Planet Antares

Inputs to make your vending business work. A special insight on Planet Antares Vending solutions

Saturday, October 07, 2006

The Honor Box Market

With profits squeezed ever so hard, the honor box market has become the exclusive domain of a unique group of specialists.

There are some owners of honor box companies who don’t have high hopes for midsize accounts. It’s a hard market segment. Midsize locations have too many people to make an honor box manageable. In other words the bigger the employee group, the more problematic an honor box becomes.

An honor box can be manageable if you find the right Antares vending machines to place in the larger accounts. These machines have product variety because of their large capacities.

Questionable labor force

Mismanagement of honor box operations is the biggest threat to business. Being in the honor box business is like walking on a tightrope, you need to stay focused. Part of this focus needs to be on account turnover, new sales, cash flow and labor.

What you need to make any Antares account successful is a good driver. You can rely on honest drivers to keep the locations accountable for the snacks. If the driver is able to establish a relationship with the account, that account tends to be more willing to make up for shortages. Problems can arise if the account doesn’t trust the driver. The driver should be expected to service between 65 to 70 accounts per day. An average driver can do up to $7, 000 in gross sales per week. This is what can attract the Antares vending company to taking up an account in the honor box operations.

The honor box operator can also find success partnering with a charity organization. This helps with marketing because it can give additional motivation for people to try the boxes in their businesses.

Name brands a must

Having name brand products in a well frequented honor box is very important. Just like in an Antares vending operation, brand is of primal importance. Variety is also very important. A challenging product mix with new offerings and new manufacturers’ names is needed, because people get easily bored with what they are looking at if the mix never changes. Consumers will always pay for name brand products.

Established operators have agreed that there are very few large honor snack businesses starting up. This can be due to market saturation and higher prices.

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