Pick locations that actually pay.
What I look for before I'll sign a contract — foot-traffic minimums, building access, and the questions to ask the host.
01 / The Story
I started this because every vending guru on the internet was lying.
I followed one of them in 2022. He sold a course for $997 that promised four-figure monthly checks for two hours of work a week. The numbers in his ads were real — for him, mostly because he was selling courses, not running machines.
The pitch was passive income. The reality was multiple vending routes, a warehouse in my living room, a card reader that continuously froze, and a cooler in Southern Pines that wouldn't hold temperature in August.
The gap I actually saw was on post. Soldiers were walking past rows of Cheetos and Mountain Dew on installations full of people who lifted six days a week and read the back of every label. So I built something better — a glass door black cabinet, LED-lit, stocked with Barebells, Built Bars, protein shakes, electrolytes, and Clean Eatz frozen meals.
It's not passive income. It's an active business that paid for itself in a year and a half — and that's a much better story.
First machines went into several gyms in Southern Pines. I priced items wrong, stocked it wrong, and forgot the Apple Pay decal — sales for the first week were underwhelming. Six weeks later we were clearing $1,800 a month. Each cooler got better and made up for the previous one's mistakes.
By month fourteen we were at 13 locations — gyms, barracks, unit HQs — pulling north of $250k a year, with four 1099 drivers and a waitlist of property managers asking when I could put one in their lobby.
I sold at month eighteen. Not because it was failing — the opposite. Bigger things were waiting, and the smart move was to package this one cleanly and hand it off. The buyer got a business with real financials and SOPs. I got a check and my Saturdays back.
