD 2oz bottle with towel sells Ok, simoniz glass cleaner wipes (10/pkg - see next comment), and we have another brand in there too, cant recall which one at the moment.

Wipes that have 10 in the package (eg simoniz "cleaning wipes") sell MUCH better than those with 1 in a package. Much better. We've eliminated almost all of our "single wipe" products at this point.

Customers have asked me on several occasions which product to use on their dashboard, so we decided to try a case of "Dash wipes" last year, we put them into a drop shelf vendor out at the vacs. They've become one of our better sellers.

Armor all continues to sell, we have the sponge packs in drop shelf vendors at the vacs and we have the spray pump bottles in our shur-vend. The nice thing about the pump is that the customer also buys a towel.

Speaking of towels, we have 4 different microfiber towels, bulk white paper towels, QD blue cotton towels, and terry cloth. They all sell well except the microfibers, that has been a disappointment.

Also a bit disappointed with how few sodas/water/gatorade we sell. Enough to keep selling them, but barely. Again, we view selling drinks as mostly a service that we offer to our customers.

 

[MEP001]

I've had similar experience with soda machines, barely enough revenue to cover the utility to run the thing, but it can't hurt to keep the customer around longer.

Armor-All now has 12-per-pack of cleaning wipes and protectant, and I plan to give the cleaners a try.

Our poorest seller is Armor-All 4 oz. protectant bottle.

 

[GoBuckeyes]

Paul & Mep, do you guys sell other non-carwash related items like gum or candy? I think latex surgical gloves might sell if I could find a way to vend them. I can't seem find anyone who sells a package of 5 or 10 pair that would be vendable. We do find alot of thrown away gloves. Have either of you tried the applicator pads that Simonize make. Do they sell?

 

[Jimmy Buffett]

There is a product that a gift shop in town sells that I may put in my vender. They are sandstone and go in the bottom of your cupholder to soak up moisture. You can get them with college logos and the like. I went to the website to sign up for an account and I put in all of my information. It said my email was not valid and blanked the whole thing out. It irritated me and I have not gone back yet but I probably will. The company is Highland Graphics.

 

[Jim L.]

Thanks for the info. on the "Black Jack" in the bottle. I was getting ready to try a case. I'll keep looking.

 

[MEP001]

GoBuckeyes, you could always fold up one pair of gloves in an envelope and vend that. You could make it look professional by using your home printer to label them neatly.

 

[mitchell3026]

I've found that the big sellers are the armorall pads, towels, and trees. As far as trees go black ice, new car cherry and vanilla pride are the top sellers. The pump sprays (wheel cleaner, tire shine, and bug remover) just don't sell but when you have a glass front vendor you need to keep the machine full of products (you can only double up products so many times). It good to give the customer some choices.

 

[PaulLovesJamie]

GoBuckEyes, no, I dont currently sell any candy or other non-carwash items. I would if I had any good ideas. I dont really care to deal with candy though.

However, there is a mild demand for "kutztown car wash" t-shirts in town, I have a bunch more on order and plan to put some in the vendor. I figure if somebody is willing to pay what it costs me for a t-shirt that advertises my business, I'll sell it to them. We'll see how it goes.

Beer would sell great.

 

[bigleo48]

Paul,

T-shirts...great marketing idea!

I find Armorall products sell ok and are generally crap. Their 3-1 pack sells well, but now discontinued. Glass and dash wipe singles from Americal oil sell well. Towels sell ok (blue sham and microfiber). Air fresheners (little tree New Car & Pina) sell well, everything else does poorly. My prices are all resonable. Sometimes I wonder if it's worth it all.

Pop machine does OK in summer months. Tried selling other products without much success.

 

[Harper220]

Armor all sponges and wipe down towels sell good. That's all I sell.

Not to get off subject, but one post mentioned a pop machine and not vending enough to pay for the electric. Does anyone have a ballpark idea of how much it costs in electric for a pop machine per month. I have one that is provided by a local vend company and I don't even get a commission. It's more for convenience I guess. This may change soon!

 

[JMMUSTANG]

In my first glass vendor I used to sell a lot of Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies from Sams.
The only problem was in the summer the chocolate chips would melt.
So I would sell them in the fall, winter, spring and early June.
When I got my new vendor I bought all car products and forgot all about the cookies. Thanks for reminding me.

 

[MEP001]

Does anyone have a ballpark idea of how much it costs in electric for a pop machine per month.

$20-30 a month, ballpark, estimated on the amp draw and the average amount of time that it runs. When I had one, the damn thing would still come on when it was 25 degrees, and they're poorly insulated.

 

[PaulLovesJamie]

Does anyone have a ballpark idea of how much it costs in electric for a pop machine per month.

I was told by the coke/pepsi guys that it would cost about a buck a day, which agrees with what MEP says, approx $30 per month.

I think that was accurate when they told me (7 or 8 years ago), but I think its more than that now.

I bought a watt meter that tells me exactly how many kwh an appliance uses - I ran my coke machine through it for exactly 124 hours in november of 2005 to get an estimate. It used 38.15 kwh. At 13 cents per kwh, that does indeed multiply out to $30 per month!

Here's the rub: coke cut my commissions, then cut them again, then cut them again, then the borough raised my electric rates. Then summer came, they raised my electric rates again, the compressor in the machine ran all day and all night, and I called coke and said "come get your machine."

The shorter answer: Depends what your electric rates and your climate, but I'd say a bit more than $30/month - maybe $40 to 60 for an annual monthly average.

FYI, I measured usage on my refrigerated shurvend twice last year:
$44 for the month of May 2007.
$54 for the month of june 2007.
So yes, climate/temperature makes a huge difference!
We put up a canopy over the vendor last summer ... hmmm, I need to re-measure electricity usage...

 

[Harper220]

I was told by the coke/pepsi guys that it would cost about a buck a day, which agrees with what MEP says, approx $30 per month.

I think that was accurate when they told me (7 or 8 years ago), but I think its more than that now.

I bought a watt meter that tells me exactly how many kwh an appliance uses - I ran my coke machine through it for exactly 124 hours in november of 2005 to get an estimate. It used 38.15 kwh. At 13 cents per kwh, that does indeed multiply out to $30 per month!

Here's the rub: coke cut my commissions, then cut them again, then cut them again, then the borough raised my electric rates. Then summer came, they raised my electric rates again, the compressor in the machine ran all day and all night, and I called coke and said "come get your machine."

The shorter answer: Depends what your electric rates and your climate, but I'd say a bit more than $30/month - maybe $40 to 60 for an annual monthly average.

FYI, I measured usage on my refrigerated shurvend twice last year:
$44 for the month of May 2007.
$54 for the month of june 2007.
So yes, climate/temperature makes a huge difference!
We put up a canopy over the vendor last summer ... hmmm, I need to re-measure electricity usage...

Thanks, that's very helpful information! Pepsi used to supply the machine and I would stock and fill it if I bought from them of course. After a while, I would ween off of them and just purchase 30 pack cans from local grocery store. I got tired of doing it though. They didn't keep very close tabs on wether I purchased anything from them or not. All in all, there's just not much money in it after you factor in your time, fuel to go get pop and the utilities. I'm about ready to just tell the vending company to come get the dam machine or at least give me some commission.

 

[PaulLovesJamie]

T-shirts...great marketing idea!

Hey Leo, it really does work well for me, I have tons of them in circulation.
The t-shirts have my "kutztown car wash" logo on the front (small, about 3" long) and full size on the back (about 10-12")
We send a t-shirt in the mail to customers who call us to report a significant issue as either a "thanks" or a "oops - sorry!" gift.
We try to make sure all of our better customers have one - I give it to them personally when I see them at the wash.
We donate t-shirts to all the school fund raisers. (It's kind of nice to see the kids wearing them at football games!)
Any charity that asks gets free t-shirts and tokens to use as door prizes.

Every year we also sponsor a soccer team - that little "wash me soccer ball" is full size on the back of 15 kids shirts every year for 7 years now. Thats a well spent 100 bucks in my book - heck, I'd sponsor a team even if I didnt get to advertise. (I coach soccer and baseball, so I know what it's like trying to raise $ for local sports clubs.)

This year we're getting a few dozen hoodies made too - so far 3 of my son's friends have "ordered" one (meaning they are willing to pay for them!) These are a bit more expensive than a t-shirt, not sure how we'll handle these yet.

I dont try to make a profit on the t-shirts, I figure its just great advertising. When they go in the vending machine in a couple weeks I'll be selling them at cost, give or take a buck.

 

[Andy]

Does anyone own their own pop machine? I was planning on buying my own machine and stocking it myself.

 

[MEP001]

Does anyone own their own pop machine? I was planning on buying my own machine and stocking it myself.

I would never do that unless it was indoors and protected in some way. Around here, soda machines in car washes are very frequently broken into and vandalized. If I were to put one in at the wash, it would be supplied by Coke or Pepsi since any damage or mechanical problems would be fixed for free by them. As you may have read above, revenue is usually pretty small. Even if you could make $100 a month profit, does that make you feel secure in spending as much as $5,000 on a machine?

I believe it's best NOT to look at vending, particularly soda machines, as a profit center. I'm certain we profit far more from the triple-foam system than we ever could from sodas.

If you do want to try and profit from it, the best way is to have them supply the machine and sell you the product, then you fill it and remove the money yourself.

 

[Doug P.]

Who sells Dash Wipes? I was all fired up to start selling them but kleen-rite was out and did not know if they would be able to get any more. I looked on North American oils website and couldn't find any there. If someone could point me in the right direction I would appreciate it.

Doug P.