Competition from Charity boxes

[PabloV8]

Hi all,

After coming across the umpteenth charity box sitting next to one of my towers, I find myself asking questions:

1. Does anyone on this forum run a mix of charity boxes and towers?
2. How much do these boxes cost?
3. How much profit is their in one box?
4. How much money is lost through theft/pilfering?
5. Is it easier to get a customer through using boxes as oppose to siting a tower!
6. What is the minimum amount of boxes you have to purchase?
7. What charity do you use?
8. What percentage of cash goes to charity?


Your thoughts are as always much appreciated.

Cheers

Pablo.

[Coin Operated Group]

Brian @ choice vending used to run them. Send him a message

[Snackmore]

they say theft is roughly 10% - Hurleys do them - you can also search on here there has been many discussions over the last few years

[PabloV8]

Cheers Snackmore,

Have been having a good look at previous posts on this. As I understand, for an outlay of about £2000 I would get something like 400 boxes. Like for like I would only get approx 12 towers and stands inclusive of vat. I have a policy now of only purchasing new towers.

Therefore, assuming that a charity box has 20 packets, 400 / 4 equates to 100 customers (against 81 products in a tower) vs 12 towers. Even allowing for a 10% loss trying to work out if it is a more viable business model. I already have over 100 towers so that is a lot of cash tied up, the stock alone in the towers is some 4k with a potential return of 8k and the stock required for servicing towers is about 5k - so some 9k of stock held in real terms paid for in advance, hence my enquiry.

Do not have a problem with the towers, but seems to me that you pay for the boxes in advance but outlay is only £2k, and would probably give a better return overall than say the 12 towers that you could purchase for the same money.

I would probably use different charities as oppose using Hurleys then do not have all eggs in the one basket.


Any thoughts?


Cheers

Pablo.

[Snackmore]

I think the market is getting saturated in the charity vend world and see boxes everywhere, interestingly the vast majority I see are full and I don't think they have just been replaced! As you say though a cheaper outlay.

Not sure this is the sort of market I want however I can imagine placing a box finding its done very well and then replacing it with a tower which would be good

[Style]

I think boxes would get the same honeymoon period towers do where you will see a 10% theft, but after that not only will sales dip but theft will go up dramatically. I say this based on my experience in a previous life where I looked after 14 different offices most of which had charity boxes come and go again when the sales dropped and theft increased.
I find them quite easy to get kicked out of most of my sites that have commision, just show the site the label saying 60% of net profit goes to charity and ask if they know what that means.
Andy

[Paul@HurleysFoods]

Its right, we do these Honesty boxes and are still selling packages every week. We have the contract with the NSPCC to do them. We have about 5 people who run towers and boxes together. The boxes slot in where the towers wont fit and sites that do very well with boxes are often upgraded to towers. They work very well together and we can do tower vending customers a very good deal to start up with them.
The losses are closer to 4-5% when the business is ran well, that's what our best franchisees are achieving anyway
Regards
Paul, Hurleys