Simple Ways To Get a Vending Machine in the Office

While it may be relatively easy to get a vending machine in your office, it can be significantly more difficult to keep it there—particularly as an effective productivity tool. Here’s what you can do to simplify the process of getting a vending machine, maintaining it, and ensuring it boosts employee effectiveness.

Why Add Vending Machines?

Successful companies add vending machines for the same reasons they add other office tools, such as computers, comfortable seating, and ergonomic desks; It can boost productivity. When considering the simplest ways to get a vending machine, the underlying reason, productivity, serves as the foundation of your strategy.

A vending machine in the office can:

• Keep employees from leaving your location. You’d be hard-pressed to find an employee that’s both happy and hungry. A vending machine keeps them from satisfying their hunger off-campus. As a result, they stay within a few steps of their work instead of going around the corner for a bite.
• You provide a quick, easy, and cost-effective solution. Employees love fast, simple, inexpensive solutions and a vending machine checks off all three boxes. You save them both time and money, and that leads to a more content workforce.

Should You Purchase And Self-fill Or Use A Service?

As mentioned above, getting a vending machine can be less complicated than maintaining it and making sure it helps productivity instead of hindering it. That is why many winning companies choose to use a service to fill and maintain their vending machines, making a provider like Prestige Services a simpler solution.

For example, picture the following scenario: Your employees are absolutely loving a hot new energy bar in your vending machine. They’re literally, well, eating it up. It’s a big hit around 10:00 am and 3:00 pm when people need a little boost to stay productive and on-task. But you run out. One by one, your workers start drifting out the front door and to their cars to get that energy bar somewhere else.

You can feel your productivity slipping, so you rush out the door to your local Costco, white-knuckling through the 20-minute drive. Costco has what you want and what feels like an impossibly long line. You finally check out, then drive another 20 minutes back to the office.

You then wrestle with the vending machine, opening it up, and shoving the energy bars in there. You close it up, muscle it back into place, then return, sweaty, to your desk.

How much time did you lose? How many employees left anyway? The opportunity costs of self-managing a vending machine can skyrocket over time.

On the other hand, by using a managed vending machine solution, you don’t have to worry about running out or managing the restocking process. This is because:

• Your vendor makes sure you have the stock you need
• Your vendor can use predictive analytics to figure out when an item is likely to run out ahead of time
• Your vendor handles the resupply process

How To Enhance Your Vending Machine Solution

There’s a lot you can do to optimize the effectiveness of your vending machine solution, making it a flexible resource with a ton of upside potential. For example, you can:

• Strategize the best possible location for the machine based on foot traffic and space. For instance, while a breakroom may be a strong option, another space, such as your front welcome area, may get even more foot traffic.
• Provide funds for your employees as a perk. You can give each employee vending machine credits, encouraging them to use the machine while simultaneously showing appreciation for their hard work. The productivity pay-off can more than cover the few bucks you give each employee.
• Issue a survey regarding the kinds of items employees want in the vending machine. Their top picks may surprise you, and you demonstrate a genuine interest in their opinions.

Getting A Vending Machine The Simple Way – What It Looks Like

With Prestige, the processes of getting and maintaining your vending machines come with only two steps:

1. You connect with a Prestige vending expert
2. Our professionals handle the rest - including a site survey, installation with a 30-day turnaround, stocking, restocking, and maintenance!

Prestige’s machines send reports regarding current and projected inventory levels, which are used to automatically schedule resupply trips. Maintenance calls are taken care of via whichever means you prefer: email, chat, or a phone call. To learn more about how simple it is to get a vending machine in your office, connect with Prestige Services today.