How To Set Up A Vending Machine Business

This spotlight features a great chap by the name of Steven, he runs his own vending machine business as a side hustle and he will be sharing his journey into the business with us on this interview.

I wanted to show with this post the diversity of what you can do if you really do want to earn some extra cash. Steven has many side hustles he talks about here.

A great interview and I know you will gain some inspiration from it.

We are familiar with the usual hustles like eBay, Amazon FBA, blogging, etc but this is something a little bit different, and a great one at that!

Over to you Steven.

The Vending Machine Hustle!

[ME] – Hello Steven, thanks for agreeing to come on the spotlight. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you ended up where you are today?

Thanks for having me! My name is Steven and I live in a small farming town in Arizona. I am a 27-year-old husband and father, and my 4-year-old son and 6-month-old daughter are my pride and joy.

I myself have been a self-proclaimed “side hustler” since a child. From lemonade stands to flipping cell phones in high school and college. After I got married I started working for a copper mine in order to pay the bills, and for a while, everything went alright.

Around two years ago I decided I was not happy with my finances, and that I needed to get serious about my income, savings, and debt. I started to get back into many of the side hustles that I had as a kid and started experimenting with many new ones as well.

Thanks to my current side hustles, I was able to quickly get out of debt and start investing my money as I have always wanted to.

[ME] – What side hustles are you doing at the moment?

I started out flipping cell phones and other electronics that I could find on craigslist and Facebook. That quickly turned into flipping other electronics from yard sales and thrift stores on eBay. I quickly realized that since I live in a small town, I could only make so much money from that and that I needed to find other side hustles.

Because of that, I am consistently trying new ones, but the side hustles that I have had the most success with and that I am putting the most effort into right now are rental properties, social media management, freelance writing, and vending machines.

[ME] – Would you care to elaborate on the vending machines hustle? That sounds awesome, what made you get into that? How many machines do you have?

I got started in the vending machine business after I had made a decent amount of money with my online side hustles and didn’t want to waste all of it on anything dumb like a fancy new car.

I decided if I invested that money into something, I could make much more money down the road. So I started researching more passive forms of income and found the vending machine business.

It instantly made perfect sense to me, as a vending machine could literally be making me money 24 hours a day, 7 days a week without me ever having to be there.

I mentioned to a coworker of mine that I was thinking about starting a vending machine business. He told me that I could place a machine inside of his arcade and laser tag business in town.

After buying a used vending machine and putting it in his business, I quickly realized that this side hustle was one of the easiest and best ways to leverage my time for money. I then grew my vending machine business from one machine to eight within a few weeks.

Steven’s first and original small candy machine, which still brings him in $60 per month profit.

[ME] – So, you’ve recently written a book on this side hustle too? How did you find the process of doing that?

As soon as I started the vending machine business, I began getting a ton of questions from friends, family, and random people asking me about it. That turned into even more questions once I started posting online.

Personally, I am a huge fan of ebooks and thought that maybe a book about starting a vending machine side hustle would be able to help out all of the people that are curious about owning some vending machines as well.

So I opened up a word document and tried to cover every single question I have ever gotten about this business, as well as the best advice I could give to someone who is just starting out.

I made a lot of mistakes starting this business, and my hope is that this book can help others avoid these same mistakes. After writing the entire book I had to do a little research on where to go from there. But I was able to figure out how to get it finished and on Kindle for everyone to find and enjoy!

Grab a copy of Stevens’s book here if you want to start your own vending machine business!

If you have any questions about this business then drop a comment on the blog or reach out to Steven on his Instagram page.

[ME] – Thanks for being on – we always like to end with a tip for new starters. What would your advice be to people who want to start a side hustle?

No matter what side hustle you are considering, just get started! I have thought about many side hustles for months before finally jumping in and starting. All that time could have been spent building the side hustle, increasing my skills, and making more money. You don’t need to know everything or be 100% prepared, just get started and learn as you go!

My Thoughts & Key Points

I’d like to wish Steven and his family all the best for the future, sounds like the side hustle business is really taking off which is awesome to see!

For me, the key points here are Steven didn’t get carried away after generating some income with it. He invested his money and grew his business up. His vending machines require little attention now and they are all little cash-generating assets in their own right. It’s great.

Key takeaways: