The quick and easy answer is, ‘Yes, of course it’s possible to make money in vending’. But I think a lot of people just starting out in vending or hoping to get started in vending have unreasonable expectations. Vending is like any other small business. Yes, you can be your own boss and make your own hours, but it is by no means easy or a get rich quick plan.

You either need to have a lot of time or a lot of money to successfully start a vending route. The lot of time route involves buying used machines, reinvesting the profits and slowly growing your route over several years. The lot of money route involves investing a huge amount of startup capital in an already established route or buying a lot of machines and starting from scratch.

The national monthly average of a single head machine is only $7, making a double head machine’s gross take a whopping $14. Once you take into consideration product costs, gas, and general business expenses you can see that your take home amount will only be about $10. But the thing about vending is its scalability, it’s all about numbers. If you have 500 machines x $10 this is now $5,000. Now that’s more like it!

But most people fail to take into account the huge number of machines needed and the cash needed to get started. Yes, you can get used vending machines for as cheap as $50 – $100 a piece, but how many people first starting out have $50,000 to invest in just machines alone. That’s why it takes so long to build a vending route and why most people never make it to the point where they can make a decent amount of money. So they wash out of the business thinking that obviously vending is a scam, rather than ever consider that perhaps they didn’t have a clear picture of what the vending machine business actually takes to be successful.