Planet Antares Offers Healthy Vending Programs

Looking at the way Americans eat today is not really health-oriented. However, recent studies and published surveys have made the common public more conscious about their diet and eating habits. This trend towards healthier eating habits has brought down the popularity of traditional snack food and drinks from vending machines. This is mostly common in schools and employee break rooms where soft drinks, candy and fried snacks are being replaced by bottled water, juices and low fat snacks.

If you are running a Planet Antares vending business, you can provide a healthy vending program to customers along with the regular items in your menu. This will give them greater variety to choose from. The demand for healthy snacks is rising at a fast pace. Almost everyone is health conscious and wants to eat nutritious food. Americans are facing obesity as a big issue and with the high number of obese people in the country; this problem is not going away soon.

Healthier versions of traditional snacks are also being introduced in the market by many manufacturers, such as crème filled sandwich cookies and fried cheese snacks. As the demand for healthy products increases, companies are manufacturing more and healthier food items. Several locations demand only healthy foods in their vending machines. Planet Antares vending machines can easily cater to the needs of such locations.

In spite of the growing interest in healthy vending options, the availability and cost of healthy food items can be quite difficult. Usually, organic and low fat items cost twice as much as the conventional products. This is a major deterrent for most vending operators who avoid keeping healthy food items in their vending machines. They feel that they will lose business by offering healthy products alone. As a Planet Antares vending operator, you must offer healthy items to cater to their growing demand.

A healthy program can be successful in your Planet Antares vending business if the vending operators and packages goods supplier work in cooperation. Start off by placing a few of the products in your vending machines, just to see how they sell. Make sure that there is a lot of demand for such items in the chosen locations. By placing healthy products in your vending machines, you will recognize a change in the desires of people and hence, gain their loyalty towards your products.

Trends In Planet Antares Cold Drink Vending

In the past few years, there was a dip in the sales of vending machine cold drinks. Now, this scenario has changed. There has been a gain in the sales of cold drinks since then. Bottled beverages have made the biggest gain in recent years since bottled drinks appeared on the vending machine market in the late 1990s.

Even though vending machine cold drink cans remain profitable, customers still prefer to buy bottled drinks from vending machines like Planet Antares vending machines. They are considered more fashionable and hence, more preferred. One reason for this preference is that customers can sell the bottles again. The problem with bottled cold drinks is that they are more expensive for vending operators.

All in all, the percentage of can versus bottles sold is an indication of the vending machine company size with smaller vending operators selling fewer bottles than cans. In Planet Antares vending machines, you will find cold drinks in cans and juices in bottles. Cold cup beverage vending is still declining despite its potential to generate substantial profits. Increased placement of vending machines also helped in expansion of vending machine cold drink sales.

One feature that has really helped in boosting cold drink vending machine sales is the use of glass front cold drink vending machines. Planet Antares vending machines are glass front. In spite of this, the proportion of closed front vending machines remains higher than glass front vending machines.

For glass front vending machines, loading has to be done from the front and this leads to lesser capacity. However, a Planet Antares Refreshment Center has quite a large capacity even though it is a glass front vending machine. The advantage of glass front vending machines is that they increase cold drink vending machine sales by showcasing a larger selection of beverages than closed front vending machines.

Even though there have been gains in the cold drink vending machines, vending operators have always found it difficult to keep up with the retail carbonated drink sector. One of the reasons for this is that bottles have been more prevalent in retail outlets than in vending machines. Still, there is no doubt that cold drinks in vending machines have brought in incredible profits for Planet Antares vending operators as well as other operators.

Vending And Value Pricing

The introduction of new management tools like handhelds and Plano grams are providing Planet Antares vending operators, among other operators the means to monitor product turns with minimal extra labor. This has resulted on evaluation of the pricing strategies by some of these vending operators.

Since a long time, Planet Antares vending operators have complained about not being able to raise prices to the same level as other retail channels. Generally, the vending prices are determined by competition and by consumer contracts. These are usually not a factor of consumer needs. Most Planet Antares vending operators agree with the fact that a more scientific pricing strategy would improve sales and profitability. However, historic evidence shows that few operators have possessed the resources to track results in a manner that would provide them the essential information required to do this.

Recently, a veteran operator, Roger Monnin, developed an academic theory and argued that by discounting secondary products, vending operators can improve customer choices and therefore, enhance customer satisfaction.

Still, you should not pass on saving on to the customer so that you can keep the pricing simple and increase your Planet Antares vending business bottom line. The price of certain items can be lowered and still a gross margin comparable to that of branded items can be generated.

Your Planet Antares vending machines should have the power to draw attention. If you have snack items priced at 25 cents, you will find customers stocking up on these items at the end of the day and taking them home. In the vending industry, the ‘take-out’ customer is virtually unheard of. This presents a huge opportunity for growth of vending operators. It has also been noted that if Planet Antares vending operators supported secondary suppliers, they would cut down their dependence on the big manufacturers.

The current economic slowdown is a good time for the Planet Antares vending operators to experiment with value pricing. The reasons for this include:

• Greater price consciousness among customers and more attention to special offers
• Reduction in location sales due to downsizing, making it the ideal time to buy less from established suppliers.