July 31, 2010

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Vending Machines and Socially Responsible Business

July 29, 2010 By Patrick Sanders Leave a Comment

You might be asking “What the heck to vending machines have to do with socially responsible business?” My answer: everything. Vending machines play a key role in food distribution in our country, and food is obviously an essential part of life.  That brown box down the hall from you in the break room holds more power than you think, for better or for worse….

Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others; it is the only means.
Albert Einstein

I don’t bust out Albert Einstein quotes lightly.  I only use them when I really need to drive a point home, and that point is this: everything you do as a company, down to the smallest choices you make, has an impact.  Its often the little things that get overlooked, too.  For example, how many companies out there claim to be socially responsible and yet still only provide their employees with unhealthy snack and drink options from vending machines that also have a huge carbon footprint?  While these companies may be socially responsible on a large scale, what about the health of its employees and the health of the planet?

I know what you’re thinking: “Is this guy serious? Vending machines? We have bigger fish to fry!” Well, what I’m saying is how are you going to expect your employees to perform at their peak when they are putting crap in their bodies throughout the workday? And how can you really say you’re a “green” company when you won’t replace your traditional, energy-sucking vending machines with modern eco-friendly vending machines stocked with health food?

Let me hit you with hard numbers if you’re still not convinced:

A study led by University of Cincinnati on obesity’s effects on productivity on 341 manufacturing workers indicated that health-related losses in productivity were 4.2% for moderate to obese workers, costing the company $1,800 per year in absenteeism related costs!

So let’s say your company is made up of the average distribution of people in the U.S. (30% obese).  If you have 1,000 employees then 300 are obese.  300 x $1,800 = $540,000 per year.

That’s half a million greenbacks!

While you can’t be responsible for the lifestyle decisions your employees make, the least you could do is provide them with healthy snack options while they work.


Filed Under: ADVICE & EDUCATION, Health & Nutrition, Healthy Vending Machines, Philosophies & Beliefs, THE VENDING INDUSTRY, The Bigger Picture, Vending Trends

The Future is Here: Healthy Vending Machines

July 26, 2010 By Patrick Sanders Leave a Comment

Am I the only one extremely disappointed that its 2010 and we are STILL not driving flying cars, watching hologram TV, and popping tasty meals in pill form? Its downright absurd! But I guess to be fair, there are some pretty cool things that have come out.  For example: healthy vending machines.  That’s right, I said it. There are actually vending machines that dispense health food and sports performance products!

These aren’t your typical big brown boxes with coils just outfitted with a different product mix, either.  These healthy vending machines are high-tech!  Here’s what I’m talking about:

An LCD Screen: If I could afford it, every wall in my house would be an LCD screen.  A vending machine should be no different.  Plus, how cool is it to have nutrition facts displayed on screen of the food products you’re about to buy? Its not like you can open the machine up and read the labels. If you have to put guesswork into your healthy snack options, then you’re probably not eating as healthy as you could be.

Cashless payment options: Like most of us, I am horrible at keeping cash around.  And nothing is worse than walking by a vending machine hoping for a healthy snack and coming up with lint.  Plastic money rules, plain and simple.

We could have avoided this, machine!Sensors that guarantee that the machine vends correctly: This is as refreshing as the natural and organic options in these machines.   You know the diagram on vending machines showing what NOT to do? (i.e. tipping the machines towards you?) Yep, I’ve been THAT guy.   Because when I get ripped off by an ugly brown box, I feel stupid. And when I feel stupid, I get angry. Angry + Stupid = I am the guy in the diagram.

Eco-Friendly Design: We all love Mother Earth.  (By “we” I am not including British Petroleum). These healthy vending machines use up to 50% less energy than standard vending machines.  This means that when you use a traditional vending machine, you are actually harming your body and the environment.  Whether you buy organic, natural, or simply healthier food from a healthy vending machine its a double-whammy of positive impact for your body and for the earth.

The bottom line is that while we still may not be able to swallow a complete steak dinner the size of an aspirin, the convenience of a high-tech healthy vending machine is a pretty cool substitute.

Filed Under: HEALTHY VENDING, Healthy Vending Machines, THE VENDING INDUSTRY, The Bigger Picture Tagged With: healthier food, healthy food, healthy snacks, HEALTHY VENDING, healthy vending machine, healthy vending machines, natural, organic, vending machine, vending machines

How Vending Machines In Schools Are Affected By Branding

July 23, 2010 By John Pinto Leave a Comment

Hello people, it’s Brian Knopke. Here is another video for vending machines in schools.  I have heard that many schools are filling their vending machines  half with healthy snacks and half unhealthy snacks.  What are students going to buy? Telling the students to eat better will not encourage them to buy healthy snacks or solve the childhood obesity problem.  The reason is big food companies do branding. Can we compete with the big boys? See how to avoid a losing battle against unhealthy snacks.

Filed Under: ADVICE & EDUCATION, Health & Nutrition, Healthy Vending Products, THE VENDING INDUSTRY, Vending News, Vending Tips & Tricks, Vending Trends Tagged With: healthy snacks, HEALTHY VENDING, healthy vending machine, healthy vending machines, Successful vending, vending machines in schools

Obesity Gets Knocked Out by Healthy Vending Machines Thanks to the Boys & Girls Club of Ada County, ID!

July 22, 2010 By Patrick Sanders Leave a Comment

Muhammad Ali. Joe Louis. Sugar Ray Robinson.

Obesity and malnutrition would rather step into the ring with these boxing greats than the Boys & Girls Club of Ada County, Idaho.

The mission of the Boys & Girls Club is “to enable all young people, especially those who need us most, to reach their full potential as productive, caring, responsible citizens.”

Gotta love ‘em.

The cutting of the ribbon!On July 20th, the Garden City and Meridian clubs joined the fight to promote health for its kids by implementing a state of the art healthy vending program through H.U.M.A.N. Healthy Vending.  With a high tech machine installed at each club, the positive and measurable impact on the kids’ health has begun.

Star athletes from Boise State and nutrition experts participated in an educational event before unveiling the machines, speaking to the children about the importance of nutrition and exercise at the Moseley Center.

CHECK OUT THE NEWS COVERAGE OF THE EVENT!

Local H.U.M.A.N. operators Amy and John Hobbing are excited to be the first exclusive healthy vending operators in Idaho: “As leaders in the Treasure Valley have come to realize, poor nutrition and obesity are not just bad for kids, but its bad for business.  One out of every three adults and children are now classified as overweight or obese.  The cost of poor health is well documented: lost productivity, higher healthcare costs and a lower quality of life.  We have decided to take a stand against poor health and help innovative organizations and leaders like the Boys & Girls Club bring the right kind of tools to help kids and adults with better nutritional choices.  Lastly, we want people to know that good health can taste good!”

When I was a kid, I couldn’t tell you the difference between sodium and simple carbohydrates.  Heck, most of the time I couldn’t even match my socks.  Not surprisingly, not much has changed.  In Garden City, the kids crowded around the colorful and high-tech machine feeding it quarters and excitedly retrieving their snacks as reporters quizzed them on what the basic ingredients were.  The look on the kids’ faces said it all: “I don’t know, lady, I just know it tastes good!”

With a customized array of snacks chosen for both taste and nutritional content, kids and parents were not disappointed.

I have to say that nothing warms my heart more than seeing a kid chugging Hansen’s soda instead of Pepsi.  My wife was offended by this because apparently our wedding video should take precedence, but that’s neither here nor there.

And as childhood obesity rates soar throughout the country, the Boys & Girls Club in Ada County, Idaho has scored a first round knockout.


Filed Under: H.U.M.A.N., HEALTHY VENDING, Happenings, Health & Nutrition, Healthy Vending Machines, Lifestyle, Vending News Tagged With: healthy food, healthy snacks, HEALTHY VENDING, healthy vending machine, healthy vending machines, Successful vending, vending machines, vending machines in school, vending machines in schools

Health Club Membership Tips: 5 Simple Ways to Get More Members

June 1, 2010 By John Pinto Leave a Comment

Health Club Membership Tips: 5 Simple Ways to Get More Members from Andy Mackensen on Vimeo.

Filed Under: ADVICE & EDUCATION, Entrepreneurship, Philosophies & Beliefs, Vending Tips & Tricks

The Future of Vending Machines

March 10, 2010 By John Pinto 1 Comment

A vending machine? A digital advertising platform? What is this hi-tech, awesome looking machine? It’s H.U.M.A.N. Healthy Vending and the all new Media Mogul!

This machine is custom built for vending success. Not only will you make your standard margin on product sales, but you now have access to a completely new revenue stream by taking part in the booming digital advertising industry!

Through the H.U.M.A.N. Ad Network, ads can be uploaded remotely and customized towards any machine location. The Media Mogul comes with a 23″ HD LCD screen that looks great. It is such an eye catcher that product sales go up simply because people want to check out the machine.

This machine does not come with your standard coil trays either. It is equipped with the most sophisticated vending technology to date — a conveyor belt style delivery system. What does that mean for you? Higher capacity (meaning less work for you) and product versatility (you can vend anything that fits!). It is an entrepreneurs dream.

Filed Under: Entrepreneurship, Happenings, The Bigger Picture, Vending News

Why Partnering With H.U.M.A.N. Makes Sense

February 22, 2010 By John Pinto Leave a Comment

Aside from our amazing machines and unparalleled customer service, here is the #1 reason you should partner with HUMAN Healthy Vending when you start your own healthy vending business:

In vending, it’s all about finding the best locations. LOCATIONS, LOCATIONS, LOCATIONS!

Premium locations with high traffic is what any vending machine owner strives for. We at HUMAN could keep our strategies a secret, but we like our operators and potential operators to be fully informed.  Check out our 6-Step premium location acquisition process:

Step 1 – 4 stage direct mail campaign to the top 250 locations in your region
Step 2 – 4 to 6 Weeks of Telemarketing to every single healthy vending conducive location in your region that meets our criteria (at least 20 vends per day)
Step 3 – 1 week of in-person location discovery & acquisition training with a HUMAN location pro
Step 4 – A HUMAN location pro attends 30-40 top-tier meetings over the course of a week
Step 5 – Custom press release and media outreach to every newspaper, tv and radio outlet
Step 6 - Constant follow-up marketing and outreach to EVERY location in your region for the lifetime of your partnership

With Step #3, this is all about the “Give a man a fish he eats for a day, teach a man to fish he eats for a lifetime.”  We’re training you to be successful in the short and long-run!  Which brings me to my next point, #6.  We perform continual follow-up marketing for the lifetime of our partnership to ALL of the locations in your region.  We have a custom email and customer marketing solution that helps us with this.  Additionally, as our brand grows nationally and internationally, you’ll benefit from our success.  Everyone who comes to HUMAN is passed along to you.  And as our brand grows to tens of thousands of machines, it’s very, very good for you.

Here is a sneak peak of The Media Mogul! My next post will highlight the features of this unbelievable automated retailer/digital media money maker!!!!

Filed Under: ADVICE & EDUCATION, Entrepreneurship, Happenings, Healthy Vending Guidelines, Philosophies & Beliefs, The Bigger Picture, Vending Tips & Tricks

H.U.M.A.N.: Creating Healthy Vending Success Part II

February 12, 2010 By John Pinto Leave a Comment

Why We Succeed at Schools While Traditional vending Companies Fail Part II

Products that are Actually Healthy AND Taste Good

When a healthy vending program fails to reach optimal success, it almost always has to do something with the products. The products must taste good and they cannot taste that much different than what students are used to. You can’t just change students’ taste preferences on the flip of a dime. Therefore, you must work with them. Take what products students like, find healthy items that taste similar, and offer those products to the students. Healthy snacks don’t have to taste like cardboard, and they shouldn’t!

Healthy products have made a huge stride over the past five to ten ears when it comes to taste. The problem is that many of the best products are not available via standard vending machine product distributors. A vending operator needs to build a network of new suppliers and distributors with different rules, policies, and prices, and many time they’re not willing to do that. HUMAN has never been involved with anything other than healthy vending. Therefore, our suppliers and our network is dialed-in to allow for the distribution of the healthiest, tastiest products that students love. We know what students like, and what they don’t, and that’s the foundation of our program.

With over six years of taste-test research (and many, many mistakes along the way), we know how to put together the perfect healthy snack and drink plangogram (product mix) for students. It’s been a learning experience, but without this experience, success would not be possible today. Without creating the optimal product offering, nothing else matters!

LCD Screens that Educate Students & Catch Their Attention

Beyond the fact that they make the machine look much better, cooler and more innovative, LCD screens also help increase sales at healthy vending machines by educating students about the products inside the machines, providing them with the products nutritional information, & offering nutritional tips & tricks that are useful to students throughout the day. This is all done vi streaming video that can be remotely loaded and, therefore, kept fresh. When getting students to switch to healthy vending, education is so important, and the best way to educate students without doing so in person is via digital LCD screens.

The 1-2-3 Punch

In order for healthy vending to work & succeed at your school, you need all of the above to exist. You can’t do one thing right and two others wrong. You can’t have the best machines and the worst products or vice versa. The entire program needs to make sense and needs to be built for healthy vending success. Healthy vending is not the same game as traditional vending–the delivery method, in that it’s automated, may be the same, but that’s about the only similarity that exists. Everything else is a 180 degree difference. A paradigm shift is needed.

At H.U.M.A.N., healthy vending is our game. Our only game. And our goal is to create healthy vending success where others either cannot, will not, or are not able to do so. I hope we’re able to serve your school and provide your students with a ton of value!

Filed Under: ADVICE & EDUCATION, Entrepreneurship, Healthy Vending Guidelines, Philosophies & Beliefs, THE VENDING INDUSTRY, Vending News, Vending Tips & Tricks

H.U.M.A.N.: Creating Healthy Vending Success

February 9, 2010 By John Pinto Leave a Comment

Why We Succeed at Schools While Traditional Vending Companies Fail

Education, Marketing & Promotion at School

In the world of traditional vending, an operator will conduct next to no on-location marketing & promotions. They place the machine, fill it, and once in a while change out products that aren’t selling. That’s it. This is a flawed model regardless of the type of business one is running (what’s more important than marketing & education?), and it’s especially flawed when running a business whose goal is to implement healthier snacks & drinks at school.

Healthy snack brands are often times less recognizable than traditional vending machine fare — students need to be taught about the items. Most importantly, they need to taste the items and learn for themselves that healthy snacks & drinks can and should taste good! These are not your grandma’s healthy foods — they taste just as good as traditional vending fare, but are just a whole lot healthier. Via sampling events, coupon giveaways, digital & standard signage, and consistent promotional strategies (all optional but highly recommended), H.U.M.A.N. operators get to know students and integrate directly into the school’s healthy vending initiative. This has a huge impact!

Innovative Machines Made for Healthy Vending

Selling healthy snacks from a standard, ugly, and boring vending machine is like trying to sell a new car from a used auto parts lot. It’s not going to work. Healthy vending success is all about creating a paradigm shift in the students’ minds regarding what vending, or automated retail, is all about. If the delivery channel is the exact same as standard vending, the students’ minds will expect the same products & experience. The delivery channel needs to change.

By using only new, unique looking machines with customized graphics that tell students “these machines are cool, premium, and good-for-you,” students are much more likely to approach them. And when they do approach them, they’re going to expect something different than traditional vending, and this is what we give them. That’s the whole point! Additionally, by adding innovative technology such as LCD screens, cashless card readers, and automatic conveyor sensor systems, the machines’ “cool” factor is maximized in a big way.

Running out of time today! So check out the next blog post for Part II of this bloviation…

Filed Under: Entrepreneurship, Health & Nutrition, Healthy Vending Guidelines, Healthy Vending Machines, Healthy Vending Products, Philosophies & Beliefs, Vending Tips & Tricks

90 Day Optimization Period: Do You Have What It Takes?

February 6, 2010 By John Pinto Leave a Comment

Every entrepreneur hits road blocks along the journey to the top. The difference between successful and unsuccessful business owners is that successful individuals stay resilient and find a way to get things done!

The vending industry is no different. The first 90 days after a machine is placed can make or break any vending operator’s confidence. If the operators see great sales immediately, they are happy. If not, they label it as a bad investment. What can an operator do to avoid the feelings of disappointment? Work harder!

A lot of learning will take place over the first 90 days of running any business. But hard work and precise planning will set the stage for success. In healthy vending, hosting sampling events, analyzing sales data, and testing new products are a few key tasks that help to optimize the business.

How do these tasks help?

Sampling Events: Hosting on-site sampling events allow potential customers to TRY the products. Some of the healthy brands are not as recognizable, but once a customer tries out a product, he/she will love it! Just 10 years ago many healthy snacks and drinks tasted like cardboard, but with advancement in technology and nutritional science there are TONS of healthy products that taste just as good as junk food!

Analyzing Sales Data: Recognizing what sells and what doesn’t is extremely important. This allows you to create more efficient inventory management and route driving systems. The H.U.M.A.N. machines are equipped with remote monitoring capabilities, which allow you to print sales reports and quickly identify any significant trends. Once you analyze the data, many decisions can be made: lowering prices, raising prices, removing products, placing products differently in the machine. All of these factors effect sales in some way or another.

Testing New Products: Although H.U.M.A.N. Healthy Vending customizes planograms for optimal sales at each machine location, small tweaks will always need to be made along the way. Once you have analyzed the sales data, there may be an underperforming product that needs to be swapped out. Make the switch to a different product, see how it sells, and then reevaluate.

Learn as much as possible, don’t let a minor road bump stop you, and adapt when necessary! Entrepreneurship can be a bumpy road sometimes, but the strong always survive!

Filed Under: ADVICE & EDUCATION, Entrepreneurship, Healthy Vending Guidelines, Philosophies & Beliefs, Vending Tips & Tricks
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