Good buy?

[josh5402]

Soda route for sale, leased machines from Coke and Pepsi. 60 locations, comes with delivery truck. Grossed $110k the past 6 months. $172k last year. Wants $150k for the route.

[AngryChris]

If the "owner" can show you a tax return that verify these numbers and if the "owner" can also lower the asking price to well below 150k.. then you might have something worth talking about.

[AZVendor]

That might be a reasonable price for a full line route with snacks and maybe food and coffee machines, but with only leased soda machines there are no owned assets except for whatever vehicle is included.  This is not a good price in that instance because you are only buying blue sky.  This is the entire problem with buying or selling such routes.  The numbers show that it is grossing between $55 and $72 per week per machine.  That is not horrible but it all depends on the prices charged, whether it's cans or bottles and the commissions paid to accounts.  You would also want to see the historic collection records so that you can see how long each machine has been placed.  In other words, how many have been placed in the last year and how many accounts were lost in the last year. 

 

A bigger question is where are all these machines placed and why are there no snacks involved?  This could very well be all apartment complexes which notoriously have the highest vandalism rates - vandalism that a third party vendor is usually responsible for.  If these are apartments, are any machines secured in cages? 

 

Lots to think about here. 

[josh5402]

Thank you guys for your response. I believe a lot of the machines are in apartment complexes. Just worried about buying something that's really not mine, with no machines to purchases or contracts in place to keep them using the machines. The potential profit is intriguing though. After verifying the numbers with his bank statements, it does look like the numbers are about right.