Anyone In The "Vending" Business?

Earlier I was looking in the business section of CL and came across a couple people selling candy dispensing vending machines. Usually when I come across things like this I don't pay much attention but for some reason this one got my attention and now I want to figure out if there is money within the vending business on a small scale.

sure ... buy/ rent a machine, find a place to put it, fill it up, cash the money. However I prefer vending machines with coke & beer.

I know a guy who runs a vending machine company in Scotland and he makes a reasonable living out of it running the business on his own. You need to be operating a lot of vending machines to make really good money though, the margins per machine are pretty small. Suppose, as with everything, it's all about scaling.

I know a guy that bought a bunch of machines to give his wife something to do. Lol and heck, that was one wise man cause it kept her busy for a better part of the week! But she made a good bit of money off it still does. But like stingow said, if you can get the machines and candy cheap by yourself it's well worth it. Finding highly profitable locations is pretty easy actually and getting business owners to allow you to put up your machines is easy too. You just gotta make it worth the owners while and he'll let you use the space without a problem

So in the end, do it for yourself and don't let some overpriced bs vending company take advantage of you!

I ran a small time vending business for about 2 years...I only had 5 double headed machines....the best place I had landed was a trucking company with about 80+ employees....I would make anywhere from $60-$150 every couple of weeks.

I did have an experience with a vending machine location service..they'll place your machine for you, but they find really terrible locations.....if I had to get back into it..I would try craigslist to find locations with business owners. It's not a bad deal...buy ur candy from sams club or costco and never fill up the machine all the way is the best tip I can give you, make it look like people are actually using it...ya know?

I had read one guy that had put an upside down Styrofoam cup and some googly eyes on his machine and his profit jumped by 50% although I never tried it...I would, I still got the machines.....the truck plant I had them in went down....and the other locations weren't worth it....in the long run though, it can make you some pretty good coin for not really doing much....and you can write off your candy and gas mileage off at the end of the year.

I did this for about 5 years with some fairly good success. Problem was it got to big for part time but not big enough to go full time. My favorite tactic was gorilla locating. Just find a large building with ALOT of people. Then just place the machine. Everyone will think someone else approved the placement and no asks you any questions.

wow..that' great tactic. lol.

My uncle actually invested 10,000 into gumball machines.

Lets just say that he had a huge yard sale with gumball machines for 50$ a pop lol.