The Pros/Cons of Owning a Vending Machine Business

Ravjot Kaur
3 min readJun 5, 2022

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After running my candy machine business for a few years, I have been grateful to learn more about the business side of running the vending machines. Through trial and error, I have had to rebrand and redesign my business in order to keep up-to-date with what my customers want. Here are a few things I learned in the process.

Photo by Stéphan Valentin on Unsplash

The Pros

The vending machines as a whole have been a great side hustle. As someone who wants to really do everything in the world, I have been lucky enough to start the vending machine businesses and figured out a way to make my vending machines profitable.

One upside to the vending machine business is that they are not that time consuming. I spend around 2–3 hours a week on the machines, and for me that is great because I can put my energy funding other projects or working on new hobbies. I like the fact that the vending machines are effective, and they inspire me to work harder on other things.

Another upside of the vending machines is that I can get the products delivered right to my doorstep. I have apps that contain my products, so I can pick and choose what I want for the day and it has been working really well. I like the fact that you can see your purchase history, so I can see all of the previous products I bought, and can simply repurchase them.

Photo by Ji Seongkwang on Unsplash

The Cons

One downside of the vending machines is not getting the supplies on time. I get my products delivered, but sometimes they run late or my products aren’t available. This means that I either don’t have my products for the month or I have to make the time to drive to the stores myself and get the products. I used to do this, but now that everything has gone digital/virtual since covid, I can’t get myself to go to the stores myself and spend the extra time getting all the products for my machines.

Another downside to the machines is that they will break down. Sometimes, the candy or soda will get stuck or the machine won’t take the quarters and dollars. I didn’t know much about how to fix the machines, but with some research and WD40, I have been able to create a semi-full proof plan on preventing stuff like that from happening again. Obviously there are still some issues that arise, and I do have to contact a technician to change the machine parts. That is a big pain when it comes to waiting around for the repair, but it is just something you can’t really control.

One thing that also gets a little tedious is counting all the coins. Since this is a cash-only business, having to count all the quarters and dollars take a lot of time. I would say that it actually takes most of the time to do the counting and cleaning up.

Currently, I am trying to work on trying to expand the vending machine business. I want to put the vending machines in other parts of my city, but I don’t entirely know the process of getting started and who to ask. If you stuck around til the end, I want to thank you for your reading along, and I hope to see you in the next one!

Stay sweet,

Ravjot

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Ravjot Kaur

Grad student who loves writing about everything | I’ll look over your personal statement: https://forms.gle/RbQs5LtZD7sAYkvE6