Starting A Vending Machine Business

The idea of starting a vending machine business is good if you are looking to venture into some small business yet want to have more time for yourself. A vending machine provides snacks, beverages, lottery tickets, and other products to consumers without a cashier. Items sold via these machines vary by country and region.
What are the top 5 reasons to start a vending machine business? What are the 5 steps to starting a vending machine business?

Top 5 Reasons to Starting A Vending Machine Business

Here is your delicious A-list of the reasons to start a vending machine business.

1. Be Your Own Boss
The vending machine business is your own business, you can make as much money as you want, without asking for a raise. You are the one to decide and to be responsible to your income.

2. Low Entry Level
As a matter of fact, entrepreneurs don’t need degrees like lawyers and doctors do. They are credentialed by virtue of their track record. A vending machine business required a good cash flow management skills, a many other common sense ability that most people could invest into. However, keep in mind that just like any other ventures and investments, always get yourself educated and gather all related information and knowledge before commit to it, even though the entry level might be low.

3. Passive Income Streams
If you setup and run your vending machine business right, it could be one of your Multiple Streams of Passive Income, income that is being generated without your presence. The only thing you may need to do is to periodically visit the vending machine sites for maintenance, top up the stocks, and collect the money, of course! You could be earning extra income when the number of profitable vending machine increase, thus achieving your financial freedom and time freedom.

4. Freedom
A successful vending machine business could provide good passive business income, thus freeing you out of a lot of hassle and headache that other conventional businesses might give you, such as dealing with suppliers, customers complaints etc.

5. Scalability and Expandability
Setting up a vending machine is not like opening a new outlet, where the initial investment and efforts involved are higher. So, once your first machine may be giving you positive cash inflow every month, you can easily setup your second, third, fourth and many other new machines in new locations.
Let’s check out the steps to starting a vending machine business in the next section.

Steps to Starting A Vending Machine Business

1. Education
Get yourself as much information related to the vending machine business, the best place to start is from the free information available in the internet. You can browse through forums, suppliers websites, read business articles related to the vending machine business to have a better idea of what you are going to venture into. You may want to get ideas to questions such as “How to find profitable vending machine business opportunities easily”, “why the majority of people lose money in vending machine business”, or even check out the most common vending sales pitches you’ll encounter before you go on the field.

2. Finding Reputable Manufacturers and Distributors
It is important to find a reputable and trustworthy supplier for your vending machines. Even though the investment amount may not be high, you should always remember the golden rules of a penny saved is a penny earned. Check out the background of the supplier, their profile and any success or complaints reference, and the best source is from their current clients, and by surveying their machines that is in operation in your surrounding areas. Do your own due diligence even it may cost you some time, but you’ll be glad that the time invested now is worth for your future success. For example, you may want to ask a salesman to determine whether he knows what he’s talking about, or just trying to separate you from your money.

3. Location, Location, Location!
Are there places with foot traffic that could use vending machines? Choose locations that will generate the highest amount of profit. Obviously, high traffic locations will likely generate the most sales for your vending machines. Find the right locations for your vending machines, and you can be enjoying a low maintenance, low stress work schedule.

4. Choose Your Merchandise
Depending on the location of your vending machine, you may decide what are the best merchandise to put into. Newspapers, bulk candy, drinks, snacks, frozen foods, prepaid phone cards, DVD, books, and even many other special vending machines such as the Condom machine in Italy, Fishing-bait machine in Spain, Instant-noodles vending machine in Tokyo, Rice vending machines in Japan and Buddhist prayer bead-roll vending machine at Zenkō-ji, Nagano, Japan.
However, the most commonly seen vending machines are candy,drinks, and snacks machine.

5. Setting Up The Vending Machine and The Administrative Works
As stated above, once you setup the vending machine, you may need to carry out the periodic visit to your business site for maintenance and collection purpose. If this is a simple part-time business that you are running from home, try to keep your administrative requirements to a minimum.
In summary, starting a vending machine business is not a “get rich quick” business. It’s a real business, and just like any real business, it takes some time and some work to get rewards. Many people will learned by making a lot of mistakes, or trial and error. Those early mistakes and the lack of knowledge may almost wiped them out a couple of times. However, if they can survived, learned and thrived, they will become successful in starting a vending machine business.