Vending Machine Franchises

Want a vending machine business in a box? A vending franchise may be right for you, but there are some things you need to know before you get swayed by a franchiser's sales pitch.

Let me start out with all the good things about franchises: you get a business in a box that has all the brand marketing, inventory mangement systems, product development and everything else done for you. The brand recognition alone is worth a lot. You also get a proven business plan, and the ability (sometimes) to communicate with the franchiser and other franchisees. This saves you hundreds if not thousands of hours that a small business owner would otherwise have to spend prefecting every single system and task that's involved with the business -- everything from websites and stationary to sourcing product, hiring employees -- the works.



All that makes for a pretty good package of value. And franchisers know it. That's why many franchises are $50,000 or more, but typically in the vending business you can get in for $8000 to $15000. That price tag alone makes a vending machine franchise more within reach for a lot of hopeful entrepreneurs.

While that's good news, there are some drawbacks to franchises. There are a lot of rules, so if you are the sort of person who believes there are five different ways to do anything, and in different situations each on of the five options can be in play, then a franchise contract may not be your friend. Also, once you get really good at the vending business, you may want to do things differently than the franchiser. And you may discover that you franchiser is not quite as great as their sales pitch suggested. Sometimes product quality of both machines and what you're selling is subpar. Deliveries are slow. Communication is poor to nonexistent.

Not all franchises are created equal. Though a franchiser will give you a lot of information, really you have not done your homework until you talk with another franchisee about their experience. And talking to just one person is really not good enough -- if you want to make sure that $10,000 you're about to take out of your 401k is going to go to good use, you should talk to at least three other franchisees. If that means flying to another city and buying someone an expensive dinner so they'll really talk to you at length, so be it.

All that said, there are two major vending machine franchises that are good places to start looking.

1) 1800Vending.com

You get snack and drink vending machines or "Refreshment Stations" that can take debit and credit cards, have a 7 year warranty and Remote Machine Monitoring (RMM), which means you can track how your vending machines are doing from your computer. You can put many different kinds of products into the machines, including drinks or different sizes, which 1800Vending promotes as being a very big deal.

You can locate the machines yourself, or 1800Vending will put you in touch with their locators. There is ongoing training available once you've bought in, and there are thousands of franchisees across the US, so there's clearly some kind of success happening here. So how much? A 5 machine package costs $23,000. Their locators charge $300 per machine. Ask them about whatever deals they're running and you could save yourself several thousand dollars. There is no financing available through 1800Vending, so you'll have to go to an outside source for that.

2) Vendstar

This company comes up in every vending franchise list. They do bulk vending -- aka empty, coin operated vending machines that dispense gumballs and nuts and what not. If you've got a sweet tooth for the candy machine vending business, these guys may be your dish. Their main vending machine is the Vendstar 6000, which has three compartments for three different kinds of bulk munchies. The machine holds up to 25 pounds of candy or about 8.5 pounds in each compartment, or "canister" as they're referred to.

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