Uncle Sam
Member
This was written in May, 2007 from information I gathered from magazine articles published years ago and from the older operators in the business.
The generic glass-front vending machine had been tried by many different operators over many years going back to the 1980s with results that were mediocre at best. The biggest problem was the reliability of vending a product successfully. All too often there were problems that ended up costing the customer whatever money had been deposited in the vending machine; drop shelf or glass-front. These problems led to vandalism which often ended with damage or the destruction of the vending machines. From the operator's stand point, investing very much money on vending equipment had a very low return for the time and investment required.
One thing that was not available in the market place for the car wash environment was vandalism and theft protection for the machine (or drop shelves for that matter). (Most glass-front vending sales were done in lunch rooms, offices, and places indoors under the protection of a company organization so security was not normally necessary.) If vandalism/theft protection was desired, the operator had to design and build it himself. That is where I started at my own washes in 1996 with computer-controlled vending. I had to reconfigure an ?off the shelf? vendor to vend car wash products and design and build my own vandalism/theft protection. My results were not as reliable as I would have liked, but we got better and better.
Cont'd
The generic glass-front vending machine had been tried by many different operators over many years going back to the 1980s with results that were mediocre at best. The biggest problem was the reliability of vending a product successfully. All too often there were problems that ended up costing the customer whatever money had been deposited in the vending machine; drop shelf or glass-front. These problems led to vandalism which often ended with damage or the destruction of the vending machines. From the operator's stand point, investing very much money on vending equipment had a very low return for the time and investment required.
One thing that was not available in the market place for the car wash environment was vandalism and theft protection for the machine (or drop shelves for that matter). (Most glass-front vending sales were done in lunch rooms, offices, and places indoors under the protection of a company organization so security was not normally necessary.) If vandalism/theft protection was desired, the operator had to design and build it himself. That is where I started at my own washes in 1996 with computer-controlled vending. I had to reconfigure an ?off the shelf? vendor to vend car wash products and design and build my own vandalism/theft protection. My results were not as reliable as I would have liked, but we got better and better.
Cont'd
