How profitable do you think a candy kiosk in the mall will be?

[MJ DeMarco]

Re: How profitable do you think a candy kiosk in the mall will be

(i cant post imges because of my post count, can someone help?)

Here's the image:

 

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[Russ H]

Re: How profitable do you think a candy kiosk in the mall will be

THAT is exactly what we were talking about at the beginning of the post--

1. Automated (no onsite labor costs)
2. Low maintenance
3. Lots of options/flavors/types of candy
4. Scalable

While it does not satisfy the requirements that the OP wanted, it is a perfect example of how to make an idea fit FASTLANE principles.

Kudos to the sharp observer who saw this!

-Russ H.

 

[CardinalsFan]

Re: How profitable do you think a candy kiosk in the mall will be

I'm really late on this thread but here is what I would do:

have you guys heard of the easy pass? or EZpass? I see little we accept ez pass signs at a lot of places that I frequent (ie gas stations, mcdonalds, ect)

so you go into the malls or whatever and set up a candy kiosk that is ez pass acceptable...

or just have a candy kiosk company, lets call it "American Candy Express" you sell prepaid 'kiddie debit cards' to parents who have small children...these cards can be swiped at any American Candy Express kiosk in the nation.

so now you can have kids all around beggin mom and pop to let them use there American (candy) Express card to make a purchase

all you have to do is automate the system and plant those suckers in malls all around your area...automation and scalability



idk just my .002

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Re: How profitable do you think a candy kiosk in the mall will be

I'm really late on this thread but here is what I would do:

have you guys heard of the easy pass? or EZpass? I see little we accept ez pass signs at a lot of places that I frequent (ie gas stations, mcdonalds, ect)

so you go into the malls or whatever and set up a candy kiosk that is ez pass acceptable...

or just have a candy kiosk company, lets call it "American Candy Express" you sell prepaid 'kiddie debit cards' to parents who have small children...these cards can be swiped at any American Candy Express kiosk in the nation.

so now you can have kids all around beggin mom and pop to let them use there American (candy) Express card to make a purchase

all you have to do is automate the system and plant those suckers in malls all around your area...automation and scalability



idk just my .002

At first read, I was thinking "Terrible idea!" ... but I don't have kids and don't kids like acting like adults? Toy cell phones, toy cars, toy this, toy that ... a candy debit card doesn't sound so strange ... the best way to "fastlane" this idea is to focus on every single mall in America, create a candy kiosk brand, and get the units deployed across the world. The debit card just might work with the right marketing message! Nice out-of-the-box thinking!

 

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[Luke12321]

Re: How profitable do you think a candy kiosk in the mall will be

Free giant Butterfinger when they save up enough points! Give the lazy kids something to strive for! haha

 

[CardinalsFan]

Re: How profitable do you think a candy kiosk in the mall will be

At first read, I was thinking "Terrible idea!" ... but I don't have kids and don't kids like acting like adults? Toy cell phones, toy cars, toy this, toy that ... a candy debit card doesn't sound so strange ... the best way to "fastlane" this idea is to focus on every single mall in America, create a candy kiosk brand, and get the units deployed across the world. The debit card just might work with the right marketing message! Nice out-of-the-box thinking!

thanks MJ. just applying your principles. keep it as simple and hands off as possible, create passive income to save time ect. Plus I think the kids would eat this up.

 

[thegame]

Re: How profitable do you think a candy kiosk in the mall will be

Reading through this thread I have seen many of intelligent replies, yet to my suprise only one common employee theft deterrent has been mentioned and it is not even the most effective. Cameras do help but you've failed to see the obvious, checking sales against inventory. Many will be quick to say thats SLOWLANE! because it takes time, but I thiink it would be worth it to see if the person you hire is an honest one. This can eventually be automated as well. As I see it this is the way to stop theft at your cart in the mall.

 

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[Russ H]

Re: How profitable do you think a candy kiosk in the mall will be

THAT is exactly what we were talking about at the beginning of the post--

1. Automated (no onsite labor costs)
2. Low maintenance
3. Lots of options/flavors/types of candy
4. Scalable

Cameras do help but you've failed to see the obvious, checking sales against inventory. Many will be quick to say thats SLOWLANE! because it takes time, but I thiink it would be worth it to see if the person you hire is an honest one. This can eventually be automated as well. As I see it this is the way to stop theft at your cart in the mall.

The reason it was not mentioned is that it is not practical.

Who does the inventory? The employees? (ie, the ones who are stealing?)

Or YOU-- the owner who is supposed to be "hands off"?

How could you scale this-- have 100 candy kiosks-- if you personally have to check inventory on all of them?

And how much time does it take to inventory 12,000 miscellaneous pcs of gum, chocolate, etc per location?

Just look at the photo of the gumball machines. How many individual pcs are in all of those machines?

Apologies if I'm missing what is obvious to you-- exactly HOW could you inventory quickly, and using 100% trustworthy staff, if staff theft is an issue?

Sorry if I'm being dense!

-Russ H.

 

[blizzard]

Re: How profitable do you think a candy kiosk in the mall will be

The reason it was not mentioned is that it is not practical.

Who does the inventory? The employees? (ie, the ones who are stealing?)

Or YOU-- the owner who is supposed to be "hands off"?

How could you scale this-- have 100 candy kiosks-- if you personally have to check inventory on all of them?

And how much time does it take to inventory 12,000 miscellaneous pcs of gum, chocolate, etc per location?

Just look at the photo of the gumball machines. How many individual pcs are in all of those machines?

Apologies if I'm missing what is obvious to you-- exactly HOW could you inventory quickly, and using 100% trustworthy staff, if staff theft is an issue?

Sorry if I'm being dense!

-Russ H.

My first thought would be to count the inventory as weight instead of individual pieces. In terms of tracking the inventory if you made an initial investment to build the candy containers with a simple integrated digital scale on the bottom you could know exactly how much there is.

Have a standardized scooper for each candy so you know exactly how much should be dispensed each time someone buys candy. Have the scales networked to your webpage and update the weight in each candy container every 5 minutes. That way you could compare how many sales of a candy to how much weight is gone while 5,000 miles away vacationing on the beach!

Have alerts if the weight is slowly going down as the staffer is munching the goods during his shift or tries to oversell and keep the extra cash.

You could actually keep a pretty good eye on everything with that with almost no manpower, that's my idea for the fastlane candy kiosk:smxF:.

 

[Russ H]

Re: How profitable do you think a candy kiosk in the mall will be

Bump up-- great example of taking an idea and making it Fastlane (automated, low maintenance, lots of options/appeals to different people, scalable).

-Russ H.

 

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[Dooley]

Re: How profitable do you think a candy kiosk in the mall will be

Remember to check with the Leasing Office for the mall and ask about security issue.

 

[Knightsman]

Re: How profitable do you think a candy kiosk in the mall will be

You could find software that could track how much the inventory should weight based on sales. So you know that the employee gets 10 sales, probalby sell 5 lbs of product. Then you could just weight the whole product, take it out of the display or something. That wouldnt be that time consuming just to verify the numbers match.

 

[BeanCounter]

Re: How profitable do you think a candy kiosk in the mall will be

At first read, I was thinking "Terrible idea!" ... but I don't have kids and don't kids like acting like adults? Toy cell phones, toy cars, toy this, toy that ... a candy debit card doesn't sound so strange ... the best way to "fastlane" this idea is to focus on every single mall in America, create a candy kiosk brand, and get the units deployed across the world. The debit card just might work with the right marketing message! Nice out-of-the-box thinking!

You struck a chord in me there. The use of prepaid cards is really interesting. I am sure 10-15% of the cards would be lost or never used. If they loaded them at a kiosk and never used them or only used some of the funds that money is pure profit. The bookkeeping would be a bit complicated for the average business owner but it would be a nice little income stream.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Re: How profitable do you think a candy kiosk in the mall will be

You struck a chord in me there. The use of prepaid cards is really interesting. I am sure 10-15% of the cards would be lost or never used. If they loaded them at a kiosk and never used them or only used some of the funds that money is pure profit. The bookkeeping would be a bit complicated for the average business owner but it would be a nice little income stream.

Yup, "planned obsolescence" is a very profitable business strategy! Welcome to the forum!

 

[mkzhang]

Re: How profitable do you think a candy kiosk in the mall will be

During Christmas, the rent on Kiosk cost around 10k. My mom runs some kiosk business.

 

[eBayMafia]

Alright, this thread is pretty old but a friend of mine was browsing online after hearing a story of my kiosk vending machine endevours.

I was in my early 20's and I wanted to get something started as I had a girlfriend that worked at a mall kiosk and an actual store (Rocky Mountain Chocolate) in a mall in Gurnee, IL and I spent several afternoons sitting with her and helping her do small tasks. So, I had an idea about traffic and how many sales she was making, and had a pretty good idea on why she wasn't making much. Fast forward a couple years, I wanted to make a transition from working in bad Iowa factories for very little money to starting my own businesses online in eCommerce as well as market a couple digital products and some software. I wanted a business where I could sit all day and work on my laptop, not have to flag people down for attention, and still make money while investing very little. It took me a while to narrow down "what to sell?" to candy, it wasn't my first choice. I wanted something people enjoyed, something people bought frequently, and something that meshed well with the malls pre-existing traffic. In most malls, there is movie theaters and people hate high costs of candy. I had a friend that had vending machines and I thought they would sell well but didn't. I looked online and found they clear plastic candy trays that lets people pick out candy with tongs and I kind of started my business at that point. I signed onto a 16 month contract, had to put a percentage down on my 16 month lease, which came out to $1800/mo with an agreement that I could secure different locations within the mall. I moved my custom built (cheaply built but very colorful) kiosk close to the theater. Took a couple months for the theater to complain and I moved to a spot pretty far away and this hurt sales. I managed to secure a spot that was near a Build a Bear and I had the child foot traffic I needed while still being walking path towards the theater. At 6 months, I was earning an average of $390.60 per day during Monday-Thursday, and $610.00 a day for my 1 booth each day. I wanted to earn more, and the candy supplier offered me much lower rates if purchased 3 times the amount I was currently, so I opened 3 more at surrounding malls and hired a couple employees and a manager which traveled and filled in shift gaps. My profit grew, and getting into a spot in the other 3 malls was easy with the success of my first one. Someone in Des Moines offered to buy my business, I played hard ball by asking for more for a couple weeks and then sold out for 2 years worth of profit from all 4 locations. At the same time, my online retail businesses were really picking up (with eBay making changes pushing out my competition, and my actual eCommerce stores development picking up) and other online projects were doing well.

People focus a lot on theft here, theft will always exist in every business. Just have to be careful in who you hire, how often they work (mine worked less than 25 hours a week), and although the law isn't fond of age discrimination, a certain age group has more experience in making decisions than another so use that to your advantage. Plus, most malls have very good security camera systems. If you suspect anything they will point their cameras at your cash registered direction.

So, because this thread is showing up on Google, I just wanted to say:
Colorful booths
LED Lights
Rotate your inventory, old stale candy sucks
Easy access to the candy, for kids and adults. I've made thousands off of kids just coming up and picking candy without their parents consent who then have to purchase the candy because their children got into it.
Accept all forms of payment
Traffic is important, you want to be near stores that target children, and still be near a theater.
Expensive candy is less valuable than cheap quality candy.
Biggest, quickest sellers are "Mixed Bags" - candy already mixed, sold in plastic bags.

Sorry for bumping an old post.

 

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[stressfree]

well when they ring the till it's all toted up..that's why they go nuts if they ring the wrong amount in...then for good measure have acamera overhaeds...any cash only deals no till transaction FIRED.

 

[SitesForSales]

All across the board, they are not profitable except before Valentine's Day
and that is not enough to sustain them for the rest of the year. THEY CLOSE
or are run by people who are stupid enough to keep them alive and take out
a second mortgage to keep them open.

Now ... if they advertised a little ... and sold ballons ... and wedding-type
things ... they'd have the wedding and shower market. If they had some
baby type things .. they'd have baby shower market ... if they had x-mas
colored candy, they'd ... do you follow? If they had boyfriend/girlfriend
"make-up" or "sorry" or "let's get back together" or happy "1 week anniversary"
and other cards ...and advertised it these specific commercial offers ... they'd have more business.

But they, like most businesses, just open their doors and say TO THEMSELVES
"Here we are ... I hope people buy from us" and only the smart survive.

 

[x.Cam.x]

Have you ever thought about setting up something like this?

http://snackaid.co.uk/ (copy and paste)

Basically you put boxes of candy in stores and workplaces with lots of people. The boxes contain the candy and there's also a little slot for people to put their money. They can help themselves to a bag of candy and put the money in the slot for you to collect later. You give the owner a small cut of the profits each month for letting you put your box on there premises. It would be easy to set up yourself. You could donate 10% of profits to a charity and sell it a charity box just like the franchise above. The only downside is that you rely on the good faith of customers as you are trusting them not to steal any, but since you would donate profits to charity it could be a good deterrent. It would also be a good idea to place them in places that have respectable visitors/workers (like stores with high-priced items) as an additional theft deterrent.

 

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[x.Cam.x]

Wow , I just realised how old this thread is. Anyway, if anyone else is interested in having a semi- automated candy business you could still try the above.