Although vending can be a nice home business for highly motivated people, it’s not all roses and sunshine and it’s not a good fit for everyone. The best thing you can do to increase your odds of success in this business is to keep your goals and expectations realistic.
Just to keep it real and dispel some of the myths surrounding vending, here are some of the ugly truths about vending:
Expect to have to replace about 5% of your locations each year. Even once your route is established, the locating never stops. A lot of people think that once you build up a route, the locating stops. To a certain extent, with aging routes do become more stable, but the locating never ends.
Your machines will get broken, your money will get stolen and your product will get ripped off. Thankfully this isn’t an everyday occurrence, but it happens regularly enough to ruin your faith in humanity. I’ve found that when a machine is broken at a location, it will usually happen again. I replace the machine once and then walk away if it happens for a second time. All of this theft and vandalism ends up costing you money, so you need to make allowances for it in your budget.
The vending machine business is a very competitive business. Often when you’re locating, you see locations that are already saturated with machines. All this competition makes it hard to find profitable locations. Ultimately if you expect to outlast and outperform your competition, then you will need to work twice as hard as your competition.
If you’re hoping to avoid a back injury, keep in mind that a vending machine can weigh over 50 lbs. when fully loaded with a cast iron stand. It’s not easy to man handle these into a car. Of course they can be disassembled for moving, but this takes time and energy and is a big hassle.
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