6 figures in the honor box biz

[Givingitashot]

Hello!

I just purchased my first 50 honor boxes from Sheridan and I have 23 located thus far.  These are the pink ribbon lollipop/mint boxes, not the snack boxes.  I’ve read through almost all of the threads about honor boxes and there is a wide variety of people who have done good and also people who wish they wouldn’t have gotten into the business.  

Ideally I’d like to do this full time and replace my income.  I’m sure it’s hard to put a consistent dollar amount on each box but is it unreasonable to think that each box could or should average 4 dollars a week in PROFIT? If that’s the case if I was able to locate 500 boxes at 4 dollars profit per week per box that would end up being just over 100k in profit in a years time.  

Is this unrealistic?

This might be a hard question to answer but any feedback would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance!

[Lake Cities Vending]

My average is about 9 or 10.00 a month per box. I was over 10.00 per box for awhile. If I picked up some slower locations I could raise that number.

[Givingitashot]

Thanks for the response.  You’re talking 9-10 dollars in profit?  Even at that it’s worth it in my eyes.  Especially if you think you could raise it by moving slower locations.

[BryanH]

Im pretty new so take what i say with a grain of salt but i treat the honor box business as supplemental income to help grow my bulk business. I have to wait around a month for bulk collections but only a week for honor boxes. Honor boxes give me a bit less freedom than bulk. But i would just take it a day at a time and try to not rush it. 

[QuikVend]

I tried them out for a bit, so I have a basic understanding of it. You would need to cycle through alot of dud locations and cover a very large area to find 500 locations that are going to average $30/mo, which would be about what you'd need to hit $4/week profit. 

[Givingitashot]

Yeah I’m sure it would an ongoing shuffle for good locations.  Do you still have honor boxes out there?

[QuikVend]

Absolutely. And a you start weeding them out,  you start to really start spreading out. 

I've pulled all of mine. I was working a FT job and my bulk and full-line routes were(and still are) really growing quickly, so I pulled the plug on them. I only had about 45 locations with them. Did have about 10 that were great, the rest were middle of the road or duds.

[Givingitashot]

Hopefully I’ll have 50 located after this week, I’ll use them as a starting point to see if my objective is within reason....I’ll keep you posted.

[QuikVend]

How long have you had these on location? You will see sales dip a bit at certain locations after the newness wears off. 

[Givingitashot]

These are all brand new, located within the week.

[Lake Cities Vending]

I've got between 80 or 90 out right now. I make around $1,000 a month profit right now. I've got probably 60 or 70 I need to get back out. I uploaded a spread sheet in the download section I use to see what my profit is.

[Lake Cities Vending]

I mostly do drink and snack machines. The honor boxes just help out. I do boxes maybe 1 or 2 days a week. I keep thinking about selling the route but the $1,000 a month extra helps out. If I put more effort in the boxes they could do much better.

[Givingitashot]

NIce, those seem to be pretty good numbers!  How long have you had the boxes?  I’ll check out that soreadsheet, thank you!

[Lake Cities Vending]

I've been doing them for 3 or 4 years. Also I should mention, the days I do boxes I start about 9:00 and usually am through between 1:00 or 3:00. I had about 150 boxes out but have let it run down. I can't decide weather to build it back up or sell. Right now drink business has slowed down so I've been thinking about spending more time with the honor boxes.

[Givingitashot]

How many boxes are you serving within that time?  

So do you think if you focused more on the honor boxes and moved some around to better locations you’d be able to get close to that 4 dollars a week profit per box?  Based on your numbers that you gave me earlier you’re really close to that amount now.

Thank you for all of the feedback, appreciate it!

[flintflash]

Just remember, Gross Profit and Net Profit are two different beasts.  Too many people look at the profit after inventory costs (or Cost of Goods) and think of that as income.  Wrong!  That is Gross Profit.  Net profit is after you factor in your expenses (fuel costs, vehicle costs, cardboard costs, insurance costs, taxes, etc.).  Be sure to factor all these things in before claiming it as income.  You can make a GREAT living at honor snacks.  I have for 25 years and plan on continuing to grow.  I operate the Honor Snack trays as well as Full Line vending.  What state are you operating in?  I don't know much about the Mint/Lollipop boxes, but if you every get into the Honor Snack trays, feel free to pick my brain.  Wish you success!  

[Givingitashot]

Thanks for the response flintflash.  Good to hear you’re doing well with the honor snack boxes.  I will let you know how the lollipop/mint boxes go once I get farther into it.  

[honorbox99]

I look on this site quite often and rarely post. to those of you who dream a six figure income from doing this you will need to work very very hard. Here are my numbers based on over 2 years.

I currently have 725 boxes on location average net profit is 1005.86 a week which out of 725 boxes would be 1.39 per box keep in mind the box number has gone up and down but would not change the average by a lot either way. I cant tell you exatly how many is done every week that would take time but in general the boxes are done 3 sometimes 4 days a week from 8-4 give or take.  so at most 32 hrs a week.  I do this with my wife so 2 people to do this amount.  want to do this amount by yourself you prob need to add 1.5 as all of you know most of the time it takes to do the locations is filling of the lollipops and taking care of money.  I drive, service return to car and go to next stop no stopping.  Now take away box theft, candy theft, and people calling you a fraud and this is a great job and above all very simple.  toughest is start up finding all these locations don't get a locator. my personal rate was about 30% locator about 15% this is because locator I have dealt with might have talked to a reg employee and not the boss so dropped a box and a day later was asked to pickup.  losing locations is tough it is a grind.  good luck to you all

[AngryChris]

I had about 40 boxes out at the beginning which I believe added up to $360/week.  That was about 20 boxes on an A week and 20 boxes on a B week.  The weeks simply alternated every week A, B, A, B, etc..  I reduced the route down to about 32 boxes quickly and was collecting about $320/week for quite a while.  I can tell you that I came up with a simple formula that, as long as your shortage is less than 20%, you make roughly HALF of what you bring in in profits (not including vehicle costs).  So, if you sell 20 pieces for $18 (supposed to be $20 with 10% shortage), then your profit is about $9, but that's every other week.  Yes, my boxes were profiting me about $4~/box per week, but I could only service 3-4 boxes per hour.  If I really kicked golpher and did 4/hour, I could feasibly do 36 in a 9-hour day, and I actually collected $9/box because almost every box was a 2-week cycle anyway.. so 36 boxes in a day at $9/box is $324 in profit if they were all decent accounts.  Do that 5 times a week and you're at $1,600/week.  While you won't break 6 figures, you can make a lot of money hypothetically.

Here are the catches: you have to CONSTANTLY relocate boxes.  Sometimes the account wants you to remove your box, sometimes you have to remove it due to shortages (aka: theft).  Sometimes you have to remove the box simply because the location is too slow.  What you really want (in my opinion) is to do at least $10/week on average if they are SNACK boxes, but mint boxes are different.  Even so with my $1600/week figure, that would require all GOOD accounts, a lot of them for that matter ( about 360.. 180 on A week and 180 on B week) and that doesn't factor in vehicle costs.  Your vehicle would need to be reliable to keep up with that.

Check out humphrey's posts.  He makes over $1,000/week now if I am not mistaken, and he has clearly worked his butt off to do it all.  Making $1,000/week is very possible and relatively realistic if you put the work in AND you live in a pretty good metropolitan area.  Making $2,000/week though... that's pushing it in my opinion.  You might end up having to work 7-5 every day or work at least 6 days/week just to make those figures.  Don't get me wrong, it's great to break into 6-figure income, but I make money to live.  If I make 6-figures at the cost of all of my free time including valuable precious time with family, then I don't see the point in working so much.  Wife would like it though.

[nepavend]

I see this as a piece of a puzzle. Seems like a good way to add a few hundred a month to the bottom line if you do the work. I had about 40 boxes at one time but didn’t relocate and it petered out after about a year and a half. I did lollipops and a snack or two. It did get me into location I’d never be able to or put a gumball in so it was good route filler for sure. 

[shvending]

On 11/18/2017 at 11:26 AM, Givingitashot said:

Hello!

I just purchased my first 50 honor boxes from Sheridan and I have 23 located thus far.  These are the pink ribbon lollipop/mint boxes, not the snack boxes.  I’ve read through almost all of the threads about honor boxes and there is a wide variety of people who have done good and also people who wish they wouldn’t have gotten into the business.  

Ideally I’d like to do this full time and replace my income.  I’m sure it’s hard to put a consistent dollar amount on each box but is it unreasonable to think that each box could or should average 4 dollars a week in PROFIT? If that’s the case if I was able to locate 500 boxes at 4 dollars profit per week per box that would end up being just over 100k in profit in a years time.  

Is this unrealistic?

This might be a hard question to answer but any feedback would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance!

I currently have 655 honor boxes out on location with 42 ready to go back out in the very near future.  I currently average $13.00 every three weeks so that is a gross income of $8,450.00 every 3 weeks.  I purchase an average of $700.00 worth of candy per week from Sams Club and spend $350.00 on road expense.  I do cover a large area but this and my bulk business is all my family does.    

[Lake Cities Vending]

Are you doing the Acrylic or cardboard boxes?

[shvending]

3 hours ago, Lake Cities Vending said:

Are you doing the Acrylic or cardboard boxes?

I use the cardboard displays. 

[bbeckl]

few things to keep in mind when choosing cardboard or acrylic: the acrylic boxes can definitely attract more attention, and solve some issues. for example, we have a cardboard display at a mexican restaurant. for some unknown reason, the bottom kept getting wet. its a good location, usually doing $40-60 a month, with minimal loss (god i wish i could find 500 of these!). we have a few acrylics kicking around, so we decided to put one in there, so we werent picking up a soaked (and ruined) box every few weeks. at the same time, we decided to change our product frfom yorks to a super top secret (laffy taffy) fruity candy. we could fit more pieces in the acrylic box, and from experience, we knew that the money box on the acrylic has much more room, so we extended the service cycle by a week. well, that was a good, and bad idea. bad idea, because when we serviced the location, the box was empty. good idea, because instead of the standard $25-30, there was over $116 in there. yeah... no kidding. we obviously tried to reproduce these results at a few other top locations of the same type, but didnt have nearly as good of results (some actually went down). so, just be sure to cautiously play with things, and find what works best. the acrylics are much more expensive, but they definitely have a place in every route.