lollipop boxes

[mojosop]

Nave an opportunity to purchase a 340 stop lollipop box route for 66,000. Route brings in gross of 80,000 per year. What am I missing. My first thought was I would spend 66,000 to buy an 80,000 dollar a year job. Would like to get your thoughts. Mark

[AngryChris]

Time for me to shine!!! Math situations are where I excel.

Firstly, the assumption here is that this "route" does 80,000/year. I am going to ASSUME that many, if not most, of these stops are located in convenient stores and gas stations as I virtually NEVER see these types of things in offices or vending locations in general.... so anyway.... you would have to compete with all of the goods that these stores have to offer, but lets ignore that for the moment.

80,000/year equates to 1,538.5/week for 340 "stops" which means you should expect at least $4.50 per week from EVERY location.

Now lollipops are generally cheap... and assuming that these lollipops are like 25c/each for the lollipops (again, competing with all the other various goods of convenient stores and gas stations), if the lollipop only cost you about 5c each, you are making 80% of that revenue in profit.... 80% of 80,000 is 64,000 (not including gas and "salary"). You have to sell 18 lollipops each week from EVERY location to maintain this.... or if you marked it up to 50c each, you would make 90% profit but only have to sell 9 lollipops each week (again, competing with EVERYTHING TO OFFER from the place its at). This may sound reasonable... but when is the last time you bought a lollipop or saw even a child buying one when they can get all kinds of other goodies WAY better than a lollipop at 50c!!!.... these are just crunching the numbers for what you have to sell to make these numbers (80,000/year).

Now, there's plenty of math we can do if there's more info on the COGS and other expenses in order to just make your money back!!! but that aside, think about it this way.... you are thinking about paying 66,000 for 340 lollipop boxes... or almost $200 for boxes that probably cost a total of maybe $5-$10 to buy the boxes and fill with lollipops yourself (would cost you $3500 tops to build your own route like this).

Now you may be thinking "Yeah but i could drive around once every few weeks and collect thousands of dollars and it's easy" but that's only true if the numbers are absolutely correct.

Ask yourself this.... depending on where these locations are... can you REALLY get $4.50 in every location and are you sure no one is going to steal your candy or the box or put less money than they are supposed to put in there? Just ask these honor box guys how common theft is (or people putting in less money than they are supposed to put in).

Again, paying almost $200 for boxes that may only cost $5-$10 for you to place yourself.. it's absurd... this is most likely a biz-op scam or a person who was ripped off from a biz-op and wants to get their money back by ripping someone else off.... I wouldn't have anything to do with it.

If you have 66,000 around to spend... i'd honestly try your hand at either a gumball machine or a can soda machine and see if you even want to bother with it first.... but I don't know if you've ever dealt with vending.

Also, just to keep it in mind, the average bulk candy machine at decent locations do like $20/month or about $4-5/week and you would never see an honor box full of lollipops at these locations because they just would not be feasible.

Final verdict: FORGET ABOUT IT!