Vending Advice

Pitfalls To Avoid When Choosing a Tower Vending Franchise & Unveiling The Myths that some companies do not want you to know

There is no Big secret to success, contrary to what some companies like to say. The success of a good vending franchise is location, quality of the site and products, together with good merchandising of both product and point of sale. It is up to your franchisor to ensure all this is in place from the very start of you business. Like in any business the rewards will be directly proportional to the amount of effort that you put in to it!

Some companies operate on a charity basis and don't tell the site how much actually goes to charity, there are no receipts left at the site (why do you think this is?). It is because everyone is embarrassed about the amount that actually goes to charity. The truth is 5%, yes only 5%. So you can imagine when the site finds out, in most cases the operator is told to take his tower out!! Also with this type of operation you will seldom get high profile sites, they are mostly small staff rooms, cash n carry (where the very people going there are buying cheap sweets) and small back street premises. We know because we operate over 1100 towers ourselves and we know which sites work and which ones don't’. We learnt the hard way and now pass our experience on to you. That is what a good franchisor should do.

Also beware of any company that offers Guarantees. What are the guarantees for? Usually it is for factors that do not aid your business and are not any guarantee of sales. Also beware of any guaranteed finance acceptance. In most cases you will find that in the long run you will be paying as much as double what you should be paying for your start up franchise or business!

All we can say is we will look after you all the way and be straight and up front with you. We offer each site 20% commission, which we think is fair; the site is happy and they can give their commission to their favourite charity or keep it themselves. A receipt is left each time the tower is refilled and this way everyone is happy, it saves your site being poached and you get a far better high profile site.

We have had so many operators come over to us from the charity operation because it doesn't work and we have testimonials to prove it. So don't be taken in, it is just common sense. Before you make a decision just take time to reflect and ask yourself does what you have read here make sense?

What Level of Investment  Should I Make?

We will advise you all the way and we ALWAYS say never over stretch yourself. Be comfortable with what you are investing and if you only want to test by putting your toe in the water that is fine by us. We will still give you all our expertise and backing no matter how small or large your investment.
From little acorns!

Finance

We would always say be very wary of any company offering finance in vending tower franchises. Just look at the figures. Do they add up?

You could be paying for them over 5 years and end up with half your towers income paying for the other half. What happens if for some reason your circumstances change and you want to sell up? You can’t because you don’t own them. So all the money you have paid is for the franchisor not you. Are you VAT registered? Most vendors in our experience are not so there is no tax saving for you.

We say that the best way forward is to own your towers and only buy what you can afford. Remember the bankers lending to people who couldn't afford to pay back and we know what happened then!!

Contracts (very important)

Buyer beware have you ever heard that saying ?

This applies to signing any contract on the spur of the moment; remember it is legally binding and should not be signed lightly. Our advice is NEVER sign a contract there and then. Ask for a copy to take away and read in your own time where you feel comfortable, before you commit to anything. If the company won't let you take a copy home with you WALK AWAY and don't look back: they have something to hide.

Here are some clauses you should look out for and remember the contract should be two-way: it should tell you what the company is going to do for you.

What happens if they cannot supply you the goods, do you get compensation or loss of earnings? What happens if THEY are in breach of contract?

Most contracts say what the company will do if you are in breach of contract so it should be two way. We have seen contracts so one-sided, we wonder why people sign them--but they do.

Would you sign a contract that said even if you find a site yourself it becomes the property of the company? If you have broken vending towers or un-sited towers do they still charge you annual fees? If you are slightly late with sending your money in you will get a penalty and administration charge plus interest? That sounds a bit one sided?

The Franchisor surely is there to help you be successful and encourage you to expand, not to try and prize every penny out of you and threaten you at every turn. What do you pay your money for!? If you want to be insulted or abused you could stand in the middle of the high street with a TV on your head and wearing nothing. At least it wont cost you thousands of pounds. Just remember: buyer beware, common sense and take time to think about it. Look at all the companies in that sector and see them all, then make your judgement and lastly, could you work with these people? You may have to for many years!!!! 

Forums

Business Forums in many case are not always what they seem to be! Don’t get taken in by so called 'unbiased professional' business forums. Look who the moderators are and what they do. They may be only there to sell their own products albeit in a very subtle way, grooming people  with one sided arguments. In many cases there are no balanced views as they seem to not to allow any opposition on the forums to put their side forward. (any adverse threads are often promptly removed) so you will not get a well balanced view. Some so called vending forums were formed by individuals who were jealous of success so they do all they can to  be negative towards the hand that fed them and give a very negative and misguided point of view.

Would you put a Liverpool Fan in charge of a Liverpool v Manchester United Football Match?

Do you think they would spend all that time online to give a balanced view and then for you to go to another company, it’s just common sense. Be careful and look at comments left on the site, are there any adverse remarks posted about their companies, are there any on other companies that are not allowed on the forum.

Do they always refer to their web site and ask you to phone them or PM them, why do you think that is?

They are after all a so called ‘public forum’ so why is there any need to discuss things behind closed doors, surely the very point of a forum is to discuss points openly so everyone can put a point of view forward. If you go to just one companies web site do you think you are going to get a balanced point of view, of course not. It seems that some companies are only using these forums as a second web site for themselves. All we say is be careful don’t get caught in a spiders web, that isn’t all it seems to be. We say just keep an open mind and look at all the companies in the particular field you are thinking of going into.

Business Forums are a good idea in principle, where people can discuss trade topics and share experiences, if you are allowed freedom of speech without being libelous and without fear of reprisals.

It's like most things, the original idea was full of good intentions, until ruthless and underhand individuals stepped in and used it to further their own causes.

There are some individuals and companies that have built their entire business model on an untruth. In many cases they approach prospective sites saying that they operate on a charity basis, but don’t tell the site how much really goes to charity. (in many cases 5%, yes just 5% actually goes to charity) Often no receipts are left so no one is the wiser, but when the site finds out the truth in most cases the operator is asked to take the vending tower out. This is not only embarrassing for the operator but the operator then has to buy another site from the company adding insult to injury.

Charity Boxes

Some companies have recently launched under the guise of charity “honesty” boxes. There are companies that  persuade you to purchase for a large sum of money one of their  franchises. This consists of display cardboard boxes and small packets of various non branded sweets. They in many cases do not find you sites just an area and say you can place them anywhere from offices to hairdressers.

You fill them up with sweets tell the owner that it is for charity and call once a month to restock and collect the money.

The companies selling you this claim that losses in their experience are only about 10%.

Reality

These companies rarely have any experience with running their own rounds, we have many individuals come to us seeking advice and switching to the tower vending as the few ‘honest sites’ that they have don’t cover the huge losses they experience from the majority of sites whether by people not paying for the sweets or when the operators attend the sites to find the boxes gone all together and the sites just deny ever having one especially if members of staff or management change or leave. The reality is that losses from Charity “Honesty” boxes is more like 20-25% on average and in some cases as much as 50% overall!

In some cases the office manager have been asked to make up the short fall out of their  own pocket so inevitably they get fed up and ask for it to be taken away. This is very common with this type of business.

What We Say

Do the figures they quote on amount of sales and amount of sites to visit in a day make sense. Ask to Talk to several existing operators. Don’t part with any money unless you are absolutely sure it is for you and  won’t lose your hard earned money.

We could have easily have diversified into so called charity “honesty” boxes, it certainly is cheap to produce and creates a good profit for the company selling them, but NOT for the poor individuals operating them. The Tubz business concept is based around longevity of customer relationship which is what the security of the Tubz Vending Tower Business Bundles offer along with your own personal customer manager and technical advice line from the largest Tower vending company in the UK. With our Vending Towers potential customers can only get the products by putting their money in first ensuring that our operators are guaranteed their monies and gross profits with little or no losses!

We are here to give you good sound advice and have the experience, expertise and back up to make sure your new business venture gets off to a flying start.

Call us on 0845 601 9001 for a friendly chat, you won’t find any forceful salesmen in our company, just friendly, helpful people.