How Other Vending Companies can Get in Your Way
Why not be your school’s only vending company?
Many Spirit Box Teams have struggled with other vending companies at their school attempting to get them removed from their school or even restricting what they can and can’t sell in their machine based on a contract with the school. Third party vending companies restricting certain sales and acting as a direct competitor result Spirit Box teams in loss of sales.
What if we told you, you don’t have to deal with restrictions or a third party competitor any more?
Consider being the only vendor at your school
In our last post, we talked about how vending contracts expire every couple of years in most cases. What if you competed for your school’s bid on being the primary and exclusive vendor?
Administrators will have a hard time saying no and here is why:
All of the vending revenue goes to your Spirit Box Teams and your school.
A hands on learning experience that provides real world skills to high school students.
No contracts from other vending companies restricting what you can put in your vending machine. This will lead your business to be more successful and bring more revenue in.
How contracts can hold you back
Depending on the contract, different rules applied. At Camdenton High School, the contract said that Spirit Box had to not only stock the drink machine with Coke products, but also could only buy from the distributor that is closest to Camdenton. This could mean more shipments with a larger variety of beverages for your customers, but it can also mean a much higher price. However, other distributors can be as little as half the price as stores like Walmart. The implementation of a contract could also strip your team’s freedom of being able to change out products quickly, purchase products quickly, and see what is selling well and what isn’t.
How the vending company at your school can limit what you sell
When Tyler Hunter and Camdenton High School received their beverage box, they were thrilled. However, they didn’t read the school’s vending contract before the beverage box arrived. Camdenton was re-signing the contract a month after they got the box. This led them to have many challenges with the other vending company. It became a back a forth battle of what they could or could not put in the machine. After trial and error of many products they found that they could only sell Coke products in the machine from their local distributor. Certain products such as Monster were not allowed in the vending machine due to the company’s policies on what they can and can’t sell at a high school. Because of these requirements by the third party vending company, Camdenton lost their best selling product and could no longer purchase from a cheaper source like Walmart. They could only purchase from their local Coke Distributor.
These restrictions increased their expenses, and lost them revenue from the removal of their best selling product. These struggles inspired them to go to their administration to begin the process of competing for an exclusive vending contract with the school.
How to become your school’s primary vendor
Is your team wanting to start this conversation with your administrators? We created a downloadable vending packet that you can present to your administrators that tells them everything they need to know about Spirit Box. Need a little bit more information on how to get this process started? Read everything you need to know on: Why Not Become Your School's Primary Vending Provider?
The main takeaway? This process may take time but the return on your time invested into this could be huge. Remember that growing your business takes time and patience. We will be here to support you along the way! Contact us with questions or if you want to chat more about this process.