Revere’s vending machines stock several different energy drinks, including different flavors of Pepsi’s Kickstart and one flavor of Coca-Cola’s Monster Energy.

Revere offers five flavors of Kickstart: Pineapple Orange Mango, Fruit Punch, Midnight Grape, Orange Citrus and Black Cherry. Energizing Citrus sells the fastest, followed by Fruit Punch and Original Dew.

Aaron Gnap, Revere’s food service director, was the first to decide to order the Kickstarts to stock the vending machines.

“When I started looking into why we only carried Coke products, it became apparent we were not utilizing any offers from Pepsi. Pepsi offered us better deals, and Kickstart is available in schools,” Gnap said.

Monster Energy, which Revere also stocks in the vending machines, is also available to schools. The school only carries one flavor, Zero Ultra, but it is one of the most popular items in the vending machines, along with beef jerky, kettle chips and chocolate milk. There are other Monster flavors available in the cafeteria refrigerators, including Ultra Paradise, Ultra Fiesta, Ultra Rosa, as well as Zero Ultra.

“The cost [of Monster] is a lot greater than the cost of Kickstart. That’s why we only carry one flavor, because of the price we have to charge,” Gnap said.

The responsibility of ordering the items in the vending machine, including the kickstarts, falls on the head chef Ricardo Alaimo.

“[I order] roughly five cases of each flavor each week, and we restock each day. The amount I order varies because of special promotions through Pepsi and which flavors are in stock,” Alaimo said.

The shipments arrive every Monday, where part-time employee Sherry Gorcz stocks the vending machines daily. Sometimes, Gnap stocks the machines when Gorcz is performing other duties.

“The vending machines are stocked every day, although sometimes we sell out of certain items, in which case they will not be available until we get more stock in,” Gorcz said.

Gorcz stocks vending machines throughout the district, five machines at RMS and six at RHS.

“I also stock three additional machines, located at the Administration building, Richfield Elementary, Bath Elementary, and Revere Middle School. These are not stocked daily but rather on a roughly weekly basis, and they are all drink machines,” Gorcz said.

Each slot holds about 12 items, with Kickstarts stocked in seven slots, a machine can hold nearly 84 Kickstarts.

“I can stack 13 or 14 in there, but they will sometimes jam up if you stack too many, and so I try to stick to 12. Kickstarts are actually my favorite thing to stock though, because they are the least likely items to jam for some reason,” Gorcz said.

Gorcz changes the displays in front of the drink vending machines and prefers to keep the display items, even when an item is sold out.

“I have actually wondered if the students would prefer if I just remove it from the display instead, and I would like to hear feedback on that. The reason I leave them there is because I don’t want the students to think the item is no longer going to be available, but instead can have hope that it will be back soon,” Gorcz said.

The six vending machines in the high school cafeteria are available to use throughout the day, except for the leftmost machine, which only opens after 3:00pm.

“The leftmost vending machine is turned off until 3:00 due to the fact that some of the drinks in there contain sugar, and the school is not allowed to make these available during the school day,” Gorcz said.

Gorcz also stocks the snack vending machine, located to the right of the drink vending machines in the high school‘s cafeteria. Lately, she has stocked new snack items that were previously unavailable at the high school.

“I also sometimes bring over a few items from the RMS kitchen that we do not get at the RHS kitchen, because I think they will be things that the high school students will enjoy. That is why we sometimes have Fruit By The Foot and other items, and why we have added Scooby Snacks and the traditional Chex Mix to the snack machine,” Gorcz said.

Gorcz enjoys her job stocking the vending machines throughout the district.

“I find it interesting which items the students enjoy the most and therefore run out the most quickly. I think it’s great that we have these machines available for student use, because sometimes you just want a drink or a snack, and the cafeteria is only open for a limited time during the day,” Gorcz said.