First off, consider everything the seller tells you about profits to be untrue. It may or may not be true, but for our buying decision making, it is irrelevant. When looking at buying a vending machine route, the only thing you should be paying for is the value of the used vending machines. Yes, the accounts have some tangible value, but that should not be taken into consideration when making an offer. Why is this? First off, most sellers won’t be able to give you any proof of how much money they are making, so they want you to pay a premium for improvable profits. This is great for them, not so great for a buyer. Does this mean that they are lying? Of course not, but it’s like buying a used car without starting it up or believing what you read in an online dating ad. And I know you wouldn’t do either of those.
So what are you basing your buying offer on? Your buying price should be based only on the value of the used vending machines. Ask the seller to either give you a list of the locations, or to go on a servicing run to take a look at the machines and the locations. A lot of times, if people are selling a route, the route may be very neglected. Machines will be dirty and filled with bad candy. If the route has been severely neglected, some businesses may ask you to take out the machine. Do not underestimate the time and cost involved with changing out a bunch of vending machines. Even a small route of about 20 machines costs about $ 15.00 each to fill with fresh candy which is $ 300.00. This is a large expense and doesn’t even take into consideration, the hassle involved with trading out all the machines and cleaning them up.
Another thing to think about with buying established vending machine routes is the general quality of the machines and also how many brands are in the route.
The quality of the machines makes sense, but to worry about the different brands of machines seems inconsequential to some people. With a long term plan for building a successful vending machine business some thought should be put into interchangeability of parts. The most common part of the used vending machine that is going to break is the coin mechanisms. If you have 10 different brands with no interchangeable parts this can be a long term hassle. Of course, if you get the route at a good enough price, this becomes less of a problem, because the machines pay for themselves and you can upgrade and consolidate as you grow your business. Another thing about having several different brands of machines is the sheer amount of keys you will have. Even if you are well organized, having 50 different keys gets to be annoying and slows you down over the long haul.
Every now and then you can get the vending machine route deal of the century. These are routes that have been somewhat neglected for a bit and the owner for whatever reason doesn’t want to be in vending anymore. You can buy the route for the price of the machines alone and then when you start trading out the machines and cleaning up the route, you find the machines have a couple months profit in them and you end up getting the route for free. I have yet to find one of these, but it does happen.
If you take all this information into account and don’t allow yourself to get caught up in the unrealistic hype of the seller, then good deals can be found. Craig’s List is one of the best places to find vending routes and used vending machines. With some time and research you just might be able to find a gem and grow your business faster.