We usually respond with  with three or four criteria such as vend price, but the one thing that we always include is location. The specific location of your vending machine is a critical element in the equation because it affects what is being sold, the volume, the risk for vandalism, and what types of payment are most prevalent. Here are just a few examples:

1)      Hospitals — in many cases, hospital employees are not permitted to carry cash so a contactless or credit card reader would be essential in machines located in and around the hospital. Where an outside connection cannot be guaranteed, often times in areas adjacent to X-ray rooms, bill recycling is an alternative payment technology an operator should consider.

2)      Airports – In locations filled with predominantly transient customers such as airports may require a bill recycler and card reader/cash acceptor combo to enable all forms of payment.

3)      Amusement Parks – in places where the vend price is typically above average, a credit card reader may be important for convenience and sales lift. Operators report excellent sales results using bill recycling as well.  Combining cashless and bill recycling would ensure vend patrons can always pay for these higher margin drinks.

4)      Hotels – Oftentimes, hotels are at high risk of theft so carrying a large float in vending machines on empty floors poses too high of a temptation for vandalism. In this case, going completely cashless may make the most sense.

1) Vend price – the higher the vend price, the more important it is that the machine accept cashless payments or include recycling technology that can accept high denomination bills.

2) Location – the more transient the customer base (eg: airports and theme parks) the more important it is that the machine accept cashless payments or include recycling technology.

3) Clientele – The more customers who don’t have the ability to carry wallets, the more important it is that the machine accept alternate payment methods.

To hear more on this topic, tune in to VendingMarketWatch.com’s latest AudioConnect podcast, “MEI’s Bob Martin Examines Vending Payment Options”  or Ask the Experts here at MEI.

You have to begin by enabling Dex in your machines.  A few companies including MEI offer a retrofit box, costing $200-$300. Once you’ve done that, you’ve got to understand what alarms your machines can send out.  Not every vending machine throws out alarms, and many such as snack machines throw out very few alarms.  Typically machines with compressors for cold or frozen applications throw off the important alarms related to whether the compressor stopped working.

Curbside polling can tell you what the machine needs but that requires an investment in software to take the sales data from the machine and compare it to what’s in the machine by spiral to know what to bring in.  Again, MEI has this software which we call EASITRAX.  

So you can see there is some preliminary work to do to get ‘set up’. We have experts to help you work thru that process so don’t feel that you would be expected to understand all this from the start.  To get started, tell me a little more about your business in terms of number of machines you service, are they primarily snack and soda, do you want to monitor all of them or just in certain locations, etc….