Vending machine fundraising?

[MikLast]

I have been doing my own little personal research for fundraising, and i came across the idea of vending machines as fundraisers.Before i start doing a whole bunch of stuff just to realize it will never happen, i wanted to know if other teams did this, and how they did it. I happened to find a couple sites online that offered free service (restocking, repairs, etc) but that seems a little too good to be true, and i wanted to see if anyone has experience with using this type of fundraiser.

[mman1506]

For fun one day we called up Coca-Cola and asked them about vending machines. Basically you sign a contract and they do everything (restocking, installation, maintenance etc) except paying for electricity. In turn they give you a small commission for the sales depending on how much product you sell (starts somewhere around 5%)

[MrBasse]

Where would you put it? If it is in a school it has to meet the FDA guidelines for healthy eating that the government put out for public school buildings. There are a bunch of regulations like the first ingredient has to be a food, so all candy is out.

For some reason chocolate and sugar don't count as food... My whole childhood feels like a lie.

[MikLast]

Originally Posted by MrBasse

Where would you put it? If it is in a school it has to meet the FDA guidelines for healthy eating that the government put out for public school buildings. There are a bunch of regulations like the first ingredient has to be a food, so all candy is out.

For some reason chocolate and sugar don't count as food... My whole childhood feels like a lie.

i have ideas about this, but they parent exactly fully thought out, as i am focusing on seeing if this would even be feasible.

Basically, our middle school has one machine in the whole building (for students, i bet a staff lounge has one somewhere) just serves water and is broke half of the time. My idea is to have a couple (3-4 max, going for less as it is a middle school) of the big sodas (all diet) then the rest will be juice/Gatorade, and with a couple being water, because water.

Before i could even go much farther someone would need to talk to the MS anyways to get the permissions to do this, and i have a feeling they will want some of the profit, because who doesn't love money?

Originally Posted by mman1506

For fun one day we called up Coca-Cola and asked them about vending machines. Basically you sign a contract and they do everything (restocking, installation, maintenance etc) except paying for electricity. In turn they give you a small commission for the sales depending on how much product you sell (starts somewhere around 5%)

Do you mind going into a little more detail? How long is the contract, FDA stuff (As MrBasse said) what products are offered, little more explanation on the commission?

[mman1506]

Originally Posted by MikLast

Do you mind going into a little more detail? How long is the contract, FDA stuff (As MrBasse said) what products are offered, little more explanation on the commission?

We never really got that far, we were mostly just curious on how it all worked. The commissions are quite low overall, and at our turnover it was much much more profitable to sell it out of a mini fridge. They didn't give us exact numbers and I'm sure they wouldn't want them posted online if they did.

[nedwards28]

We looked into selling erasers, pencils, headphones, granola bars that met the requirements however, we were turned down at the school because of the bookkeeping nightmare it creates with ASB. Sadly, we gave up on it right there. Also, we didn't know where to source a free vending machine. We are in washington state. Perhaps your state has less requirements on how to document things sold.

[MikLast]

Originally Posted by nedwards28

We looked into selling erasers, pencils, headphones, granola bars that met the requirements however, we were turned down at the school because of the bookkeeping nightmare it creates with ASB. Sadly, we gave up on it right there. Also, we didn't know where to source a free vending machine. We are in washington state. Perhaps your state has less requirements on how to document things sold.

Well... we are in Washington state too. Good to know about that, never knew that would be an issue.