Customized machine fronts and area treatments gain favor as selling tools: improvements in printing technology unleash new options for vending operators looking to dress up their machine fronts; options expand for enhancing the entire vending area.
Take a good look at your break areas. Do they look like fun places to visit? Sometimes a bank of plain, dark machines in a room with vinyl floors, sourrounded by laminated counters and metal-framed furniture aren't very exciting. Especially if the people working there have to visit it...

Operators find remote machine monitoring yields real operating efficiencies: in recent years, costs for intelligent vending have fallen while equipment and software manufacturers have improved the DEX standard; as a result, more operators are testing the waters.
When Gary McSwain arrives at his office in the morning, he logs onto his password-protected website and views the status of his 30 vending machines, noting the sales activity from the previous day. Every night the machines send their activity reports to a Web server via a cellular phone...

LEDs.
LEDs, or light-emitting diodes, are the newest lighting technology to hit vending. More durable and without the mercury found in fluorescent bulbs, the real selling point to LEDs is their long life and improved merchandising capabilities. LEDs draw less power than fluorescents, savings the location money and offering a...

2006: operators battle rising costs, challenging market: the vending industry still fails to win its fair share of growth in a prosperous economy. Operators remain slow to invest in new technology that will strengthen their competitive position.
Fiscal 2006 was not a year of great expectations for the vending industry. The industry remained constrained by the same forces that have stymied its growth since the end of the "dotcom" implosion of the late 1990s, which was its last prosperous period. Worksite downsizing ebbed after...

Minnesota appeals court rules against vending operators seeking sales tax equity.
Minnesota's vending machine operators hoping to change the state's sales tax collection policies were dealt a defeat by the Minnesota Court of Appeals, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Vending machine operators sued the Minnesota Department of Revenue last year in Ramsey District Court, alleging that laws requiring their...

Alphabetical index.
alphabetical index # 4mega-Vending 60 4mega-Vending.Com 43 5-Hour Energy 60 500 Club National Headquarters 60 A A-1 Distributing, Inc 39 AAA Locks Co., Ltd 60 A&A Global Industries 42 ABC Coin Sorting Counting Supply Inc 60 ABC Postage Stamp Vending Supply Inc 60 ABC School Vending Supply Inc 60...

Vending/OCS/bulk vending product, equipment, accessories and component manufacturers and service suppliers.
# 4Mega-Vending 60 Long Lake Dr. Carriere, MS 39426 601-749-8424, Fax: 601-749-8425 www.4mega-vending.com Products: Bulk candy vendors will never be the same. We have changed all the rules with a bulk candy vendor far the 21st century,...

Vending/OCS/bulk vending product, equipment, accessories and component manufacturers and service suppliers.
4mega-Vending 60 Long Lake Dr. Carriere, MS 39426 601-749-8424, www.4mega-vending.com Products: Bulk candy vendors will never be the same. We have changed all the rules with a bulk candy vendor for the 21st century. Brand: T. Pico,...

Technology players improve systems' integration: as technology standards have become more uniform, more providers are working together, allowing vending operators to utilize more efficiencies and offer more customer benefits.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In past articles, we have explored topics such as cashless technologies, software systems, and DEX while touching on remote monitoring (wireless) systems. In this article, my goal is to explain (in layman's terms) how these technologies interact and can work together. The good...

2007: vending becomes a tougher balancing act: operators move into survival mode as operating costs increase against limited growth opportunities. A constant focus on account profitability becomes the norm.
By now, observant vending operators have recognized what factors they can and cannot control in the current operating environment. The environment will not improve any time in the near future. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The visionaries look forward to a time when customers will appreciate the benefits...