Thursday, January 25, 2007

All about Electronic Locks

Once you have your Planet Antares vending business up and running, you will need to protect your vending business from internal theft as well as external theft. Technology has provided the vending industry with answers that will help it combat this persistent problem.

In the market today there are a variety of electronic locks that are available to protect all types of vending machines, which includes Planet Antares vending machines. Electronic locks in vending machines offer several advantages over convectional lock-key methods. The benefits of electronic locks are numerous. Here are some of them listed below.

• Cannot be picked: Once you have installed an electronic lock in your Planet Antares vending machine, there would no longer be a need for a visible lock on the front of the vending machine. The lock can only be opened using an electronic key. There are machines that also use non-contact infrared key fobs.
• Hard to drill: You can choose to have hardened steel roll pins incorporated into the vending machine’s t-handle locks. This will prevent drill bits from coming in contact with the actual lock.
• Key cannot be duplicated: The software used in the electronic vending machine keys is encrypted, so only you will access to key codes.
• Full control of keys: You are the one who will have complete control how many times the key will be used.
• Access to all locks: An electronic lock would be of great advantage because there would be no need to change all the vending machine locks if one set of keys gets lost all that you would have to do is to quickly change the key codes.
• Ability to monitor a route person work habits: The electronic lock can give you the ability to determine the time that the route person takes to fill a vending machine and the time it takes the route person to move from one vending machine to the next.

To replace the convectional locks in your Planet Antares vending machines with electronic locks would take about the same time as changing a regular lock.

There are other ways of increasing vending machine security. You can choose to reinforce weak components of the vending machine. This can be done by installing mechanical security panels to secure dollar bill acceptors from the front and rear of the vending machine. Vending machines security can also be increased by implementing cashless payment options.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

The Right Products in Your Vending Machine

Having the right products in your Planet Antares vending machines is vital for the success of your vending business. Planet Antares vending machines sell snacks and beverages, which are products that sell highly in most of the locations. People usually feel inclined to have a snack or beverage when they are passing through a location or waiting in a location.

When you are looking for products for your vending machines, the first thing that you should look for is a supplier that will provide you with all of the products that you will want to have in the vending machines. The supplier has to be one that will be close to your base, so that you have no problems transporting the products from the supplier to your base. The supplier has to provide you with products that are fresh and have an expiry date that is not anywhere close to the date of purchase. You wouldn’t want consumers to visit your vending machine when they feel like having a snack, and then finding that the product that they have purchased has already expired. This will hurt your business, because the next time the same consumer will avoid your vending machine.

If you are not sure about which products to place in your vending machines, you can go out to different vending locations to watch people buy from the vending machines there. Check to see what snacks and beverages they are being bought the most. Do this with several locations in your area. This will help you learn a lot. When you are equipped with this information, you will then know which products to place in your Planet Antares vending machine. Kids make a large number of purchases from vending machine. They always know what is new and popular in the market. Try asking a few kids about what products to place in your vending machine. The information that they can provide to you can prove to be very helpful. Suppliers are also the right people to ask about which are the right products to vend because they are always in touch with other vending operators.
The supplier usually learns a lot from the vending operators that come to the shop to collect their product supplies.

Brand products in your Planet Antares vending machines, can never go wrong. These are products that are easily identified by the consumer and this is the reason why they always do well in vending machines. With these products, there is no need for you to advertise the products in order to promote them. A brand product will always be easily identified in your vending machine. These products will always ensure successful sales from your vending machines.

Monday, January 08, 2007

Finding the Right Supplier for your Vending Business

There are vending machine suppliers for almost any product that is available in the market today. When you get started in the vending business, try to sell products that you know the customers will want to buy. Snacks, candy and beverages are products that always do very well in the right locations. These are products that are sold in Planet Antares vending machines.

Look for a supplier in your local area, because you shouldn’t have to drive a long distant just to buy your supplies. Search the Internet for information on the suppliers in your area. The supplier should have all the products that you would want to purchase. When a product is new in the market, the supplier should have the product available with them, especially if the product is popular with the public. This means that if you want to be on top of your Planet Antares vending business, you should be very much aware about the products that are popular in your area at a particular time. When you are armed with that piece of information, you can then ask your supplier for these products. Trends come and go; a product may be a hit for a short or long period of time. This is the reason why you need to be up to date with how products are doing in the market.

A vending machine supplier will also provide you with information on the products that you want to sell in your vending machine. This means that for your Planet Antares vending business, you need to look for a supplier of snacks and beverages. They will tell you which locations are ideal for these kinds of products. These suppliers deal with a huge number of operators, so they get to know a lot about which locations are working well for the vending operators in your area. They are the best people to give you advice on this.

When it comes to snacks and beverages, a vending machine will need to carry brand products as well. These are products that sell themselves, so your supplier should be able to provide you with these items.

When you are purchasing products for your Planet Antares vending business, you will need to buy cases of the products. Your vending machine supplier should sell the products in bulk, so that you don’t keep going back for the next stock. Since you are buying products in bulk, make sure that you have ample space to store them. A garage can be an ideal place for them if you are running the business from home. A warehouse is also another option, especially when your business has expanded.

Lastly, buy your products from a reputable vending machine supplier who will not sell you products that are about to expire. The products should have a best before date that is well in advance of when you make the purchase. Selling fresh products in your vending machines is crucial to the success of your vending business.

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Full Line Vending

Full line vending is where vending machines sell cans or bottles of soft drinks and/or small packages of snacks. These are the kind of products that are sold by Planet Antares Inc. vending machines. The common volume for soda is usually 12fl oz or 20 oz. it has been estimated that 7 out of 10 people buy an item from a vending machine in any given day. This is why it is such a great business, especially when you are selling both drinks and snacks. Planet Antares can offer you this great opportunity.

Some years back there was a trend in the U.S for large national retailers to make contracts with national companies to provide full line vending services to all their branches’ break rooms. In quite a number of cases, managers and staff of individual stores objected to this, because the national vending operators were not essentially receptive to their item preferences.

Advantages of full line vending
Locations usually recognize the need for full lone vending machines like those that are provided by Planet Antares. This is of great advantage to the vending operators because when they are looking for locations for their vending machines, they are more likely to get a ‘yes’ from the location owner. Locations sometimes contact a vending company to request for installation of a vending machine. In addition to this, companies usually recognize the hassle of moving vending machines, so it would be very hard for then to request removal of your vending machine, unless you are doing a bad job. These machines are also very hard to steal, since they are heavy and they also have vend counters that helps to keep a track on the number of items that are sold, making it difficult for an employee to steal money from the machine.

Planet Antares offers a combo vending machine, which has a wider capacity, than other similar machines. They are also reasonably priced, making them affordable to potential vendors. These kinds of machines do extremely well in locations with high traffic or offices with a large number of employees. Most locations will be attainable, since full line vending machines are always in demand. When people are in a hurry and don’t have time to eat, they would rather go for a snack in a vending machine. Employees in an office don’t always have the time to go out for a bite to eat, so the only option for them would be the vending machines at the corner of the cafeteria. A good gross sales benchmark for a full line vending machine would be $75 a week for a location with 50 employees. If you are able to secure bigger accounts then, then the more profits you make.