The three components of effective vending business are location, location, location...

It is well known that the three components of effective vending business are location, location, location. One should focus on search for location even before the purchase of a vendor; people fight for places, sell and buy them.

Hot drink vendor location can be any place where people have to wait for 1-15 minutes. Naturally the busier the location the more possible sales. Here is a list of some typical coffee vendor locations:

• Automotive centers
• Laundromats
• Car wash
• Hotel, motel
• Beauty shop
• Companies with staff of 50 or more people
• Shopping malls
• Banks
• Slot-machines halls
• Library

Virtually all coffee machines locations break down into several kinds as follows:

Category 1 is busy locations with often change in constituency – high traffic areas. They are places with steady foot traffic where people try not to linger but nevertheless have to wait – metro stations, railway and bus stations, airport, market, shopping mall, registration chamber, hospital, tax office, car wash admitting large quantity of cars, cinema. The flow of potential buyers of drinks constantly fluctuates here. The average amount of sales can reach 100 and over per day.

The purchase occurs impulsively: “I see a vending machine – I want some stuff”. Convenience of purchase through a vending machine should make it definitely superior to the similar process in the shop or cafй. No queue, no squash, and foodstuffs are always available. As the consumers have various social and financial status sale price of a drink should be reasonable and moderate. Moreover the vendor should be easy to use, so that a person coming up to it for the first time could make purchase after reading the instructions or an instructional diagram not feeling embarrassment about his or her incompetence and uncertainty.

Category 2 is locations with limited large and steady foot-traffic of patronage. The customers belong to a definite population group. These are institutes of higher education, colleges, specialized schools, enterprises, sports clubs, dancing clubs, banks, large-scale insurance companies, waiting rooms of maternity ward where relatives (mainly men) wait for a new-made mother and a baby. Both visitors and workers will use a vending machine.

Category 3 is locations with limited constituency. It includes offices, public institutions, and various administrative settings. It is a small but steady group of customers that should be highly valued and whose opinion should not be ignored. Here to lose only one buyer means to prejudice a part of customers, to make an enemy means to lose a location.

Installing a vendor in locations of categories 2 and 3 (particularly 3) high emphasis should be placed on sales management. Here the purchase is made on the following principle: “I want some foodstuffs – I go to a vending machine. I don’t want foodstuffs – I don’t go to a vendor”. Impulsiveness shows itself rarely since the vending machine becomes an ordinary service as, for example, a copying machine in library. Wish of a buyer comes first here. Having determined solvency of buyers it is important to define what stuff and how many products the customers want to by for a certain sum of money. It would not be out of place to avowedly ask for buyers’ desires; e.g., to post “a list of requests” beginning with words of welcome and presentation of your company and ending with an indispensable signature such as “We are pleased to work for you, operator such-and-such (full name)”. People will enter their wishes on a list, you may be sure. Maintenance of ideal appearance and ability to work is also direct operator’s responsibility.

А machine should be located everywhere people gather. If all before-mentioned locations in your city are occupied then expand the scene. Try to agree upon set up of a vending machine in such places as bath-houses, courts, district social welfare departments, race track (during horse race), libraries, civilian registry offices (civilian registry office is not only the place where a bridegroom and a bride officially join their hearts – here, of course, a coffee machine is out of place, but there are always queues in the other wing, where birth and death are registered and names are changed). Equip yourself with a local directory like Yellow Pages and go into action.