RJT Posted June 2, 2015 Share Posted June 2, 2015 People on here and other places always talk about "how many machine" "how many accounts". I hardly ever hear people talk about how much MONEY. If you like vending so much you want a hobby then sure have at it but I don't think that is the case with people that come here. Some may just be doing vending to earn some spare cash and never intend on doing it full time which is fine also. Starting a vending BUSINESS is just that a business and any successful business is about MONEY and PROFITS. Have you ever really thought about how much money you want or need to make and how to accomplish that? Have you ever took a sharp pencil to it to figure it out? Lets just say you want to clear $40k a year after Uncle Sam gets his. I think that is a fair wage for the average person and not being unreasonable. How much vending revenue will that take? How many accounts doing X amount? Obviously one account could accomplish this but is that likely for you to accomplish? What will it cost you in equipment? Can and how do you pay for that equipment? Do you have a business plan? Do you know how to execute that plan? How long will it take you to get to that goal? Have you figured out how to get quality accounts to get you to the number ($40k salary) you have set as the goal? Lets just say you have this figured out. What happens if you fall ill for a few weeks and cant work the route? Do you have a backup plan so you don't loose the accounts? Do you have someone with the ability you can trust to do it for you? What is your long term goal for vending? Work it till you decide to sell it and retire? What would your route be worth at that point with you generating enough revenue to make $40k a year salary? Can you retire on that amount? Cause if you are only making $40k a year you want have a lot to put back in savings. I just wanted to hear peoples thoughts and what they have to say. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SchligVend Posted June 2, 2015 Share Posted June 2, 2015 I think a lot of people are hesitate to talk about actual dollars being profited from their business because most feel its inappropriate to talk about how much money someone makes...... I can tell you I work 4 days a week including doing my own moves and 90% of my own repairs and I have a nice house and support a family of 5 doing vending.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RJT Posted June 2, 2015 Author Share Posted June 2, 2015 I think a lot of people are hesitate to talk about actual dollars being profited from their business because most feel its inappropriate to talk about how much money someone makes...... I can tell you I work 4 days a week including doing my own moves and 90% of my own repairs and I have a nice house and support a family of 5 doing vending.. I am not really talking about telling someone how much money you make "exactly" in your particular business or situation. I am talking in general about the vending business and what people can expect and how to accomplish it. Let me ask you this. What is your "average" per machine gross revenue? The reason I ask is because to be successful like you sound you are I don't think that is being accomplished with $50 a week per machine average only working 4 days a week. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SchligVend Posted June 2, 2015 Share Posted June 2, 2015 50 dollars a week is what I shoot for anything more is icing on the cake. I have a set number of money I need to pull per account per visit so those 30 dollars to 60 a week accounts I visit every other week... I even have accounts that do 25 a week but I service every 3 to 4 weeks so my profit per service is averages around the same .... the smaller accounts are nice because they rarely complain and do not require a large investment (newer machines) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RJT Posted June 2, 2015 Author Share Posted June 2, 2015 50 dollars a week is what I shoot for anything more is icing on the cake. I have a set number of money I need to pull per account per visit so those 30 dollars to 60 a week accounts I visit every other week... I even have accounts that do 25 a week but I service every 3 to 4 weeks so my profit per service is averages around the same .... the smaller accounts are nice because they rarely complain and do not require a large investment (newer machines) Not trying to get in your business to deep but how many machines are you servicing in that 4 day work week? Every 3 to 4 weeks? Are these drink only accounts? How is your stale rate on those? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SchligVend Posted June 2, 2015 Share Posted June 2, 2015 The amount of machines I service varies, week by week, I setup an excel spreedsheet that has all my accounts with amounts pulled and I analyze it daily to see what accounts I havent been to and what accounts did what the last 3 times I pulled money from it....... and of course I have my main accounts I know I need to go to every week Yes I have mostly drink accounts that would be serviced every 4 weeks but I do have a couple snack machines that are serviced every 4 weeks (which should not be there) but i only put longer lasting chips and cookies and no danishes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RJT Posted June 2, 2015 Author Share Posted June 2, 2015 The amount of machines I service varies, week by week, I setup an excel spreedsheet that has all my accounts with amounts pulled and I analyze it daily to see what accounts I havent been to and what accounts did what the last 3 times I pulled money from it....... and of course I have my main accounts I know I need to go to every week Yes I have mostly drink accounts that would be serviced every 4 weeks but I do have a couple snack machines that are serviced every 4 weeks (which should not be there) but i only put longer lasting chips and cookies and no danishes Yes I know it can vary from day to day week to week but what is the average amount of machines you service each week (4 days). I would think you have quite a few high volume accounts with much fewer of those doing the less than $50 a week number. That is why I asked an estimated number of machines you service in a week. What is your highest gross revenue account? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SchligVend Posted June 2, 2015 Share Posted June 2, 2015 I service 35 to 50 a week, I have my business setup in a way that no ONE account will put me out of business.... I have talked to many other vendors that have their ONE good account that keeps everything else going. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RJT Posted June 2, 2015 Author Share Posted June 2, 2015 I service 35 to 50 a week, I have my business setup in a way that no ONE account will put me out of business.... I have talked to many other vendors that have their ONE good account that keeps everything else going. Gottcha!! Lets take your number of machine and work some numbers as an example for people to look at. Lets say 50 machines a week that average $50 gross. That's $2500 a week gross. Now lets assume COG's are half that so now down to $1250.00 net before sales taxes, any commissions, GL insurance, truck insurance, stales, fuel, CC fees, repairs, refunds, admin fees such as office supplies, websites, cell phone, equipment investment payback, etc. Let's just make it an even $1000.00 left after everything. (I think that is a little low but will go with it) .This is assuming you have no other cost like warehouse space even a storage unit, utility bill, phone, internet, renters insurance, etc. If Uncle Sam gets his portion (state and federal self employment, this can vary) but lets say 30% so that leaves us $700.00 a week or $36,400.00 in the pocket after everything. This is what I was wanting to show people to achieve $40k a year net salary and this gets close enough. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SchligVend Posted June 2, 2015 Share Posted June 2, 2015 If I was servicing 200 machines a month and only making 2800 a month I would think of a new career path...... But I understand most people are okay with making that amount of money Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RJT Posted June 2, 2015 Author Share Posted June 2, 2015 If I was servicing 200 machines a month and only making 2800 a month I would think of a new career path...... But I understand most people are okay with making that amount of money That's why I say your average has to be far greater than $50 per machine. That's also why I did this post to show people that $50 a week average per machine is a tough row to hoe. Nice looking website by the way. How is the ice cream going for you? Nice margins on ice cream compared to most items. How are you transporting? Dry ICE? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
orsd Posted June 2, 2015 Share Posted June 2, 2015 You can do greater than one week service cycles, and pull 100+ from a machine. Your argument was not against 50 dollar a week accounts it was against servicing too often. Also is it really that different to have a new 3000 machine in a great account that have to be serviced every other day for a couple hundred or having ten 300 dollar can machines serviced monthly for 200? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RJT Posted June 2, 2015 Author Share Posted June 2, 2015 You can do greater than one week service cycles, and pull 100+ from a machine. Your argument was not against 50 dollar a week accounts it was against servicing too often. Also is it really that different to have a new 3000 machine in a great account that have to be serviced every other day for a couple hundred or having ten 300 dollar can machines serviced monthly for 200? Not sure I follow your first point but yes you can pull more from a machine. That is a given depending on the account volume. It may be serviced every day for that matter and pull $100 each day out of the machine. I am talking about each machine doing an average of $50 a week in revenue. Their was no "argument" against servicing a $50 a week account to often. That never even came up in this thread. If a machine does $50 a week then it may need servicing once a week to EOW. When you say 3000 machine I assume you mean a machine that cost you $3000 and having to service it every day. I can tell you if you have a single machine being serviced everyday you are looking at an average of around a $100 per day in gross or you are servicing it to often. You would not work that machine everyday and only pull $200. So your comparison does not work because I would not service a single machine everyday for only $200 gross weekly revenue. If you are saying it is worked every day and it does $200 per day then that is $1k a week or $4k a month. So if a single machine is being serviced every day at an average of $100 each day that is $500 a week or $2000 a month based on a m-f service schedule. Or the $4k a month if I understand what you wrote. So yes give me that one machine over 10 I service once a month for $200. First is you make more money, second I don't have 10 machines to deal with service calls, drive time to get to each one, so many different contacts to deal with, no stales, etc. Much less labor and issues with one over 10. If you are buying $300 drink machines you are going to have service calls and issues. Also if you are only servicing a can machine once a month pulling $200 you are going to have a lot of sold outs and run the risk of loosing the account because of that. That is if you have a good selection and not a lot of duplicates. You might could do that with a lot of duplicates of the popular products but even that would be hard to do. Around the $100 mark is where you need to service I dont care if that is once a day, once a week, twice a week, every other week, or once a month. If not you are going to be sold out of a lot of product each visit. $50 a week gross per machine is just that and you will need around 50 machines doing that number to get close to the $40k a year in net salary. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SchligVend Posted June 2, 2015 Share Posted June 2, 2015 That's why I say your average has to be far greater than $50 per machine. That's also why I did this post to show people that $50 a week average per machine is a tough row to hoe. Nice looking website by the way. How is the ice cream going for you? Nice margins on ice cream compared to most items. How are you transporting? Dry ICE? I have great margins on ice cream mostly 3 times well let's take ice cream sandwich for an example I buy one for 37 cents and sell them for 1.25 to 1.50 ... Hot pockets I buy for around .75 cents and sell them for 2 to 2.50 ...... The corndogs I buy for around .35 cents and sell them for 1 dollar...I have a freezer hooked up to an inverter on my truck.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bvending Posted June 2, 2015 Share Posted June 2, 2015 I have accounts that do $400 a week and accounts that do $30 a week. But if I'm driving past the $30 a week account anyway, I have no problem stopping for ten min to make sure everything is fresh and nothing is sold out. You can still be successful working an account that pulls $30 a week. I too have many that average $50 a week and that's just fine with me (more $50 avg accounts than $400). I work full time at this, so I might as well put the same effort into those as I do the larger ones. The revenue from my route is 30k a month. So needless to say those small stops add up Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tc vending Posted June 2, 2015 Share Posted June 2, 2015 I think the answer is between 100-200 k at the top if its just you. No venders likes to talk numbers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EatMoreJunk Posted June 2, 2015 Share Posted June 2, 2015 Happy to gross around $100k ....doing 25 hours per week on average. Comes out to approx $27/hour and leaves plenty of time in the rest of my week for everything I want to do, making money and otherwise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SchligVend Posted June 2, 2015 Share Posted June 2, 2015 One man operation should be able to do 200k+ gross. imo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EatMoreJunk Posted June 2, 2015 Share Posted June 2, 2015 I could definitely do $200k but I don't want to work that much. I'm also a licensed health insurance agent and usually put 10-15 hours per week into that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RJT Posted June 2, 2015 Author Share Posted June 2, 2015 One man operation should be able to do 200k+ gross. imo That is correct. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TKK Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 200k a year net but 100k a year net would still be great im sure many of us would venture to other things, vending is great but not gonna get super rich off of it. Its one of those the more u grow the less u make businesses. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EatMoreJunk Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 My issue with getting much bigger partly lies in the increased maintenance issues. Obviously the more machines you have in operation, the more problems you'll have. I don't want to be spending 2 or 3 hours each week chasing down jammed mechs and stuff. I work hard to keep my radius of travel within 20 miles. Am currently looking to trade two smaller accounts that are 12 miles away for a single larger account that is 2 miles from home. Would free up approximately 30 minutes of my week....time is money, right! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
65tremecgt Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 Great info, I would like to make 30-40k, as I can service the machines while the kids are in school and be able to drop them off and pick them up. Plus have a little free time on those school days! Really tired of working for other people! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KychrisKy Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 I would like to e eventually make 100-150,000 a year but im running out of machines, and they don't grow on trees If one were to make 200,000 a year just wonder on AVERAGE how many machines it would take I would say 125 good placed machines you think Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TKK Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 200k a year gross wouldnt take 125 machines. Unless u find crap accounts. You can esily make 200k a year gross with 40 to 60 machines in good decent accounts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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