When operating a vending machine, which factor is the most important: capital, points, operations, and personnel

Writer： Zhongda vending machines Time：2022-11-26 16:46 Browse：℃

Question: When operating unmanned retail equipment, which factor is the most important - funding, point, operations, and personnel?

And the answer is - Location.

A quality location is a scarce resource in the industry and is an important resource for you to be able to make money and expand your share in the industry. Simply put, how much money you can make in the industry depends on how many quality spots you hold in your hands. Today we’re going to talk about how to quickly and accurately filter out quality pips.

The easiest way to measure the quality of a spot is to see how much money the spot can help you make after you have placed it in operation, but it is difficult to judge the quality of the spot accurately before the device is placed in operation. There are two main factors that affect the quality of a spot: the “People” and the “Field”. “People” refers to the potential customers within the radius of the spot, which is commonly referred to as customer traffic; “Field” refers to the site conditions of the spot.

Quickly identifying quality locations - “People”
Most operators tend to think of the footfall of a point of sale as customer traffic, which is not the same as customer traffic. Footfall refers to all the people within the radius of the point of sale, including your potential customers and non-valuable customers whose conversion costs are too high. The confusion between the two concepts will make you misjudge the quality of the spot, resulting in your initial investment not meeting expectations. When judging the quality of the point, you need to pay attention to the percentage of point traffic, the higher the percentage of traffic, the better the quality of the point.

How do you identify potential customers in foot traffic?

According to our existing data analysis, the 18-35 year old customer group accounts for 70% of the consumer base of unmanned retail equipment; in terms of gender, men consume twice as often as women. With the same base, the closer the customer attribute data is to these two data points, the better the quality. Of course, these two types of data apply to vending machines, smart cabinets and other devices that sell goods covering the full range of customers, and are not informative for some precise and targeted goods.

Quickly identify quality points of sale - “Field”

The amount of customer traffic determines the upper limit of point of sale, while the lower limit of point of sale depends on the condition of the field. Unlike potential customers who can be simply categorised, the site conditions of a point of sale need to be considered in a much more complex way, consisting of three main components: infrastructure, competitor conditions and replenishment commuting.

The Infrastructure has to consider conditions such as waterproofing, electricity, signal strength and equipment location.

The Competition is the number of competitors within the radius of the point, including other vending machines and convenience stores in operation.

The Replenishment commute should look at the ease of access to the point for replenishment, the convenience of customer consumption, etc.

Therefore the site conditions of a quality point of sale should meet the following data.

1.Good waterproof energisation, signal strength of two or more cells, and it is best to have a stable full cell.

2.Within 200 metres, there should be less than 2 convenience stores, etc., or less than 5 other vending machines (selling drinks and snacks as an example, other products depending on the situation).

3.Considering the efficiency of replenishment, the replenishment radius should preferably be within 500 metres (in terms of the distance from the warehouse to the vending machine).

4.Point share control at 10%-15% of turnover (including electricity), better if you can negotiate lower, but also leave some profit to others appropriately to maintain a good relationship (in case the point is really high quality).

At present, most operators are judging the quality of points based on experience, which is easy to misjudge. If the above methods are followed, the chances of making money under good operation are great.