What do you stock your machine with?

[DanV]

My Cavalier 64 has Coke (8 oz bottles) 2 rows , Diet Dew (16.9 oz plastic), Orange Crush 12 oz bottles, IBC, Grape Crush 12 oz bottles , Faygo 8 oz glass Strawberry (found at odd lots), and  Florida's Natural Orange juice in cans (sam's club).

A few times I will throw in an oddball like 9 oz bottled Chocolate Soldier (Dollar general 6 pack is $2)- very good better than YaHoo. I am too cheap to buy bottled H2O.

Since we have another baby on the way, a friend joked that we could put the bottles of milk/formula in my Vendo, so that when we need to feed the baby, I'd just drop in a dime and down would drop a chilled bottle for the little one!'>

[halehouse]

Chocolate Soldier at Dollar General, huh?  Hmmmm, I will have to check there.  I think there is a Dollar General not too far away.

[DanV]

Solder is my quick breakfast drink

[dr galaga]

Quote (Markito @ Feb. 04 2005,8:27)

Does the stiffness of the plastic bottles really matter?

I tried Ice Mountain at first.  The flimsy bottle basically crushed it's way out and and never released the vending solenoid.

[joesquid]

Right now I have one functioning can machine (Cavalier C6-390-228).  I stock it with coke, diet caffeine free dr. pepper (wife), sunkist, A&W rootbeer, sprite, and.....(this is how much I love my wife).......mountain dew.  I have the machine set for .25 and let all the neighborhood kids buy sodas from the machine.  So far, after 2 years of doing this, I've only had two kids attempt to "cheat" me by putting slugs in the machine.  They're already half the price of any other machine in town, but still they gotta try cheating the system...amazing.  Coin rejector works beautifully I might add.

When the word started getting around about "Mr. Johnson's coke machine" I put the word out to all the neighborhood kids that I only had two rules concerning the coke machine:
1.  If the garage door is up, feel free to go right in and get a drink.
2.  If anything else in my garage is touched, the door comes down and stays down permanently.

So far I've been fortunate, nothing messed with in the garage.  Of course they're dying to see me finish the other machines (they loved my restored Vendo 144E; one enterprising 10 year old was attempting to save enough to buy it....if only more kids would show that kind of drive) but, unfortuntely, duty calls me to Maine, so will be moving from sunny Pensacola to Maine next month.  Guess I won't have to worry about the compressor running too much up there!!

joesquid,
That's really neat. We should all have more neighbors like that.

[DanV]

Mountain Dew is THE drink of teenagers everywhere (AT LEAST IN SOUTHERN OHIO). I could probably put code red, live wire, regular dew, diet , and pitch black in my machine and it would sell out!

[glassbottlesrule]

Had a Vendo 154 in my garage last summer.  I had kids knocking on the door with quarters in hand to buy pops.  They couldn't believe that coke came in glass bottles.  Usually I keep coke, diet coke, sprite,dr pepper, boylan's creamy red birch beer, IBC root beer, Orange crush, Grape crush, Mt. Dew and Cheerwine in Glass.  In plastic Pepsi 16.9's and Dasani water,  That's why I like the big slant shelfs.  I just can't get enough variety with a vendo 63.  BTW I went to Dollar General this evening and loaded up and Chocolate SoliderI havent had it in probably 20 years:)

To refill I dispense the soda poip into a large measuring pitcher and then use a funnel to get it into the bottles. Its not that difficult once you get the hang of it and if you have others that can help all the better. Especially if you have kids you can use them as cheap labor. then you get a bottle capper and blank bottle caps and your all set. Of course you need to clean the bottles beforehand