Millions of Dollars, All out of the Coffee Machine

With a total investment of 2.6 million dollars, a German company established its headquarters in Brasov and then got the Romanians from all over the country to drink coffee, cappuccino, tea and hot chocolate from the coffee machines. The total value spent by them is about 2 million dollars per year.

The first machines have been installed in April 2001, and today there is a franchise system of about 1,200 machines belonging to the German company. They cover all the big cities and a series of the smaller ones. One of the keys of success is the franchise system itself. This means that the machines are the property of the German Company, but its partners have to find places for them and to take care of them. For the time being the company has 100 partners and the most important of them have to manage 60 machines.

Frequented Places Mean Profit

Placing the machine in a specific location becomes profitable when it sells 1,500 cups a month (in the important places), and 800 cups a month (in the less important places). "From the money-flow point of view, we are among the first two market operators in Romania, and moreover, we are the largest company which practices exclusively the vending services which involve hot drinks distribution with the help of their own cup-filling products", says Pavel Liszka, the general director of the Alois Dallmayr Automaten-Service SRL. In the first trimester of the year 2003, the company had already recovered the losses in the previous years. At an international level, Dalmayr owns 20,000 machines in eight countries and is one of the leaders in the hot drinks distribution with the help of the coffee machines, business called "vending". The market segment that the company tends to undertake is the big "vending", meaning locations where they commercialize at least 1,000 cups a month. "For the time being our focus is not on the "office coffee" area - small offices, having 10 to 20 employees, in which the monthly consummation are of 200-400 cups a month", says the director. We don’t avoid the public locations like train and bus stations, hospitals, judge’s offices, supermarkets or retail selling centers, at all.

Refusal

Big problems concerning acts of vandalism upon the coffee machines didn’t appear. Anyway, they have Casco insurance. "There is a problem with the refusal of the majority of the banks to exchange coins. Most of our partners from all the country have this problem. The commercial banks don’t accept exchanging the coins without any explanation or they collect taxes which make this service unacceptable", says Pavel Liszka.

Blocking

The shape, the quality of the Romanian coins and the material they are made of, have bad repercussions upon vending machines. The coins are made of Aluminum alloys which are easy to find and replace. A lot of people use this kind of "replacements" which block the coin analyzers. "We can only hope that due to the Romanian integration in the European Union, the National Bank of Romania will develop new coins and banknotes inspired by the ones of the other European countries", says Lizska.