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The Big Move

Hello all, I have been on the forum for almost 3 years now. I have been in vending almost 4 years. I recently just made big life changing move. My girl friend and I just moved from Nebraska all way to gulf coast of Mississippi. I sold my vending business in Nebraska and extra machines quite my job and bought a moving truck and packed up. We are staying with family till we find a place and get on our feet and get know the area. It has been a journey let me tell you but we are both looki

Beach Bum Vending

Beach Bum Vending

Let it Ride!

I have posted about this before but after yesterday I feel inclined to resurrect the topic in this blog. When a business tells you they are about to close to you remove your machine or let it ride in hopes of securing location with new tenants. Yesterday I was driving down the road and seen a car sitting in the parking lot and front door of the biz proped open. It was a vietnamese restaurant that was placed about 2 years ago. After six months the place called and said they were shutting down

mainor5251

mainor5251

Serial Entrepreneur

Having owned my own business before and now building another I absolutely without a doubt know that it's the only thing thats makes me happy professionally over working for someone else. I love business, looking back I wish had went to school for it. The one thing that I enjoy most about the vending biz is the networking with other business owners and talking about ideas. Besides vending I have had a few other interest but nothing that is currently realistic without additional income to fund

mainor5251

mainor5251

Amusement Vending When the Time is Right

I've been wanting to add some cranes along with a few other kind of machines to my route for a while now. Thought yesterday was gonna be the beginning of that with 2 cranes that I was suppose to pick up in Jacksonville. Everything that could hinder this pick up seemed like it happened yesterday. It was gonna be real tight with buying machines, locks, plush, trailer rental and one crane needed new graphics. I have reservations about amusement vending only because lack of knowledge and experie

mainor5251

mainor5251

Future Prep

About 8 years ago I had a credit score of 750, 1 failed business in NC and 8 years later its now around 575. We currently rent and have been talking about buying for years now but have never took the time to get credit straightened out so it would be possible. Looking ahead now is the time. Got about a year left at full time job before I want to be vending full time. Want to be able to buy a house before I leave the state so I have enrolled with sky blue credit repair, who is supposed to be

mainor5251

mainor5251

Reality Check! First day Self Locating

So I have a few machines now and feel like I was finally ready to start getting them placed! I have a 5 way beaver rack, and 10 beaver globes that can be used as singles or doubles. I`m hoping for mostly doubles, but right now i`ll take anything. I stopped at 5 or 7 places today, (finally getting over my nerves!) and found all the managers seemed to be out. I was out between 12 and and 3 and focused on non-restaraunts until after 2. i avoided the lunch rush but then none of the managers were

Cloudedjourney

Cloudedjourney

MIA Soldier

About 2 1/2 years ago I placed a double A&A PN95 in a small bar in the town I live in, always did just mediocre. After about a year the bar closed and I never got a call to pick up the machine so I figured it was another lost soldier. Hadn't given it another thought up until about 8 months ago when the place was bought by someone who had owned a restaurant in this same town, I happened to have had a triple there. Well that restaurant had shut down about 10 months ago and I was able to pull t

mainor5251

mainor5251

Getting the Most out of Every Location

Got some different kind of machines I need to try and get onto some of my better locations to maximize revenues. Gotta get funds up to help get in the crane business. Still considering attaching some sort of narrow sign boards to candy/gumball machine stands and sell space to non competing businesses. Would mainly utilize charity stops like hair/nail salons, automotive repair shops, car dealerships, laundry mats, bingo halls, etc. I figure it might even help with locating, you could offer ne

mainor5251

mainor5251

Bought my First bulk Candy Machines!

It's a 5 way rack made by Beaver with 2 bigger machines for toys in the back, and 3 candy machines in the front. It's got a little rust around the edges of the back machines but the 3 candy ones in the front are in perfect condition. She gave me 5 keys, plus the coin key for the back machine, but 2 of the keys work on one of the small candy machines, and one of them doesn't have a key that works. I was so excited to make the deal i didn't test out all the keys, dumb move on my part. I'm goin

Cloudedjourney

Cloudedjourney

Route pruchase and future growth.

Well I just bought another route last week added 11 stops to my route got a pretty good deal for 12 locations and also 5 extra machines parts and a nice electric coin counter. I gave the guy a lowball offer he countered and met in the middle way lower then he wanted for the route. I told him you only have documentation for a pull every 2-4 months and if you put that average out you not making much. Unless you have deposit records This is the amont I will pay see you later. Must of needed ca

BigRedvender

BigRedvender

Going Forward

As of late I have really been giving a hard look at my route and eventually decided to scale back a tad do to shortage of time and a new baby on the way. I work at a county jail as a detention officer. I have been on midnight shift up until tomorrow. When you work 12hrs (6pm-6am) you really don't need to be running the roads trying to service when you can barely keep you eyes open for the trip home. So I was losing a whole day every time I worked off while attempting to get back to a normal

mainor5251

mainor5251

Back

Quick introduction - I live in the Boston area and have about 30 locations, mostly with 2-head Beavers. I'm about 50% toys, 40% gum balls, and 10% candy. I started this summer so I'm still pretty new although I have a few service cycles under my belt. Love it so far with the only issue being balancing my full time job, wife and kids, and bulk vending! My back has been sore lately so I'm shopping for a cart to bring servicing supplies to the locations. I have several locs close together so

Dmkraz

Dmkraz

Well Picking up more machines Tomorrow

Well another member on the board here is moving and had a bunch of machines for sale. I will pick them up tomorrow after my car club meeting. I am getting at ruff count around 45 1" heads Mostly Oak and NW with a couple AA and eagles thown in for good mesure. Along with various stands and parts, double, and triple plates. All will need a good cleaning some will need to get refinished new locks. I will probably need to order some gumball wheels for a few f them. I have some for the ealge

BigRedvender

BigRedvender

My Operation

Heres a look at my small operation that includes home office, 8x10 storage shed for storing machines and parts, old barn used to store machines that need to be refurbed and my service trailer. [attachment=2452:50825dec3bc2e.zip]

mainor5251

mainor5251

Smarties Crane & Scholarship Program Oppurtunity

S&B Candy & Toy Co. has teamed up with the Smarties Candy Co. to create the Smarties Scholarship Program. S&B developed the Smarties Crane, which is full of Smarties candy. Along with the machine is the Smarties Scholarship Program, which will give $15,000 away this year in scholarship money to the lucky winner. In order to win the money kids must continue to return to the machines in order to try and get a code, which they will stratch off and enter in on the Smartiesland.com web

SBCTYT

SBCTYT

Well I made it into another month of vending.

Well I made it into another month One more month and I will hit the 6 month mark. I did my Route 1st time for Fremont and Blair. I also had some added stops in Omaha. I ended up with 100.00 clear after last month after candy. This month I ended up with 275 after Candy Gas and a couple of lunches. The route was good Fremont Did good to great on 4 stops ok on 2 and 2 sucked. Will probaby swap a couple of machines around and see what happens. Maybe some candy changes and lables on a coupl

BigRedvender

BigRedvender

150 heads: $1200. Baptism by fire.

Well I bit the bullet and dove in head first. After doing enough reading and looking around, I felt comfortable enough to go ahead and make a purchase. Ended up buying 50 used vendstars for $1200. Not in brand new condition or anything, but they will do for now. I work full time in the army, so this will most likely just be a weekend hobby. I plan on attempting to get 40 of the machines located in decent places as my first priority. After that, from the revenue the machines are making I will rea

Nategeli

Nategeli

Starting out

I enjoy writing, always have, As such, I have decided to document my journey of getting involved in bulk vending. I was originally introduced to the concept of candy vending sort of off-handedly. I was reading a book called "the millionaire fastlane" (excellent book, which I would highly recommend), and bulk candy vending was mentioned as an example of a semi passive income. I thought it was laughable at first, but was quite intrigued by it. I then proceeded to buy every ebook on the topic of

Nategeli

Nategeli

Homemade Claw Machine Pt. 2

One thing i noticed when connecting the arcade controls, the ground is common but each 5v line coming to the board....but to make the inputs go high,wwhen the button is pressed how do i pull the voltage up on those lines? I couldnt figure it out, so i rewired it so that the pins on the shift register are pulled high, and then when the button is pressed they are pulled low. this made sense, i figured i must be missinng something... Well I got the arcade stick , button and coin mech connected t

dogcow

dogcow

Homemade Claw Machine Pt. 1

At this point I've amassed a pretty large collection of old cranes. Mostly United Textiles and Smart cranes. I'm getting pretty frustrated by the limitations of the older cranes so I decided to try and hack together my own crane motherboard. Ideally this would allow me to drop in to any dc driven crane and get it running. Some of the goals would be adding percentaging features, bill acceptance & credit accumulation (for the REALLY old cranes that can only play for 25c), and easy auditing

dogcow

dogcow

Working with Excel

I have just recently got the wife a new laptop and also purchased MS office home and student edition. I was playing around setting up some spreadsheets moving some from the Open Office program I was using to excel. In the process I separated out the two areas I have been running now into their own routes. Moved Omaha Council Bluffs into one sheet and Fremont, Blair into another. I will probably build a new master sheet for quarterly reports on what my stops do, but for now I just made it work

BigRedvender

BigRedvender

Big Reds Rambling

Well The I chatted with the guy he does in person locating apperantly has around 20 locations set up in the Omaha area. 40 bucks a spot and he will do in bundles of 10. I might give it a try end of October. I am debating between that and going with First Choice again for 4-6 locations this next month. Will probably run the route again the 28-1st of Oct. Looking to see how it dose. The 8 spots I just got in fremont will have about 6-7 weeks on it and the rest will have about 5 when I run it. I

BigRedvender

BigRedvender

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