What His First 30 Days in Vending Really Looked Like
A food-truck owner facing a saturated, seasonal market bought an 18-location drink route doing $7,000/month within his first 30 days in vending.
$7K/mo
Purchased Route Revenue
23
Machines
30 days
Time in Business
It's at about $7,000 a month right now — without my machines, without me touching it.
Background
Jesse Lee, 44, of Rapid City, South Dakota, had owned a food truck for 10 years — work he describes as feast-or-famine, watching his money climb every summer and drain away every winter. The market had also gotten saturated: 70 food trucks now compete in a town of under 100,000 people. Before the food truck, he ran a utilities and excavation construction company in Denver that a business partner bankrupted after a buyout. He researched other income options for 18 months and followed Vendingpreneurs founder Mike Hoffman for about six months before signing up.
"For the past year and a half I've been researching and researching and researching on some kind of other income."
The Challenge
Jesse says cost is usually the objection people lead with, but for him the bigger fear was doing it wrong alone — not knowing how to structure a contract, and feeling out of his depth with technology.
"It's probably usually about the cost, right? But if you don't have a correct contract, as far as I'm concerned, anything could happen to you. Anything tech, I'm an idiot."
The Turning Point
Mike responded to him personally on Instagram, which Jesse found surprising for someone with no obligation to help a stranger. The decision itself came fast: the same day he signed up, he had his first serious pop-in meeting and needed a contract and flyer ready to go.
"The fact that he would actually respond to me — just some random guy on Instagram — I thought it was actually pretty cool that you would help somebody when you don't need to do that."
Where They Are Now
Thirty days in, Jesse has placed three of his own locations — an office building, the biggest dentist office in Rapid City, and an apartment complex signed the day before the interview — and bought an 18-location drink route already doing about $7,000 a month on its own, seller-financed with no bank loan. He's now up to 23 machines total, with a goal of 40 within 17 months.
"Finally I found something that got me motivated again to get back up and get my ass off the couch."
