Howdy Texas Venders

[gavinkhan]

Greetings gents,

 

Extremely new to vending! I recently got referred over here by the good people of Parlevel.

If you have any wisdom you'd like to grace me with I'm open to any & everything.

 

Gavin

[AZVendor]

You have to ask a question to get any wisdom.

[gavinkhan]

On 9/12/2019 at 12:05 AM, AZVendor said:

You have to ask a question to get any wisdom.

Fair point!

Does anybody have experience in Tobacco Vending or hot food?

If so, what kind of roadblocks had you dealt with or are you currently dealing with that may be informative to someone new looking into either space?

[AZVendor]

Tobacco vending is outlawed in just about every state and there are no more hot food machines around any longer.  You might be asking about refrigerated food that gets heated up but those machines are loss leaders.  If you do frozen food you can make a little money by putting ice cream in and being frozen, you won't have many stales but you will have to eat what doesn't sell well so you can try other items.  Why are you considering these two types of vending?  Do you like to be the underdog that will lose?

[gavinkhan]

8 minutes ago, AZVendor said:

Tobacco vending is outlawed in just about every state and there are no more hot food machines around any longer.  You might be asking about refrigerated food that gets heated up but those machines are loss leaders.  If you do frozen food you can make a little money by putting ice cream in and being frozen, you won't have many stales but you will have to eat what doesn't sell well so you can try other items.  Why are you considering these two types of vending?  Do you like to be the underdog that will lose?

It's my understanding that you're only allowed to dispense tobacco in adult only designated areas, atleast here in the state of Texas. I've recently talked directly to the Texas Comptroller; I figured that it would be a novel solution for people who like to go to clubs and have ran out of cigarettes.

As far as the Hot food vending machines, I do mean refrigerated food that gets heated. I thought it may be an interesting concept for a large office environment; a company I had previously worked for had a micro market that would often sell out of frozen goods to eat, especially breakfast and afternoon snacks. I did a little research and found those Bicom Vending machines interesting.

Perhaps my ideas and vending strategies aren't the most thought out, however I think that those types of vending would provide solutions to things I viewed as problems. What are your thoughts?

[Vending Dude]

 Neither of those sound particularly great.  Smoking continues to decline so you have an ever shrinking (already small)  pool of customers, and you're very limited on where you can place the machines.

The fact that they're already illegal in most places means they run some risk of becoming illegal in Texas.  The resale value of the machines has to be almost zero.

Cigarettes are highly regulated, heavily taxed, and subject to increasingly stringent laws.  If you're new to vending why not start out with an easy product that's sure to work?

[gavinkhan]

2 hours ago, Vending Dude said:

 Neither of those sound particularly great.  Smoking continues to decline so you have an ever shrinking (already small)  pool of customers, and you're very limited on where you can place the machines.

The fact that they're already illegal in most places means they run some risk of becoming illegal in Texas.  The resale value of the machines has to be almost zero.

Cigarettes are highly regulated, heavily taxed, and subject to increasingly stringent laws.  If you're new to vending why not start out with an easy product that's sure to work?

I'm definitely open to working with easier products, but what kind of income could I be looking forward to with snack / beverage machines. I was recommended to stay away from Combos...

[Vending Dude]

The info does exist here about how much you can make but it does take a lot of research.  I'd advise going thru each of the subforums and reading the guides which most of them have.  Asking "how much can I make" kind of seems like the wrong question though.  After reading about all of the various forms of vending I think you can make a good income with most of them.  What type of vending interests you?  Which type of vending can you see yourself going out and doing?  How much time are you willing to invest?  Ask yourself those questions.

 

I did a lot of research on this site before recently starting my own vending route.  Here are a few of my takeaways.

1.  Do something mainstream that's been proven profitable by others, and has plenty of startup information available.

2.  Stay away from oddball vending such as bathroom vending, cigarette machines, healthy vending, and biz ops

3.  Atm vending sounds profitable but requires a lot of capitol to keep the machines full of cash.

4.  Bulk machines seem profitable but take a decent amount of money for equipment and lots of locations.

5.  Drink and snack machines sound like where it's ultimately at but takes a lot of startup money to buy machines.

6.  Honor box vending is low startup costs but requires a lot of locations.  

I went the honor box/ mint & candy route because it's really inexpensive to start out.  So far it's working really well.  I eventually plan to reinvest my profits into buying drink and snack machines and slowly transitioning to full line vending.