🎯 The business: machines in breakrooms, lobbies, gyms and laundromats, restocked weekly. The machine is the easy part. The real business is finding locations with foot traffic and keeping the owner happy enough not to swap you out.
Employees and customers at the host location, one snack and one drink at a time at $1.50 to $3. Hosts take 10 to 25 percent of sales, or nothing if the machine is a perk. A good location does $300 to $800 a month per machine; a bad one does $60 and costs you a trip.
| Used machines with card readers, three to five | $6,000 to $15,000 |
| Opening inventory, wholesale club membership | $800 |
| LLC, liability insurance, vending licenses | $700 |
| Hand truck, route software or spreadsheet, moving help | $500 |
| All-in | ≈ $8,000 to $17,000 |
Walk into fifty small businesses with 30 to 100 employees and no machine, and ask. Expect forty noes. Put card readers on every machine; cash-only machines earn half. Start with snacks and drinks that sell everywhere, then adjust by location. Visit weekly, on the same day, and clean the machine every time.
A $500-a-month machine has about 50 percent product cost and a 15 percent host commission, leaving $175 before your time and gas. Ten good machines is roughly $1,750 a month of profit for a day a week of restocking. Twenty-five machines is a modest full-time income, and the route can be sold as a package when you are done.
Many cities and some states license vending machines or charge a per-machine fee, and sales tax applies to the sales. Food safety rules cover expiration dates, and machines in schools have federal nutrition standards. A written location agreement protects you from being swapped out after you have proven the spot.
Bill jams, broken coils and a refund call at seven in the morning. A location that closes or sells. Theft and vandalism in unattended lobbies. And the route that sprawls across two counties; buy locations close together, not machines that happen to be for sale.