I run both AI and traditional vending machines. Most of my route is AI. Here’s why. What you can sell. AI machines hold far more than chips and soda: battery chargers, tumblers, Tide Pods, toilet paper, Kleenex. More products means more ways to solve a problem at that location. How they look. When you’re pitching a property manager, a sleek machine makes a much stronger first impression than one that looks like it’s been in a break room since the 90s. A new revenue stream. Many AI machines have a video board built in, so the screen can earn ad revenue. That option never existed for traditional machines. Repairs. No coin jams, no bill collector, no spiral motors. An AI machine is basically a refrigerator with a computer. I own five traditional machines, and I’ve paid for plenty of repairs on them. Where traditional still wins. High-theft locations and places like correctional facilities. In those settings, simpler and tougher is the better call. The takeaway isn’t “AI good, traditional bad.” It’s matching the machine to the location.

Vending isn’t passive. Here’s what it actually asked of me. When I started, I’d never seen the inside of a vending machine. I had to learn all of it, from the ground up. It asked for the boring work every week: restocking, service calls, follow-ups with property managers. It asked for patience. My numbers built month by month, not overnight. Here’s what it gave back. My machines’ sales now stay steady month to month. If one does $1,000 this month, it’ll do about $950 to $1,050 the next. In my old real estate business, I’d have a $40K month and then make it last 3 or 4 months until the next one. The work doesn’t disappear in this business. It just becomes predictable. My advice to anyone starting something: get 1% better every day. #MondayMotivation

Friday Wins: A Vendingpreneur added 10 machines in 2 months and still raised what each one makes. Adding that many machines that fast is hard enough. He also made each one better. Between Feb 19 and Apr 22, he installed 10 new units. Over the same stretch, his average sales per machine went from about $3,000 a month to $3,771. Two things made the difference: He fixed the product mix. He pulled what wasn’t moving and doubled down on what was. He invested in service. His team gives a free snack or drink at every refill. It paid off: a property manager who moved to a new building called him to install there too. That’s the kind of growth I like to see. Every new location gets better, not just bigger.

42 of my 47 vending locations are over an hour from my house. That isn’t a mistake. It’s how the route was built. Most advice tells new operators to start close to home. I understand why. It feels safer. But distance from your house is the wrong thing to optimize for. My route started at an alderman’s birthday party. I got talking with a developer there, and that conversation turned into my anchor location. That one relationship led to more locations, and I built the rest of the route around them. That’s clustering. When your stops are close to each other, it matters a lot less how far they are from where you live. One trip covers a whole cluster of stops. If you’re building a route, here’s the order I’d follow: Land one strong anchor location. Ask who else they know. Only add locations that fit the same trip. Don’t ask “what’s close to me?” Ask “who do I know, and where does it lead?”

Some of my worst product decisions looked like sure things. Every one of these made sense on paper. That’s what made them dangerous. A healthier, premium energy drink at a manufacturing warehouse. It barely moved, while the familiar big-can energy drink next to it kept selling. Right product, wrong location. Those workers wanted what gets them through a shift, not what’s trending online. A premium snack with better ingredients and a higher price. People went right back to the brands they knew. At a machine, people decide fast. An unfamiliar product at a premium price makes them stop and think, and that pause kills the sale. A product I personally loved. It sat for 2 months before I admitted it wasn’t working. Your taste is not data. And the small chip bag. It cost me 38¢ and sold for $1.25, so 87¢ profit. The bigger bag cost 65¢ and sold for $2.99, so $2.34 profit. Same slot, almost 3x the profit. My rule now: test anything new in one slot, not a whole row. Give it a fair test, watch the numbers, then move. What sells depends on the people at that location. Not on what looks good to you.

My kids found my business before I did. Every Saturday, the second gymnastics class ended, 20 to 25 families ran to one old-school vending machine in the lobby. Goldfish. Pirate’s Booty. Hershey bars. A line every single week. My family was in that line too. I didn’t know anything about vending. But I knew what I was watching: people wanted something right then, and the machine was the only thing there. When I started looking for a business I could own, I kept coming back to that machine. So did my wife. She’d seen the line too. #MondayMotivation

This water costs me $1.39. I sell it for $5.99. That’s not a 330% margin. That’s markup. Markup is what people brag about. Margin is what you keep. Here’s what actually happens to that $5.99: Product margin: $5.99 minus $1.39 is $4.60. About 77% of the sale. Card fee: almost every sale is tap or swipe, and the processor takes about 5.9%. That’s about 35 cents. Location’s cut: some locations take a commission, usually 2% to 5%. At 5%, that’s another 30 cents. Now you’re at about $3.95 a bottle. What doesn’t sell: product that expires or sits is money you spent and never got back. Getting it there: stockers, gas, the warehouse. My team gets paid whether a bottle sells or not. What’s left across my whole route: about 16% to 18% of revenue, depending on the month. Real money. Just not the number people post online. Revenue is vanity. Profit is sanity. Cash flow is reality.

I charge $29.99 for a phone charger. I can’t keep them in stock. It’s not about the price. It’s about the moment. Someone checks into a hotel late. Their phone is almost dead. The charger is at home. They’re not price shopping. They need it tonight. Same idea, different products: Hotel “pharmacy.” Ibuprofen, Tylenol, cold medicine. Costs me $1.50, sells for $5.99. I sold 7 Tylenols in the first 3 days at one location. Protein at the gym. Costs me about $3.76, sells for $7.99. Right after a workout, it’s the obvious buy. At a desk at 2pm, it sits. A product sells out when it has three things: a real need, a specific moment, and no better option nearby. So before you stock anything, ask what people at that location are already asking for.

Most vending locations aren’t worth your machine. After testing 500, these are the 3 types I’d go after first: Multi-shift warehouses. Two or three strong shifts, set break times, and nowhere close to grab food. When people can’t leave, they buy. Centralized apartments. One building or a clubhouse, one elevator bank, one package room. Everyone walks past the machine. Skip spread-out, garden-style layouts. Outpatient medical. Steady patient flow and long waits. The doctor says “take some Advil.” Your machine is in the lobby. All 3 share the same 4 things: high daily traffic, people who can’t easily leave, a spot everyone sees, and few other options nearby. If a location is missing those, walk away. Even if they say yes.