Scale your vending route

2Know the target

What a full-time income actually requires.

A route of 15 to 25 or more well-placed machines is usually what generates a meaningful full-time income — somewhere around $1,200 to $3,000 or more per month in net profit. A six-figure net points to a route in the low-to-mid dozens of well-placed machines. Those are net figures, after product, commission, and fees, and the word doing the work in both of them is well-placed.

• 15 to 25+ machines is the usual threshold for meaningful full-time income
• That looks like roughly $1,200 to $3,000+ per month in net profit
• A six-figure net points to low-to-mid dozens of well-placed machines
• Machine count without placement quality just multiplies a weak result

Well-placed machines for a full-time income

15–25+Well-placed machines for a full-time income

Net profit per month at that count

$1,200–$3,000+Net profit per month at that count

A week to run a placed route

2–15 hrsA week to run a placed route

3Two ways to grow

Place the next machine, or buy somebody else's route.

Organic growth through pop-ins is the path most operators start on and it stays available forever. The other path is acquisition: buying an existing route or book of accounts from an operator who is exiting. It moves faster and costs capital up front, and it comes with somebody else's placement decisions — which you now know how to evaluate, because you have run steps one through six on your own machines.

• Organic: repeat the pitch that worked, in the building type that worked
• Acquisition: buy an existing route and inherit its accounts immediately
• Evaluate an acquisition on the same per-machine margin you use on your own
• Either path needs the service capacity in place before, not after