Angry Vending reduced expired products by 50%, improved service cycles, and increased sales with VendSoft

With over 100 machines placed at 50 different locations today, Christopher Suiter started Angry Vending LLC back in 2011 by purchasing a single route from a local vendor in Dayton, Ohio. Over time, he kept adding new locations and machines by buying the bulk from existing vendors and negotiating others himself. Chris owns a large variety of soda and snacks vending machines among which different models of the popular AP, DN, Vendo, National Vending, USI, and Royal Vendors.

Running the entire business on his own, Chris believes his main competitive advantage is his dedication to servicing all vending machines himself which helps him establish a direct relationship with customers and thus deliver excellent customer service. While visiting all vending machines personally requires good planning and time management skills, it does pay back in securing long-term contracts with location owners/managers and providing great insight into customer preferences. Chris has been using VendSoft for over a year now.

Challenge

As he began adding more locations and machines, and the business expanded, Chris started to face challenges managing his stock. A primary issue was dealing with all the expired products: he calculated that each month he had to throw out some $50-$150 in stock that has passed its sell-by date. On top of that, it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep track of what was flying off the shelves and what wasn’t selling so well at individual locations. Overstocking items that didn’t sell well would often lead to expired products if not rotated properly, which in return resulted in the loss of products and extra labor. On the other hand, understocking best-selling items resulted in lost opportunities for higher profits.

Solution

Chris started looking for ways to better track what items were selling best at each location in order to reduce expired goods and increase profits. Initially, he had considered trying out another vending management system, however, their plans turned out to be expensive. Chris decided to give VendSoft a try. Once he managed to enter all the necessary data about his machines, stock, and locations in the system, and he installed the mobile app on his phone, he quickly got up and running with the software. He was happy to find out that whenever he had questions about the software, the VendSoft team was really quick to help which Chris considered critical for his business.

One thing that really impressed me was the VendSoft team’s responsiveness and willingness to help adapt the product to my needs. For example, the software was attempting to predict what I would need rather than just tell me exactly what I needed from telemetry. Together with Luben (VendSoft’s Founder), we found out that USATech was not recording my dex/fill recordings. It turned out the system was working harder than it had to! Luben managed to modify the software pretty quickly to better suit my requirements.

Results

Since implementing VendSoft, Chris has been using the vending machine software on a daily basis to reduce product loss, improve servicing cycles, and increase sales.

I have managed to reduce my stale product which has gone down about 50% from what it was”, said Chris. “On top of that, I have increased sales at several locations simply by putting in what sells the most, and replacing slow-selling products with items that sell quickly.

A year later, Chris continues to accrue positive results from using VendSoft vending machine software in various aspects of his business:

Pre-kitting, inventory, and real-time machine management

Once all the machine and inventory details were entered into the system, Chris could start pre-kitting. He was able to see, remotely, what was selling at what locations. The insight was even greater (real-time!) where he could combine the software output with telemetry stats. Chris quickly learned that some items sold out in the first few days after he serviced the machines: something he was unaware of before implementing VendSoft.

It turned out that a few locations were always low on pastries. I quickly realized that customers went through chocolate cupcakes in the first few days and only started eating the other pastries once those were gone. I realized that I had some slower selections that I could just remove and add more of those items to increase my sales, especially since they spent way more time buying the remainder of the “left-over” pastries. I also realized just how slowly some other products sold. Yes, I knew that 7up at location X was a slow seller but I didn’t realize I only sold maybe 1 bottle every few weeks. I am going to remove it and add another row of a higher-selling item to increase my service cycle

explained Chris.

Chris managed to take full advantage of this knowledge and began pre-kitting on-site and adding products as needed. He also decided to remove some items to control sell-by dates because he could clearly see how many were selling and how many were in there.

With VendSoft you can clearly see what sells the best and how fast it sells, you can easily adjust your selections to add additional rows of those high selling items and just remove slower selling items

concluded Chris.

Servicing cycles and time management

In addition to increasing sales (by adding more of what sells and less of what doesn’t), Chris was soon able to drastically increase his service cycles at many locations. One of his best locations has an unpredictable work schedule for employees due to the nature of their work, so he didn’t know when exactly the machines needed servicing. Now he knows precisely when he needs to get there. While other locations are more predictable, with VendSoft Chris learned that simply changing some products and selections around will allow him to go every 2-3 weeks instead of every week. This meant that he managed to save time and fuel.

Reports

Chris found the VendSoft rich reporting system really useful to calculate sales tax, commissions, profit and loss, as well as margins per product, machine and location. “Seeing the “% full” is incredibly helpful”, said Chris.

In conclusion, VendSoft will be able to save you money by providing you with a better way to manage your inventory, but the real savings is when you combine it with telemetry because you might have never known that you could increase the sales of that single location by maybe $10/more each week by just adding another row of your best-seller. VendSoft is a bargain compared to other software out there

said Chris.

Eager to learn more about how VendSoft can make your vending machine business successful? Start your free 14-day trial now.