School Vending

We can debate and lobby all day about nutrition and calorie restrictions but the bottom line is can we afford healthy school vending? The answer would be absolutely yes! We all want to do the right thing for the kids of America, but we don’t want to start what we can’t afford to finish. We may incorrectly presume that healthy vending really can’t pay for itself, but we at Vend-ucation have success story after success story that extends over twenty years.

The infamous “Deep Throat” captured the focus decades ago...
“Follow The Money” is what he told Woodward & Bernstein. The money flow establishes an undeniable truth. Believe it or not, healthy school vending can be a veritable CASH COW, as long as we pay attention to the details and duplicate historical success. Let me show you how to follow the school vending money.

Many schools use a professional vending operator to install their own vending machines and forward a percentage of the sales of these machines to the school... just like Woodward and Bernstein - you too can “follow the money.”

School vending contracts are all determined on the basis of some percentage of the vending machine sales being returned to the school, on a monthly or a quarterly basis. A vending operator wins a bid by simply offering the highest percentage of sales. However, if you don’t follow the money then the bidding process is just a game of liars poker and the school loses every single time. Who is auditing those vending sales? Where is there a requirement in the vending contract that the vending operator allow the school to audit the sales? So how do we follow the money?

This is surprisingly simple. Every vending machine can be audited, because they all have a non-resettable sales meter (just like a cash register). There are absolutely no exceptions! So why is it that all these vending companies that promise to pay their school clients a certain percentage of their sales never allow anyone to see the sales meters for each machine? This is exceptionally disturbing when we learn that it is standard operating procedure to have a vending route person take that meter reading every time they remove the cash... in order for the vending company to make sure the route person is returning all the money being collected. Why aren’t they offering the school the same validation?

Did you know that every accounting software program for the vending industry that I have ever seen (and it is my business to know) has the capacity to keep two sets of books? One is for vending management and the IRS and the other is for the vending clients where commissions are involved. This is sometimes called the R factor.. or the fudge factor, but there is always a ‘factor’ so that vending companies can promise you one thing, deliver another... but still make it look good with a convincing computer report. There is only 1 fool-proof way to audit vending sales: That is by recording the non-resettable sales meter in every machine at the beginning of every month... anything else is a shell game. There are two answers to this problem.

If you would like a sample school vending auditing form you can request this free form and directions for auditing your school vending sales on our Contact Us page. You can also fill out a brief questionnaire if you would like a comparison to how much new money could be generated by doing your vending yourself.

Can we really make more money by doing our own Healthy School Vending? Schools don't need the refrigerated route trucks to operate vending machines in their cafeterias, or an offsite warehouse like their vending company, or all that extra insurance a vending company has to have, or pay for the layers of management, or any federal income taxes. The legal and accounting costs as well as the vending owners personal income from the school machines would drop right to your bottom line when a school takes their vending service in-house. Operating your own vending machines in schools is always very profitable, even when our nutritional limitations offer advantages to the local convenience stores and fast food restaurants. This is more than logical. We can prove it.