T he A
u t o m a t ic
A ge
13
has increased many times and made many tremendous fortunes,
but they did it by giving quality merchandise in attractive pack
ages. Let us put out attractive vending machines and vend quality
merchandise and we will see fortunes made in this business. While
we are talking so much about the health departments let us make
the prediction that if the boards of health get hold of some of the
ball gum that is being vended these days they will prohibit the sale
of it. W e have got ball gum out of machines that was so rank that
it should never be placed in the mouth of a child.
We Ought to Have
Reliable Statistics
of the vending machine industry. With
everybody, figures are nothing more than a guess. For instance
in reading Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent we ran across the
following squib:
A million dollars in pennies is fed into vending machines
each day by the American public. Each machine registers
profits o f $3 to $5 a month.
W e do not know where they got these figures. If they include
the slot machines these figures are away too low. If they include
vending machines only they are about in line.
W e have been asked several times how many machines there
were in the United States. If there are one to each thousand
people there is something like 120,000. I f there is one machine
to every 500 there are around 240,000 vending machines. W e
think this is about right, although on almost every corner of any
consequence in the country there is at least one peanut, one ball
gum, and one match machine, not to mention a multiplicity of ma
chines that are found throughout the country including penny
scales. W e would like to have somebody make a better guess, or
suggest some practical way to get authentic figures.
An Empty Machine
Does Harm
to the industry as a whole. All good operators
realize this and many of them, when they see a competitor’s ma
chine empty, will fill it up. Lots of operators co-operate in this
way. Once in a great while there is a legitimate excuse for a
machine being empty because it has been abnormally played, but
© International Arcade Museum
http://www.arcade-museum.com/