24/7 Ice Sales Without Person-to-Person Contact
Selling ice has always been a person-to-person transaction. On a sunny and 85oF Saturday afternoon, a customer walks into a retail store, checks out with the cashier, heads back outside, and grabs their ice out of the loaded ice merchandiser in front of the store.
Simple, straight-forward, and traditional. But times are changing.
Luckily, the self-checkout lane for ice exists. Today, the consumer can avoid all person-to-person interaction by using a Leer Ice Vending Machine!
Leer’s VM40 and VM85 Ice Vending Machines, are similar to many other vending machines. Customers swipe their credit card, the order is processed, and the consumer receives their products. Just like the soda vending machine, in front of the store, this allows for packaged ice to be sold 24/7.
Likewise, this cuts out the need for a cashier – or any sort of person-to-person interaction – providing convenience and fast access to your product.
The Hidden Benefit
These days, where there’s a need for ice isn’t always convenient enough for a whole store.
There’s a real hidden benefit to serving your ice customers this way. Sure, the unit can be accessed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and yes, customers don’t need to enter a store to purchase, but ice vending also allows for strategic placement of machines.
Have you ever gone to the beach, only to realize that you forgot to fill the cooler with ice? You then have to trek to the nearest gas station to buy a bag, go in and pay for it, and then get back to the beach… wasting precious vacation time. These units can be placed right at locations that can’t house a whole convenience store. Point-of-need ice sales are now possible at beaches, marinas, and campgrounds!
These units operate on a cellular network, so they provide live updates on the status of the machine. During the 4th of July holiday, which is the Black Friday of ice sales, you can monitor inventory levels, and even remotely increase pricing. The ability to remotely monitor and set up machine alerts allows you to make sure that you aren’t missing out on any potential profit!
Placing ice vending machines in strategic locations allows for easy access to ice where customers otherwise may have been inconvenienced or may even have gone without.
How Does Ice Vending Work?
You might be asking yourself, how does the machine even work? After all, when you buy a soda, one drops through the mechanical systems of the machine and into the tray after you pay.
With Leer Ice Vending Machines, customers have to use a credit card, and here’s why. First, they swipe their card to unlock the vending machine door. Then, they remove their desired amount of ice – whether it’s a single bag or 10 bags. Once the door to the vending machine closes, it locks and the load cells on the bottom of the machine calculate the weight of the packaged ice inventory. The machine then calculators the change in weight before and after the transaction. The system then relays that info to the unit’s computer to calculate cost., and the customer’s card is charged for the total number of bags they removed.
There’s real opportunity for ice vending machines to be convenient, simple, and make real money!
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