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Well, basically it cost however much money you want it to cost. A vending business can very easily be started part time with a couple used vending machines picked up on Craig’s List for $50 a piece. But, keep in mind that you don’t make a lot of money per machine, only about $7 per head, so you’ll be working a long time until you can buy more machines and expand your route.

Some people think they want to quit their day job, invest a bunch of money and then just start vending. This is a much riskier proposition. For one thing, if you’ve never done vending before, how do you know you will actually like it? And a lot of people don’t realize that the return on vending machines is so low and that it requires a lot of machines to make a living. Also, many people fail to realize how much of their identity is wrapped up in their job title. If you’re making $60,000 a year with a certain job title, even though you may still make $60,000 a year in vending, somewhat ironically a lot of people view it as a “less than” job. Like vending is something you do only if you’ve proven unsuccessful in other ventures. This may deal a blow to the ego of some people.

I think the best way to go is a happy medium. Buy 20-40 used vending machines, either already on location or needing to be placed and get a feel for the business. This amount of machines is enough to make you a small profit and will allow you to determine if vending is a good match for you. If you only have 1 or 2 machines, I can almost guarantee that collecting the $20 a month in gross income from these machines will leave you discouraged. You need 20-40 to really see the possibility of vending.