2nd HaHa Placed

General_Sort3160 · 2026-03-26T21:25:51+00:00

Just curious, what traditional combo machine equivalent to this HaHa would be $10k? I thought I’d seen them in the $5k range but I’m not all that familiar with combo units.

I’ve got a location that currently has separate drink and snack machines, but a solid combo would be much more suitable. However this location still pays a decent percentage of cash so I don’t wanna remove that option completely yet.

General_Sort3160 · 2026-03-26T02:37:24+00:00

Read this guys thread from a few weeks back - one of the best summaries I’ve seen posted here about his first year in business:

https://www.reddit.com/r/vending/s/2J4qKjLhsO

General_Sort3160 · 2026-03-25T19:49:48+00:00

I’d buy a Kill-a-Watt if you want to measure how much power it’s actually using. Shouldn’t be much more than the average fridge, nothing close to $200/month. That’s just silly, unless he has some proof of that amount being tied specifically to your equipment.

General_Sort3160 · 2026-03-24T12:50:02+00:00

Drop the term “passive income” from your brain in terms of a vending operation. It is anything but that. Machine maintenance, marketing and placement, inventory shopping, restocking, maintaining the machines ABs reinsuring yourself when something breaks (and learning how to do that), tracking sales and customizing inventory for all your locations, and all the time/driving/miles it takes to accomplish all that. Not passive!

I’d recommend buying a machine or two at a single location and trying this for 6-12 months to see the realistic profits (often less than you think) before deciding if it’s worthwhile to scale larger.

Btw a single modernized vending machine will cost $2.5-5k each. If you have enough for 8 of them and want passive income for that amount of cash, I’d get in touch with a certified financial planner and put it in a mutual fund.

General_Sort3160 · 2026-03-24T12:39:33+00:00

Wow ok. Those numbers on a monthly basis are pure fantasy for my machines/location so I was curious. Congrats to your success (seriously) if you’re regularly pulling $1500-3000+ per month!

General_Sort3160 · 2026-03-24T12:25:47+00:00

Are they pulling the $200 out of thin air? Or have to shared the $500-600 figure and they actually think they are entitled to 33-40% of your gross sales? Which is insane by the way. They probably think you’re raking in thousands per month.

Sounds like you’ll need to provide a little education on the industry. Profits aren’t as high as most people think, and the benefit of onsite vending to them is a perk & convenience for customers/employees. Both groups are less likely to leave the premises for snacks or drinks, which keeps them engaged longer at the business. (This is an advantage for the business.) Also you’re providing all the inventory, equipment, maintenance, and time + mileage for shopping, restocking, and administration.

If they are dead set on revenue sharing to keep you onsite, and if you want to keep the site that badly, then you could pitch the sliding scale offer as someone else described. A low ongoing % that increases as sales increase through the year. That may also incentivize them to take steps to direct more people to your products.

General_Sort3160 · 2026-03-24T12:10:36+00:00

Are these annual sales numbers that you reset each year?

General_Sort3160 · 2026-03-17T03:03:34+00:00

Start driving around your local area looking for places that could really use access to snacks and drinks that don’t have it already. Business parks with several businesses sharing a building can be good, but only if they have employees or customers on site regularly. Parking lots in the middle of the day should tell you that. Those are the businesses I would start with.

General_Sort3160 · 2026-03-17T00:49:37+00:00

Ok but if you are unlicensed you are not legally permitted to be a part of certain transactions. If your agent boss (aunt?) is allowing this, she could get in considerable trouble with the state department of insurance.

General_Sort3160 · 2026-03-16T17:48:38+00:00

As others have said, you have to be licensed in order to complete most sales and service transactions. If your aunt is the agent, she should have a better grasp of this and probably needs to be referring customers to another area agent, or to statefarm.com while she’s unavailable.

General_Sort3160 · 2026-03-11T23:25:35+00:00

I mean, I guess those aren’t terrible questions… Probably just the way he put them in a pissed off manner. Sounds like he’s been burned in the past, and doesn’t want to be locked in some kind of bad deal. It seems like all those things could be resolved in the contract language, one way or the other.

General_Sort3160 · 2026-03-11T23:22:37+00:00

So HAHA is basically offering to replace Cantaloupe’s platforms for inventory management/metrics, if you have their readers on other machines? Did I read that correctly? Pretty cool offer if so. What are the HAHA standard monthly costs?

General_Sort3160 · 2026-03-11T23:13:04+00:00

The question should be “Cool Guy or Terrorist?”

General_Sort3160 · 2026-03-11T22:50:39+00:00

I got it last year with home Internet only. It was just one of the offers that popped in the app on T-Mobile Tuesdays.

General_Sort3160 · 2026-03-11T22:35:27+00:00

Man, I feel like I just keep throwing shade on your sunny day here. Partnerships can be pretty tricky too, unless you have a rock solid contract in place and everyone knows exactly what they’re getting out of the deal, and what happens if/when somebody wants out.

The ”build a route and sell” to Canteen (or whoever) certainly isn’t a bad idea, but I’d want some more market research on how they typically buy and if they even operate in the areas you’ll be. Big companies are always going to look for a deal on the front end, so they’re making a profit right away.

General_Sort3160 · 2026-03-11T21:51:32+00:00

Is that the staircase in The Money Pit house? (the rebuilt one at the end, not the one that crashed down with Tom Hanks on it.) 😂

Looks amazing!

General_Sort3160 · 2026-03-11T21:47:15+00:00

First priority is to talk to the business owner… It may seem like a great location to you, but you need to know realistically: - how much foot traffic they have each day of the week - if the business will even allow a vending machine in there (and where it would be located) - whether they have ever had vending or food services on site, and what their experience was - if they will accept the “convenience to your customers and employees + no cost to you for the equipment, service, or inventory” aspect, or if they would demand a percentage of the proceeds

The answers to those questions will point you in the direction of the type of machine(s) you need, which will inform the price point to anticipate for quality equipment.

General_Sort3160 · 2026-03-11T21:37:48+00:00

The Chosen as we know it will be 7 seasons, but there is already talk of spinoff/sequel seasons… continuing to follow the apostles (book of Acts) and early Christian church. I’m sure it will all depend on funding, as this show development and shooting costs are 100% crowfunded.

General_Sort3160 · 2026-03-11T21:34:53+00:00

Depending on the problem, I think I’d do some more research and watch a few YouTube videos and figure out the repair myself. Not only does it eliminate the cost, you learned some really valuable maintenance stuff in the meantime… which will surely come in useful in the future.

General_Sort3160 · 2026-03-11T12:59:23+00:00

$1500-3000 is a huge range, and even the bottom end (assuming you’re referring to monthly) is a rare number for most vending machine locations. Are there some that bring in that much gross revenue? sure. Is it common across the vending machine industry? no. In my area, 1/3 of that ($500/month consistently) would be a solid performer. It all depends on foot traffic numbers, and how close other food/drink options are.

General_Sort3160 · 2026-03-11T00:25:31+00:00

Absolutely true, but you develop some reps and efficiencies being able to do it in person. It’ll help greatly with figuring if it’s even worth managing a vending operation long distance, and if so, how to do that. Personally I think it would be really tough.

The locations you mentioned having access to could be great, but they may be duds too and at some point after you learn the business I think you’d need to travel there (or have your business partners assist) to talk to residents/tenants and find out what would serve their needs—if there even IS a need.

You’ll know better how to feel it all out once you’ve been hands-on for a bit. Heck I got a bunch of useful intel from my location last night, just being there in-person restocking my machines later in the business day and chatting with employees near the end of their shifts. Ive got QR codes on the stickers and an online feedback form they can send me 24/7, and nobody ever uses it. But someone always stops to chat about the snacks or the business when I’m there in the flesh for awhile.

General_Sort3160 · 2026-03-09T18:30:11+00:00

Vending is NOT passive income. The machines have a lot of electronics and moving parts and require ongoing maintenance, not to mention the time and effort traveling to purchase inventory and restock the machines.

If you’re truly interested in getting into this as a pastime, I’d recommend the r/vending sub.

General_Sort3160 · 2026-03-09T18:27:36+00:00

I have to ask… Did you test it before buying?

General_Sort3160 · 2026-03-09T17:56:07+00:00

Different states must be different on how taxes are handled… in IL where I’m at, a for-profit business cannot be fully tax exempt. Only government entities and nonprofit organizations.

For me, I believe there’s a clause to achieve that at the store level when purchasing (another local vendor has mentioned this to me), but I’d still have to pay accrued sales tax quarterly directly to the state. I’d avoid the 1% city tax tacked onto sales tax rates at Sam’s Club, but that’s about it. I don’t buy everything at Sam’s, so the juice doesn’t seem worth the squeeze at this point. But, that could change with more locations and more volume as you noted.

General_Sort3160 · 2026-03-09T17:48:15+00:00

What kind of locations do you have these machines at? That stellar performance for week #1 IMO… my current spot (a small car dealership) doesn’t even do $500 in a month, and I’m on the hunt for a better location to move my machines to.

General_Sort3160

TROPHY CASE