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Comment by cmos | Hacker News Reader

If you look at the energy costs of a vending machine it's actually cheaper in some cases to have an efficient fridge with soda for free. (at least back in the day) The vending machine company often doesn't pay for power, so they have no incentive to cool the soda efficiently.

A nice 'interim' way of making a change would be to have a $.25 'donation' for each soda which eventually goes to some animal shelter, which would then be a tax writeoff.

CFO's will suck the lifeblook out of a company if nobody stops them. That is their job. Shame on the others for letting the CFO mess with their culture.

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The big cost here is likely to be labor. When you give away free sodas you have to pay someone to keep sodas in stock. When you sell sodas you can even sell a contract to a 3rd party to restock the machines. This is why free sodas are fairly rare, because soda machines are a money maker for the company and involve fewer employees on the balance sheet, whereas free sodas rack up all of the costs of an employee (salary, taxes, benefits, etc.)

On the whole it's probably a silly tradeoff, since the benefits to employee retention of free sodas almost certainly far outweigh the comparatively minor costs, but if you just look at the balance sheet it can be awfully tempting to get rid of.

true - at my old company we insourced it. One couple choose to maintain a small store with soda's and candy and fruit from a warehouse store. It made enough to keep interest in it maintained, and kept the money stream in the company.

Then people feel less bad about paying as they know it's not going to some vending machine company, and they can also request healthier snacks.

At my present company the free sodas (and beers, on Friday) are simply delivered in pallets and teams take a week at a time to be responsible for the fridges. Peer pressure is enough to make this work. There was the time Luke's team didn't restock the beer fridge and to this day he's known as Luke Warm...

When I worked at Pepsi, they paid 'rent' for keeping a vending machine somewhere. The rent was based on location, power usage, etc.

Random question, but did Pepsi offer any vending machines that had Coke products?

I imagine at least a few Pepsi employees might like some of the Coke brands (e.g. Dr. Pepper).

Dr. Pepper isn't a Coke brand, in many markets Pepsi has distribution rights for Dr. Pepper. So in those markets, they offer those products.

Pepsi wouldn't be caught dead selling Coke products in their machines. Some machines have both, but those are offered by third parties (Canteen/Vending companies) that buy in bulk from Pepsi & Coke and resell.

Hmm, I thought Dr. Pepper was a Coke property.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Pepper

Wiki seems to indicate that Coke manufactures it, but only does so in Europe.

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