In the lobby at work we have a Coke machine. Prefering Diet Pepsi I asked the guy filling it if there was any chance of sneaking it in and he said, “Sure, no problem” and he did! So right there along side the giant lit-up Coke logo there’s a little Diet Pepsi button!
Is this really allowed? I always assumed vending companies never bought the soda machines themselves because a) they’re too expensive and b) the soda companies use them as advertising. Somehow I feel this has to be a violation of some kind of contract and/or license agreement.
It depends on who owns the machine and who is filling it up.
If it’s a Coke-owned machine, being maintained by Coke, forget about it.
If it’s a Coke-owned machine, being maitained by someone else, if Coke finds out there are non-Coke products in it, they’ll probably threaten to pull the machine if the products aren’t removed.
If it’s not owned by Coke, you can have anything you want put in it, as long as the guy loading it has what you want.
Since the guy had Diet Pepsi, it’s probably pretty safe to say he’s not a Coke guy. The machine is probably owned by the vending company.
You can actually buy vending machines at places like Sam’s or Costcos. Since you would then own them, you can put anything you want in them (Beer, anyone? ) :).
Many of the private vending machine operators do this, and, depending how hard they work, can make a lot of money doing this.
I ran a Coke machine for a while (it was owned by the apartment complex my mother was the assistant manager at, but the guy who was supposed to run it thought it was too much trouble). I put basically anything that was on sale in it - I even had one slot that I put a big question mark on which I put assorted sodas in. It was a lot of fun, and I made a lot of money - over $200 a week profit during the summer.