Government Employee Shows Vending Makes Cents

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

When a government employee looks to counteract her serious day job with something fun, she stumbles upon the vending machine hustle. Hey, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau, so glad you're here. Now, I don't think we have ever talked about vending machines before.

Maybe at some point, some reference, but I don't think we've done a whole story about the vending machine business. And fun fact, this was actually one of my life dreams when I was about 16 years old. I was looking at all kinds of weird business opportunities and I was like, man, one day I want to own vending machines. You know, and I did some research about the industry, such as it was, you know, long ago. And I never actually made it happen, but I was amused and reminded of that fantasy when we came across this story.

Because back in my time, vending machines mostly sold candy bars and soda, along with some that sold cigarettes, pretty old school. These days, they stock all kinds of items, from foldable ballerina slippers to cartons of eggs to beauty products. It used to be like this in Japan. Japan was always the leading force of, you know, vending machines, and I'm sure they still are. But eventually, America caught up in probably the rest of the world.

So it's a whole new vending world out there. Let's look at the story. Government employee shows vending makes sense. Makes sense, right? Like sense and money.

Okay, all right, stay tuned. That story is coming up in just 30 seconds. [Music]

Lakenia Francis works a government job in what she describes as a fairly serious environment. That seriousness was a big part of why she began looking for something different. Specifically, her hope was to find something fun to do outside of the regular nine to five, with a hopeful byproduct of making extra money doing it.

After some time, a side hustle idea popped into her head right at her workplace, and it came from the office vending machine. Lakenia noticed the vending machine guy came around twice a week to restock the machines. With that amount of regularity, she thought he must be making good money. So she began researching exactly how the business worked. She read blog posts and watched countless YouTube videos.

In a few weeks, she felt like she'd become somewhat of an expert. The only thing she hadn't done was put her theory into practice. So here's an important fact. It turns out that many vending machines are privately owned by individuals rather than large companies. Lakenia was ready to be one of those individuals.

She put her coin in the slot and waited for it to drop. The first step was to buy a machine, so it was time to go shopping. And the first place she looked was OfferUp, a local classifieds app similar to Craigslist. There, she stumbled upon a set of machines being sold nearby. Lakenia offered $1,000 for the pair, and just like that, she was in the vending business.

She was excited. The summer of 2017 had just rolled around, and she was having Milky Way dreams about all the extra money she might make. Instead, the machine sat dormant in her garage for over three months. You see, it's easy enough to buy a vending machine, but finding a good location for it, well, that's a little harder. In fact, this is the most important task at hand if you want to be in the vending machine business.

And that's why Lakenia couldn't place her machine straight away, but she knew patience would prevail and was willing to hold out for the right spot, also critical. She knew from reading that a good location had regular foot traffic and a high turnover of people. Of course, finding that location and having the business owner agree to host her machines are two different things. Many businesses she approached said no to her offer, which went like this. Lakenia would stock the machine with products as well as install and maintain it for free.

In exchange, she'd keep whatever profit she made. At first, she struggled with the rejection. In her mind, it was a no brainer for the business. To convince them, she added a few more key points to her pitch. She sold them on the benefits to their customers and employees, stressing that they'd have to do literally nothing to maintain the machine.

Furthermore, Lakenia would include them in the product selection process. So a business could be certain the vending products would fit their demographic. She sold the whole concept behind the business name, iCrave Vending. With this refined spiel, it didn't take long to find her first location, a tire shop in downtown Miami. She had it delivered fully stocked and was so excited that she went to check sales the very next day and had already sold a cool $30 worth of soda.

Soon after, she found a second location and then she purchased a third machine and placed it as well. Eventually, she had multiple machines in locations all over the city and was collecting thousands of dollars per month in revenue. This was a side hustle she felt anyone could find success with, which also got her thinking. It seemed like every other day, someone was asking her how she got into this and how they could too. She began to wonder if she could teach others what she knew by becoming somewhat of a vending consultant.

After all, she'd taken herself from novice to expert and felt confident she could teach others the same. Using the iCrave name, she made an Instagram account and began posting helpful tips for those interested in vending. By the way, you can follow her if you'd like at iCrave Vending, that's crave with a K. I'll link it up in the notes. She also interacted with many business-related accounts and eventually built up a small following of her own.

By pitching to that audience, Lakenia now makes almost as much from consulting as she does from the machines, which still bring in $2,500 a month. Not one to let things fizzle out, she's also expanding into different types of machines. First, beauty products, which have a much higher average purchase price. Then, and get this, the launch of a new live bait vending machine in Key West, the first of its kind. From soda fizz to fish, Lakenia shows vending machines make so much sense.

[Music]

Well, I never got to live out my own vending machine fantasy, so I'm grateful to Lakenia for taking me on that throwback journey. And so here is the key point about the vending machine business. I alluded to it a bit in the story. Key point is it's all about location. It's kind of like real estate, you know, the real estate business.

Location, location, location, point number one, number two, number three. And there's also a whole subreddit that consists of people interested in the business of vending machines, as well as fans of historical vending machines. It's a whole rabbit hole. That's on Reddit, reddit.com/r/bendingmachines, or just search vending machines on Reddit. So you can learn more if you want, but again, key factor is where you're gonna put that machine because some machines bring in $100 a month and some bring in $1,000 or more.

So just a tremendous variance all depending on where they're placed. Keep that in mind if you decide to go down that route. If not, hopefully you enjoyed the story. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Today's notes, including links to iCrave vending, anything else I mentioned in the episode.

Those will be at sidehustleschool.com/1485. Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you'll continue to listen. Be sure you're subscribed wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Chris Guillebeau.

This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]