Making fast money on vending machines: Is it that easy?
(NewsNation) — More Americans are picking up side hustles, and vending machines are being touted on social media as a simple way to generate 'passive' income.
How-to videos on TikTok and YouTube show vending entrepreneurs unloading bricks of cash. The short, punchy clips have racked up millions of views and explain how others can turn 'snacks into stacks' with little effort.
With roughly 3 million vending machines across the U.S., the sector is worth an estimated $18.2 billion, according to The National Automatic Merchandising Association's (NAMA) 2022-2023 industry census report.
Are millions of dead people receiving Social Security benefits?
So, how hard is it to get in on the action?
Vending how-tos on TikTok and YouTube have clicky, eye-catching titles that give the impression business is booming:
'He turned vending machines into a $500k business' (TikTok)
'6 months in vending business and already made $10k' (TikTok)
'2-Day Workweek Earns $700K – Vending Machine Business' (YouTube)
One YouTube short with over 58 million views claims to show the start-up process from start to finish. The user says he bought five used vending machines for $4,000, loaded them up with inventory from Costco and then profited $750 per month for two hours of work.
Social media makes getting started look easy: buy a machine, put it somewhere with foot traffic, stock it with stuff people want and swing by occasionally to collect your cash.
The videos follow a similar pattern. Vending entrepreneurs unlock their machines, pull out the cash and see which snacks or drinks are running low. From there, influencers head to big box stores like Costco or Sam's Club to replenish their machines.
Viewers get the sense that there's little time and energy involved.'The biggest difficulty is finding a good location and negotiating with the owner,' said Brandon Schlichter, who has two dozen vending machines across central Ohio.
What are OASDI taxes? They help fund your retirement
Schlichter estimates his machines bring in $3,000 to $3,500 a month — about $100 to $150 each. After factoring in costs like inventory and electricity, he said he makes around $2,000 in profit across all 24 units.
'It's a nice little side piece of income. I've done well with it,' said Schlichter, a serial entrepreneur who shares business tips with nearly 2 million subscribers on his YouTube channel 'Investment Joy.'
Schlichter's machines are spread across laundromats, car washes and rental properties.Foot traffic is one factor to consider, but negotiating favorable terms with a building owner is just as important.
There is no standard playbook. Some landlords charge rent to host a machine, while others may ask for a commission.
'If you're a good salesperson, you can get a location for free,' Schlichter said. 'It's a sales pitch to a business owner to get more foot traffic.'
Manufacturing plants were the most popular location in 2023, making up 40% of the vending machine market, according to Automatic Merchandiser's State of the Industry report. Offices were the second most common location at 21.5%, followed by colleges and universities at 9.2%.
John Talbott, a senior lecturer focusing on retail at Indiana University, recommends scouting out locations and talking with potential landlords before buying a machine.
'Before I would invest, I'd walk around and I'd have 20 deals cut with somebody that said, 'Yeah, you can bring one in,'' he said.Once you have a location, you'll have to decide what to put in it.
One common mistake is stocking your machine based on what you like, which can be a 'recipe for disaster,' Schlichter said.
'I've run into people that went and bought thousands of dollars worth of product for a vending machine, thinking that they could convert a factory to healthy foods, and then everything expired,' he said.
Simple savings: Ways to save money when eating out
Cold beverage machines are the most common and accounted for 27% of vending sales last year, the most of any category, according to Automatic Merchandiser's report. Snacks were the second-largest product category (17%) by revenue, followed by candy (14%).
As far as inventory, small operators often buy in bulk at stores like Costco and Sam's Club.
'I know people that are in high volume, high traffic locations, and they're taking that 25-cent bag of chips, and they're reselling it for $1.50,' Schlichter said.
A final point: scale matters. The more machines you have, the more money you'll make.
'You're not going to really make a lot of money off one machine,' Talbott said.
Vending machines have a relatively low barrier to entry, which makes them competitive.
Schlichter said used machines can cost anywhere from $500 to $2,000 on eBay and Facebook Marketplace. New machines are more expensive, costing about $3,500 to $6,800 at Sam's Club.
Small-time operators may be less common than social media makes it seem. The NAMA Foundation found that the 'typical' operator maintains 277 machines.
NAMA estimates the typical operator generates around $6,000 in revenue per machine annually, about $500 a month.
At the end of the day, Schlichter sees vending machines as a low-risk endeavor that, like any other business, requires hard work and practice.
'The only way that you learn is to go out and do it,' he said.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
San Francisco Chronicle
38 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Senators prep for a weekend of work to meet Trump's deadline for passing his tax and spending cuts
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate is expected to grind through a rare weekend session as Republicans race to pass President Donald Trump's package of tax breaks and spending cuts by his July Fourth deadline. Republicans are using their majorities in Congress to push aside Democratic opposition, but they have run into a series of political and policy setbacks. Not all GOP lawmakers are on board with proposals to reduce spending on Medicaid, food stamps and other programs as a way to help cover the cost of extending some $3.8 trillion in Trump tax breaks. The 940-page bill was released shortly before midnight Friday. Senators were expected to take a procedural vote Saturday to begin debate on the legislation, but the timing was uncertain and there is a long path ahead, with at least 10 hours of debate time and an all-night voting session on countless amendments. Senate passage could be days away, and the bill would need to return to the House for a final round of votes before it could reach the White House. 'It's evolving,' said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., as he prepared to close up the chamber late Friday. The weekend session could be a make-or-break moment for Trump's party, which has invested much of its political capital on his signature domestic policy plan. Trump is pushing Congress to wrap it up, even as he sometimes gives mixed signals, allowing for more time. At recent events at the White House, including Friday, Trump has admonished the 'grandstanders' among GOP holdouts to fall in line. 'We can get it done,' Trump said in a social media post. 'It will be a wonderful Celebration for our Country.' The legislation is an ambitious but complicated series of GOP priorities. At its core, it would make permanent many of the tax breaks from Trump's first term that would otherwise expire by year's end if Congress fails to act, resulting in a potential tax increase on Americans. The bill would add new breaks, including no taxes on tips, and commit $350 billion to national security, including for Trump's mass deportation agenda. But the spending cuts that Republicans are relying on to offset the lost tax revenues are causing dissent within the GOP ranks. Some lawmakers say the cuts go too far, particularly for people receiving health care through Medicaid. Meanwhile, conservatives, worried about the nation's debt, are pushing for steeper cuts. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said he is concerned about the fundamentals of the package and will not support the procedural motion to begin debate. 'I'm voting no on the motion to proceed,' he said. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., pushing for deeper cuts, said he needed to see the final legislative text. The release of that draft had been delayed as the Senate parliamentarian reviewed the bill to ensure it complied with the chamber's strict 'Byrd Rule,' named for the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd, It largely bars policy matters from inclusion in budget bills unless a provision can get 60 votes to overcome objections. That would be a tall order in a Senate with a 53-47 GOP edge and Democrats unified against Trump's bill. Republicans suffered a series of setbacks after several proposals were determined to be out of compliance by the chief arbiter of the Senate's rules. One plan would have shifted some food stamp costs from the federal government to the states; a second would have gutted the funding structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But over the past days, Republicans have quickly revised those proposals and reinstated them. The final text includes a proposal for cuts to a Medicaid provider tax that had run into parliamentary objections and opposition from several senators worried about the fate of rural hospitals. The new version extends the start date for those cuts and establishes a $25 billion fund to aid rural hospitals and providers. Most states impose the provider tax as a way to boost federal Medicaid reimbursements. Some Republicans argue that is a scam and should be abolished. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said that under the House-passed version of the bill, some 10.9 million more people would go without health care and at least 3 million fewer would qualify for food aid. The CBO has not yet publicly assessed the Senate draft, which proposes steeper reductions. Top income-earners would see about a $12,000 tax cut under the House bill, while the poorest Americans would face a $1,600 tax increase, the CBO said. One unresolved issue remains the so-called SALT provision, a deduction for state and local taxes that has been a top priority of lawmakers from New York and other high-tax states. The cap is now $10,000. The White House and House Republicans had narrowed in on a plan for a $40,000 cap, but for five years instead of 10. Republican senators says that's too generous. At least one House GOP holdout, Rep. Nick LaLota of New York, said he cannot support the compromise. 'There's no good reason for Republicans to chase a silly deadline,' Schumer said. House Speaker Mike Johnson, who sent his colleagues home for the weekend with plans to be on call to return to Washington, said they are 'very close' to finishing up. 'We would still like to meet that July Fourth, self-imposed deadline,' said Johnson, R-La. With the narrow Republicans majorities in the House and Senate, leaders need almost every lawmaker on board to ensure passage. Johnson and Thune have stayed close to the White House, relying on Trump to pressure holdout lawmakers.
New York Post
an hour ago
- New York Post
My grandfather ‘the destroyer': Inside the ruthless world of NJ's frozen veggie kings
When John Seabrook first discussed writing a book about his grandfather, C.F. Seabrook, and the family's agricultural empire with his mother, her response shocked him, as he reveals in 'The Spinach King: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty' (WW Norton). 'Don't write about your family,' she said. 'Just don't.' Seabrook was perplexed. 'Maybe she knew what I was going to find out,' he writes. In 'The Spinach King,' he unearths the story of how his grandfather created one of the world's largest farming operations, as well as the ugly means that got him there. 9 C.F. Seabrook with factory workers in the 1950s. The Seabrook family's pioneering expansion of the frozen vegetable market is chronicled in a new book. Seabrook Educational and Cultural Center 'Charles Franklin Seabrook, my grandfather, was the principal dreamer, main promoter, master builder, and autocratic ruler of this industrial farming empire – and ultimately its destroyer,' he writes. At its peak in the mid-1950s, Seabrook Farms owned or controlled 50,000 acres in southwestern New Jersey, employed 8,000 people, and grew and packed about a third of the nation's frozen vegetables. Dubbed the 'Henry Ford of Agriculture,' C.F. Seabrook had taken over his father's farm in 1911, transforming its fortunes with his innovative approach to agriculture. He introduced new irrigation and mechanization and diversified into building roads and railroads. But it was his pioneering use of quick-freezing vegetables in the 1930s, partnering with Birdseye, that sent Seabrook stratospheric. 'In our family history, he was Thomas Edison and Henry Ford in the same Dagwood sandwich; a great American who had elevated us from dirt farmers to industrialists in a single generation,' writes John Seabrook. Seabrook Farms was so successful that a 1959 Life magazine story described it as 'the biggest vegetable factory on earth.' 9 C.F. Seabrook seen here with his family. Courtesy of John Seabrook 9 A tractor at Seabrook Farm, the family's vast agricultural estate in New Jersey. Heritage Images via Getty Images In 1969, meanwhile, director Stanley Kubrick featured an astronaut in '2001: A Space Odyssey' sucking a Seabrook Farms Liquipack on their way to the moon. Thousands of workers worked for Seabrook: Russians, Syrians, Germans, Hungarians, Jamaicans, and Japanese Americans, many personally sponsored by Seabrook under the Displaced Persons Act and all paying rent to him. Workers were divided into three sections; whites, 'negroes' and Americans, with each living in separate 'villages' and their rent depending on their ethnicity. African-Americans were given the worst accommodation, without water or sanitary facilities, with European immigrants receiving the next level of housing, and Americans the best standard. 9 Seabrook was known for his ruthless anti-labor practices, most notably during a 1934 labor strike by company workers. Bettmann Archive It also determined their job. 'In the workplace, Blacks were confined to the field and weren't allowed to work in the plant at all, to say nothing of management, which was entirely white, Protestant, and male,' adds Seabrook. Behind the public image of the successful businessman was a man feared by everyone. 'Ambition, energy, and ingenuity drove his rise,' writes Seabrook, 'but violence and terror allowed him to maintain control.' 9 The Seabrook family partners with Bird's Eye vegetables as part of the expansion plan that made them frozen food leaders. REUTERS The way he tackled a strike in the summer of 1934 was typical. Seabrook's revenues from quick-freezing were slow to materialize, and by that summer, it became necessary to cut wages and lay off workers. 'That was when the trouble started,' says Seabrook. 9 Bird's Eye products were so ubiquitous that they were even featured in the movie '2001: A Space Odyssey.' With resentment stoked by the workers' miserable living standards, C.F. Seabrook amassed a vigilante strike force to subdue protests and even enlisted the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan to crush the 'Communist agitators' holding up operations. The results were violent and terrifying; the KKK burned crosses outside black workers' homes. Belford Seabrook, one of C.F. Seabrook's three sons, reportedly threw a small bomb into a house with a mother and her children inside. Workers had their homes surrounded with chicken wire to prevent their escape, and tear gas was employed to quell protestors. 9 C.F. Seabrook was compared to other American industrial moguls such as Henry Ford and Thomas Edison (above). Bettmann Archive Appeals were made to New Jersey Gov. Harry Moore to declare martial law and send in the National Guard. While a deal was eventually struck, most black strikers were fired, and others were evicted from Seabrook properties. C.F. Seabrook would, years later, recruit Japanese Americans from World War II incarceration camps, a 'model minority who would never challenge the old man's authority,' writes Seabrook. Remarkably, John Seabrook had never heard about the strike before he started researching for his book. Even his father, John M. Seabrook, who took over the business from his father, had never mentioned it. 9 'The Spinach King: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty' is written by John Seabrook. 9 'All that's left of the world that my bootstrapping grandfather built is a small museum at one end of the basement of the Upper Deerfield Township Municipal Building,' said author John Seabrook. 'This was arguably the single most significant event in Seabrook Farms history,' he writes. 'How could I have remained clueless of an event that convulsed the family, the company, the county, and the state?' Just as Seabrook Farms prospered during World War I, so it did again in World War II, as quick-freezing came into its own. But by April 1959, with his health failing, C.F. Seabrook had sold the business. By the end of the 1970s, Seabrook Farms was no longer. The plant was demolished, and the land was given to the township in lieu of taxes. 'All that's left of the world that my bootstrapping grandfather built is a small museum at one end of the basement of the Upper Deerfield Township Municipal Building,' adds Seabrook. 'Here the memory of C.F. Seabrook, his multicultural workforce, and his vegetable factory is preserved, swaddled in gauzy nostalgia.'
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Many baby boomers are unprepared for retirement — but here are 3 things the savviest of them do to get ahead
A significant portion of older Americans are headed for retirement with insufficient savings. The Federal Reserve reports a median retirement savings of $185,000 for Americans aged 55 to 64 as of 2022. I'm 49 years old and have nothing saved for retirement — what should I do? Don't panic. Here are 6 of the easiest ways you can catch up (and fast) Thanks to Jeff Bezos, you can now become a landlord for as little as $100 — and no, you don't have to deal with tenants or fix freezers. Here's how Want an extra $1,300,000 when you retire? Dave Ramsey says this 7-step plan 'works every single time' to kill debt, get rich in America — and that 'anyone' can do it Among Americans ages 65 to 74, the number increases to $200,000. But neither balance is a particularly large amount, given that retirement could easily last 20 years or longer. Baby boomers as a whole might not seem prepared for retirement, but that doesn't mean all older Americans are doomed. Some baby boomers are headed for financial security, and it's all thanks to the smart decisions they make on a regular basis. Here are three things financially savvy baby boomers do with their money that could lead to decades of comfort once they retire. Earlier this year, U.S. News & World Report found that 42% of Americans across all ages don't have an emergency fund. But financially savvy boomers don't let themselves get into a situation where they can't cover a surprise bill and end up with debt. Rather, they practice paying themselves first. On a basic level, paying yourself first means allocating money to your savings from every paycheck before using it for anything else — but there are different ways to do it. If your employer offers a 401(k) and you sign up, contributions can be taken directly from your paycheck. If not, you can set up automatic transfers to an IRA so that you're funding your retirement plan every month. You can also set up automatic transfers from a checking account, where your paycheck might land, to a savings account to build an emergency fund. Having emergency cash reserves could spare you from having to take out a loan or put an unplanned expense on a credit card. Experian says that baby boomers have an average of $6,754 in credit card debt. But having savings ready at all times could help you avoid debt and the financial insecurity it can lead to. Read more: You don't have to be a millionaire to gain access to . In fact, you can get started with as little as $10 — here's how As people's paychecks increase, a funny thing starts to happen. Instead of taking the opportunity to save more money, many folks opt to spend more instead. But that could lead to more stress, more debt and less stability. A 2024 report from PYMNTS Intelligence found that 48% of Americans earning more than $100,000 a year live paycheck to paycheck. And the reason may boil down to lifestyle creep. Financially literate boomers don't let themselves increase their spending as they edge toward the end of their careers and their earnings peak. Instead, they find ways to be happy with their current standard of living and continue saving so they can support their lifestyles without worry once retirement arrives. It's a practice you may want to adopt so you can benefit from your growing paycheck instead of having it become a source of stress. Investing isn't just important when you're young and trying to build retirement wealth. It's just as important to hold your investments as you approach retirement, and during retirement. Boomers that are financially stable continue to invest, and they don't completely withdraw from the stock market out of fear. It's a good idea to scale back on stocks as you age to minimize your risks. But ditching stocks completely could mean not generating enough income to lead the lifestyle you want. A 2024 Empower review of baby boomers' investments found that they tend to allocate 36% of their assets to U.S. stocks and only 7.6% to international stocks, which can be more volatile. It also found that boomers tend to keep 10.5% of their assets in U.S. bonds and 29.6% in cash. Boomers who maintain a diverse investment mix over time often end up having more stable returns. They should also consider assets that can generate income for them once they're no longer working. Some options that work well in that regard include dividend stocks, municipal bonds and real estate investment trusts (REITs). Certificate of deposit (CD) laddering can also be a good option, namely because doing so offers low-risk returns while earning different interest rates over different term lengths. When each CD reaches maturity, you can reinvest your earnings. When interest rates fall, CDs become less attractive. However, in the near term, CDs are another smart option for boomers to consider for their investments. Savvy boomers also invest in the most tax-advantaged manner possible. For those who are still working, IRAs and 401(k)s make sense. The nice thing about these accounts is that there are no age limits for making your annual contributions, so boomers can fund them as long as they're still working and earning money. You may want to continue funding your IRA or 401(k) for as long as possible to take advantage of the tax benefits involved. This tiny hot Costco item has skyrocketed 74% in price in under 2 years — but now the retail giant is restricting purchases. Here's how to buy the coveted asset in bulk Robert Kiyosaki warns of a 'Greater Depression' coming to the US — with millions of Americans going poor. But he says these 2 'easy-money' assets will bring in 'great wealth'. How to get in now Rich, young Americans are ditching the stormy stock market — here are the alternative assets they're banking on instead Here are 5 'must have' items that Americans (almost) always overpay for — and very quickly regret. How many are hurting you? Stay in the know. Join 200,000+ readers and get the best of Moneywise sent straight to your inbox every week for free. This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
