Francis House Charity Project

Manco Automatics is very excited to announce about our ongoing project with Francis House Children’s Hospice and Ashton on Mersey school.

It is an honour to work with such an amazing charity and to make a real difference to people’s lives across the Greater Manchester region.

Francis House provides high levels of clinical care in a home from home environment, supporting the families of children, teenagers and young adults with life-limiting or life-threatening conditions. All services are given completely free of charge and include respite care, home care, sibling support, end of life care, emotional and bereavement support.

Kate Puć who is the fundraising officer for Francis House said “I was absolutely delighted to hear from Ashton on Mersey Sixth Form that Francis House had been chosen to be their charity to support during their week of fundraising in school. Every day this week I have been in to talk to the different year groups in assembly and Freya and Hannah from the sixth form have been informing the school of next week’s fundraising activities. I thank the sixth form for all their fundraising ideas, their hard work and most of all their enthusiasm to raise funds for their local children’s hospice.”

One of their activities is a good old-fashion game of pool! Not only is it a great way for the students to relax and have fun during break times, but as the pool table is on a profit share arrangement with us, we will be donating all of our proceeds during the 16th March week commencing to Francis House to help them reach their target of £3,500, so that they can continue the special work and care provided there for all the children and their families.

13th March 2020 blog, Pool table hire Comments Off on Francis House Charity Project

Ways music can boost productivity at work

Have you ever considered installing a jukebox in your workplace? Music can have a big impact on productivity (for the better) and can help to keep employees more motivated and less bored over the course of a day.

In 2019, research in the journal Economics and Management argued that “music makes our daily life more beautiful”.

“Music is one of the most effective methods of reducing anxiety, relaxing the body and mind, and positively affecting memory,” the author wrote. “Music can also improve productivity and quality of work.”

But what type of music should you have on your workplace jukebox? The study found several options that have proved beneficial in research in the past:

• Individuals tend to work faster when listening to music they enjoy.
• Individuals focus more when listening to music with sounds from nature within it.
• People are more productive with music they don’t focus on directly.
• Instrumental music removes the risk of employees being distracted by lyrics.
• Different tempos can have different effects, with medium tempos reducing stress.

The joy of a jukebox is that you have good control over what to play – both at management level and by opening up the playlist to employees too.

How to control workplace music with a jukebox

Simply putting a radio in the workplace gives you very little control over the songs that are played, and commercial radio stations can be very distracting with adverts, news bulletins and traffic updates.

A workplace jukebox gives you direct control. You can compile your own playlists of only the songs you think are appropriate to boost productivity among your employees.

You can restrict song selections to certain categories – no unexpected drum and bass blasting across the office – but still benefit from regular updates of the latest chart songs via the jukebox’s network connection.

And by giving your employees a sense of agency over the songs they hear, you can help to keep them motivated and happy, even while generating an additional revenue stream if you ask them to pay a small amount for each song they select.

Finally, there can be positive reputational impacts too, for example if you choose to donate your takings from the jukebox to charity or spend them on something nice for your workforce.

If you’d like to learn more about how to put a jukebox in your workplace or office, give Manco Automatics a call today on 0161 870 7777 and we’ll be happy to talk you through the options available to you.

12th March 2020 blog, juke box hire Comments Off on Ways music can boost productivity at work

What does the new £20 note mean for the gaming machine industry?

The polymer £20 note is now officially in circulation, which means any of your future punters could walk in with one in their pocket – so are your gaming machines ready to accept them?

It’s been a challenging few years for the gaming machine industry and for manufacturers of coin-operated machines in general, such as parking meters and vending machines too.

We’ve had polymer £5 and £10 notes, the new 12-sided £1 coin and now the new polymer £20 note, all of which could be incompatible with older coin-operated machines.

Hopefully all long-term customers of Manco have now had their fruit machines, pool tables and jukeboxes updated for full compatibility.

But if you have older fruit machines from other suppliers or mechanically operated ‘push to vend’ pub pool tables, you might still be in a pickle.

Here we’ll look again at some of the options to make sure your gaming machines are compatible with the new polymer £20 note, as well as the plastic £5 and £10, and the new £1 coin.

New coin/note slots

The hardware fix is to install a new coin slot or note feeder, which is designed to work with the new shape of the £1 coin and the materials used in polymer banknotes.

In many cases this can be done quite easily, but there’s always a surge in demand immediately after a new coin or note launches, so contact Manco as soon as possible if you’re having problems accepting the new £20 polymer note.

Updated software

Software updates can restore compatibility in modern coin slots and note readers, which are designed to be updated in this way when necessary.

Even if you had a new note reader installed into your gaming machines when the polymer £5 and £10 notes were released, you might need a quick update to be able to accept the plastic £20 note, so make sure you check this or call out an engineer to be certain.

New gaming machines

Unfortunately, some old gaming machines just can’t be economically updated – either with a new hardware note reader or via a software update – to accept the new £20 note.

It can be a wrench letting go of an old favourite fruit machine, especially if it’s been a nice little earner for your establishment, but generally speaking you’re likely to make more with a modern fruit machine or quiz machine that can take £20 notes.

 

Whether you’re looking to replace old gaming machines or you’d like to add a new fruit machine, quiz machine, pool table or jukebox to your premises with complete compatibility, contact Manco Automatics today by calling 0161 870 7777 or emailing us info@mancoautomatics.com and we can let you know your options.

11th March 2020 blog, fruit machine hire, fruit machine maintenance, game machine hire, juke box hire, Pool table hire, pub pool table hire, quiz machines Comments Off on What does the new £20 note mean for the gaming machine industry?

How to pull in a profit with pull tab tickets

We’re all familiar with pub pool tables, fruit machines and jukeboxes, but we sometimes find customers who are not so familiar with pull tab ticket machines and how they make a profit.

The concept behind a pull tab ticket machine is simple enough – for a price of 25p, 50p or £1, the player gets an instant-win ticket similar to a lottery scratch card.

Each game has its own prize levels, pay-out percentage and ticket price. For example, players can see information at a glance like “every 1 in 6 tickets is a winner”.

How to calculate pull tab ticket profits

A full set of tickets typically contains around 3,000 and sticks to the stated prize levels and win percentages.

Therefore, you know exactly how much income the game will generate – simply by multiplying the ticket price by the number of tickets in each set.

You can also see at a glance the total prize pay-out per set, either by referring to the supplier’s information for that set, or just by adding up the individual prizes for that game.

Subtract the total prizes from the total ticket revenue and you have an instant measure of how much profit you will make once you sell the full set of tickets.

Which pull tab tickets make the most profit?

Surprisingly, some of the largest operator profits come from pull tab tickets with the best win percentages – and not always the highest ticket price.

Classic Jackpot Cherry Bell is a great example of this. Its win ratio is 1 in 3.96 tickets, which means more than a quarter of the tickets in each set are winners.

Each ticket costs 50p and prizes range from 720 tickets that win 50p back, right up to four jackpot prizes of £100 each.

Total revenue from the 3,623-card set is £1,811.50 and the total prize fund is £1,292.00, leaving a healthy profit of £519.50.

What else affects pull tab profits?

It’s not just about the profit per set of pull tab tickets. If you can sell more than one set, you can multiply those profits several times over.

Popp-Opens lottery tickets include a Coronation St set that’s popular for obvious reasons among Manchester pull tab ticket machines.

The set contains 2,800 cards at 25p each, raising revenues of £700.00 against prize pay-outs of £405.00 for a net £295.00 profit per set.

Because each set is relatively small and the title is a real attention-grabber, it’s possible to sell through more sets faster, making bigger profits over the same period of time.

 

We supply Elite Pull Tab machines at simply the best prices around. Please call us on 0161 870 7777 for more information and see how we can offer you a new way of providing Pull Tabs to your customers.

3rd March 2020 Pull tab machine Comments Off on How to pull in a profit with pull tab tickets
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