Franchisee: Sean Taylor   Area : Norfolk

“This is a very simple cash business that relies on trust. The businesses we deliver to love our service because we keep their employees on site, and they prefer that than seeing their employees wander off for mid-morning and afternoon snacks."

Sean Cleveland - Sales director

Honesty is the Best Policy for Snack-in-the-Box Franchisees

Snack-in-the-Box began delivering top branded snacks to the workplace almost 20 years ago. While the business has grown into a 80 strong franchised outfit, the very same principles that made its Vending Boxes profitable back in 1997 continue to do
so today!

With an 'honesty' box there is no personal contact with a vendor at the time of purchase. Nor is there a mechanical vending process in place. Customers are relied upon to leave the correct change in return for the tempting snacks on offer.

Snack-in-the-Box Sales Director, Sean Cleveland, explains:

“Many people ask me whether customers actually do put the money in the box. They seem surprised that an honesty system works in this day and age. But it is important for them to understand that in building a successful business, we also introduced many controls that reduce theft from our franchisees.”

“Most customers are decent. They are honest enough to leave the exact amount in a fair exchange for the snacks they take away. In reality, newsagents and food retailers suffer far greater losses than our franchisees. We even have lots of ex-newsagents and shop owners within our network who can testify to that!”

““We also have franchisees that are well into their fourth term. These people have been successfully trading for more than 12 years and can testify our Vending Box model works”

Snack-in-the-box franchisees deliver boxes packed full of popular snacks. It caters to small to medium sized businesses of less than 20 employees. They return a week later with a fresh packed box and take away that week's cash takings. There are no contracts or cost to the work-place – the staff only pay for the snacks they eat!

Sean Cleveland goes on to explain:

“This is a very simple cash business that relies on trust. The businesses we deliver to love our service because we keep their employees on site. They prefer that than seeing their employees wander off for mid-morning and afternoon snacks. Those same employees love our service because we make it convenient for them to buy the best chocolate, confectionery and crisps. And because they love the service we provide, they want it to work. In the smaller work place if someone abuses the system generally everyone knows who it is. So the collective honesty of the group often prevails. They tend to govern any 'would be' light fingered abusers as the rest of the staff don’t want to lose the service. In the smaller work place it really works. Put very simply, we are vending from a self-service Box.”

Professional canvassers from Snack-in-the-Box help franchisees source their initial customer base. But it is the rapport that is then built up between those franchisees and their customers that ensures each site remains profitable.

Norfolk Franchisee, Sean Taylor (who has over 200 Vending Box Customers), explains:

“I love meeting my customers, spending time chatting with them and knowing they appreciate seeing me every week. They know that this is my business, and that if they were stealing from my boxes they would be taking money from me, not from some huge corporation. That's the honesty box policy, and it works. And let's face it, Mars wouldn't put their name to something that doesn't work either!”

Every year, Snack-in-the-Box donates a significant sum to help the NSPCC, Cancer Research and other charitable organisations. This contribution is on the ‘box’ itself. Franchisees acknowledge that, altruism aside, this also serves as a control to keep customer's morals in check.

A total of over 8,000 business benefit from our vending box service each week!