Chasing Passive Income, Americans Turn to Vending Machines | Hacker News Reader

Chasing Passive Income, Americans Turn to Vending Machines

wsj.com

50 pointslxm63 comments

I looked into doing this in the 2010s and it’s really an enormous pain in the ass to scale. A lot of the turnkey options were pretty much scams too. Machines that vended DVDs were popular back then.

You have to find the hot spots, negotiate for the space, deal with any vandalism, reload the machines, respond to problems. Not what many would consider “passive”

When machines were cash only you could theoretically avoid taxes on some of the income, something that might have offset some of the hassles. With credit cards and electronic payment that’s not really possible.

When machines were cash only, there was a big box of cash sitting unguarded on a lonely corner at 3am...

I've drilled out the lock on an old Coke machine my dad bought at an auction.

It's not a fast, discreet, or easy process.

That's why you drag it somewhere you can do it in peace.

That’s why it is so rare for people to drag vending machines somewhere to do it in peace.

They are big and bulky and heavy and all that work for, what, $80? Junkies aren’t usually that coordinated to pull this off.

$80 is a good payday for a junkie. I've seen junkies steal manhole covers for a couple bucks of scrap metal.

Stealing manhole covers is quite easy compared to hauling off a vending machine and drilling out the cash box.

$80 sitting easy is great for a junkie. But requiring multiple steps and special equipment may as well be a voyage to the moon.

For proper criminals who can plan and procure equipment, $80 probably isn’t enticing.

As a teenager (back in the gold age of arcade) i used to work as a helper on an arcade, vending machines and jukeboxes repair shop. I’ll tell you none of those machines are easy to drag arround!

Tubular locks are fast, discreet, and easy to pick. You need a specialized tool, but when you do opening the lock is almost as easy as just using the key.

And that's assuming your vending machine isn't using some standard key you can just outright buy on ebay.

On cheaper tubular locks, that specialized tool is a pen cap.

That’s true of 70-80% of tubular locks, but there are higher quality tubular locks that are designed with the standard tubular impressioning tool in mind, and on which it does not work.

The only kind of vending machine low maintenance enough that I think it can count as passive is digital vending machines that only take electronic payment, e.g. a Bitcoin ATM. There's no physical goods to restock so once it's in place, you're hopefully good for a long time. But as you point out, even getting the location, the machine, and then installing it, is enough work to potentially not fully count as passive.

And those are heavily regulated in US -- moreso than just an average bank ATM from what I understand.

> You have to find the hot spots, negotiate for the space, deal with any vandalism, reload the machines, respond to problems. Not what many would consider “passive”

I’ve spent a lot of time in various solopreneur, micropreneur, and indie hacker communities. One thing you have to understand is that for a large majority of people (we’re talking 90%+), the alternative to not-quite-passive income, isn’t a cushy software engineering job or even a job in tech. It’s working grueling hours under the heel of some asshole manager or owner jerking you around 12 hours per day while you sweat your ass off in unpleasant conditions.

All the hassle you described sounds like a beach vacation compared to stacking boxes in a warehouse or cooking brunch in some greasy restaurant or bar.

I used to mentor an ex head chef who got into software engineering through a bootcamp and the stories she would tell … wow. She said that just being able to take a bathroom break whenever felt like a luxurious perk.

> It’s working grueling hours under the heel of some asshole manager or owner jerking you around 12 hours per day while you sweat your ass off in unpleasant conditions.

Sounds about the same as a tech lead or SRE job minus the sweating in a warehouse.

Hey, in this industry we desperately need to replace the lazy boomers who don't hustle anymore and want to spend half their work from home day picking up their kids from soccer practice. Anyone willing to pivot into a tech job is welcome in my book just maybe not in much beyond a junior dev position.

I'd prefer they take those bootcamp skills and apply them to front office work like talking to clients and gathering requirements or sales. A little bit of tech knowledge can go a very long way and we sorely need that in traditionally non-technical roles. I don't get the obsession over coding for a living when the salary isn't that different elsewhere in the office. I've never met a bootcamp person who really wanted to code. Incentives are better aligned with other work and leaning on what they learned in bootcamp.

I guess the Gold Vending Machine in Dubai is not for you then :)

[https://whatson.ae/2023/08/the-uaes-wildest-vending-machines...]

I wonder how much of a difference there is in the quality and reliability of Japan's machines and countries where is not common. I've worked at the Madrid airport in Spain and every single day we have a problem with this things and that would destroy the concept of "passive income". On the other hand, it's not that easy to find a good user interface, or at least to me.

This isn’t Japan half the cost will be in securing the machine from vandals and thieves

One would think there would be a higher rate of vandalism in Asian societies as all it takes is one with a crowbar[1] and the more prominent mask wearing culture.

1 https://japantoday.com/category/crime/charges-dropped-agains...

Goes to show it is culture, and not tools that lead to crime.

The mask-wearing is quite common in the US these days. It appears that many people experiencing unbought merchandise like to stop the spread.

In Japan, crime is both illegal and frowned upon.

The outdoor machines are built like tanks. I read stories after the March 11 earthquake of people trying to get into them for food and completely failing.

The next rent-seeking scam to pitch to the incoming generation. I'm surprised Fannie and Freddie aren't offering financing for vending machines too.

This was already an “entrepreneurship” fad pretty recently. Maybe 15 years ago.

At one sucker born every minute, 15 years sounds like enough minutes to sustain a new fad.

15 years * 1 sucker/minute = 7,884,000 suckers, not accounting for leap years!

> Coinbase had 108 million users in 2022, up from 56 million people in 2021

I hope we reach the vending machine density of Japan.... Was extremely helpful to have a vending machine every 10 m when it was 40C outside with extreme humidity last summer when I was there.

The most surreal thing about Tokyo (and there were a lot) was having Tommy Lee Jones' grizzled visage staring back at me from every street corner.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=japan+boss+vending+tommy+lee+jones...

> Was extremely helpful to have a vending machine every 10 m

There used to be more vending machines, but the prevalence of convenience stores every 200m (or so it seems) makes them less viable financially.

It is a sad day when a favorite vending machines that sells something unusual just vanishes. Usually this is something like a type of seasonal beer that vending machines will have in stock longer than the stores do.

Whole large banks of vending machines in Shinjuku have gone the way of the dodo. Sadness.

Anything to disrupt the everything-via-cloud model. Yes, please, more, don't stop. Fine good useful nice stuff & stock it in bizarrely accessible places.

If anything I'd believe demand is mostly gated on having fairly low expectations of what's available. I fully believe this could expand up & out, that vending machines could provide much much more, if they maintain their well-stockedness & are expansive enough so that we get some curatorial interesting nice shit from our local machines.

The trick is to sell the vending machines and parts.

selling shovels to the gold miners

I want to make a vending machine that sells vending machines. It'd have to be real fuckin' big.” — Mitch Hedberg

https://archive.ph/ls2fx

Reading this on WSJ is interesting. Having been raised in a very working-class family, but now being fortunate enough to have a stock portfolio, I'm struck by how romantic a business like this (or the other small business entrepreneurs I see on YouTube, such as a guy who runs laundromats and car washes) is to me -- I guess just by how straightforward the business model is and how it appears (at first glance) to be something one man can just do all by himself.

It's inexplicably intriguing to me to consider doing a side hustle like this -- even though in terms of both risk and reward I have to acknowledge it is probably no better than what my savings is doing right now in various stocks and funds.

> it is probably no better than what my savings is doing right now in various stocks and funds.

From a numbers perspective sure. When we talk about social ramifications and future business potential — the calculus changes entirely: this guy got a cover in the WSJ, for example.

In 1998 I went to a seminar on vending machines and the numbers didn't work.

I would love to see some details from a Japanese owner where vending machine usage is more common, but also there are zillions of machines.

I wonder if he makes more money from his YouTube channel where he talks about vending machines.

Whatever happened to those little automated convenience stores people were talking up a few years ago? There was a startup called "Bodega".[1] Automated convenience stores the size of a shipping container were a thing in China, but they now seem to have one employee. There's "venhub.ai", but it comes across as a ploy to get VC funding, not a retail operator.[2]

Serving locations too small to staff, such as small apartment buildings, doesn't really pay. If you have fresh food items, the location has to be serviced at least once a day, and expired items must be discarded. Plus you're competing with Amazon and Doordash.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/25/bodega-once-dubbed-america...

[2] https://www.venhub.com/

Perhaps a good business would be running a vending machine 'compound' or 'center', basically a big empty room with electrical sockets and some CCTV cameras. Preferably somewhere next to a parking lot.

You rent out spots to vending machine owners.

Have people not heard of depreciation, maintenance, restocking?

Oh. Oh waitaminute I see the angle here. Mining company shares to goldbugs, substandard shovels and rations to 49ers, stakes in stablecoin exchanges to the common techbro, and now, at last, "ISO-Certified Vend Automation Accreditation Training" where you can get all the tools you need to STRIKE IT BIG. Then you can rope in more people with the scam, and they can rope in more people yadda yadda yadda

Another goddamn grift . . did we really need another? . . in search of the last dregs of pocket change lost in the American cushions. Looking for actual returns that aren't sacked with fees and conditions, everyone wondering, with an ever-growing suspicion, that all the new clever retirement "vehicles"[1] they've been dumping money in their entire lives will grow mysteriously inaccessible, in a suspiciously timely fashion, until they are all dead.

Shit. Put up a vending machine that dispenses Quietus pills, then you might get some business.

Forgive my cynicism, please. It's not a luxury I can afford at the moment.

[1] Which not-so-coincidentally inflate the market valuation of the same industries employing them. Jesus Christ, did anyone think for twenty seconds about the follow-on effects of that? Whelp. Too late now.

The Japanese have numerous vending machines of high quality that offer decent prices with good selections of food.

Perhaps it is in our Future in America too

My house mates’ drug dealer used a vending machine

yes it was brazen, yes it worked

Was it just one specific item that was not appetizing looking and was very expensive (to keep unsuspecting kids/etc.) from accidentally buying it?

Were they concerned about getting nicked every time they refilled the machine?

It works until it doesn’t

If the yield was high enough all those costs and risks are absorbable

>Looking for actual returns that aren't sacked with fees and conditions

The Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF[1] has 12.0% annualized returns over the past decade, and only charges 0.03% in management fees.

[1] https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/etfs/profi...

People don't want actual returns that aren't sacked with fees and conditions. They want get rich quick schemes. Their financial instrument needs to be counter cultural somehow. And with an affinity for conspiracy theories and no financial literacy, low expense ratio index funds are the enemy.

Where to put excess capital for the average person is a solved problem. People just want to be different.

And you know for a fact it will also return 12.0% annually for the next decade?

I don't and never made a claim to such effect. Past returns might not be indicators of future performance, but that's true for every investment out there, including vending machines. Moreover the performance of the entire US economy is probably better diversified and managed than whatever side hustle you can dream up.

past performance is no guarantee if future returns; you're not wrong there.

but will vending machines + their associated maintenance hours & overhead + supplies of goods to be sold return you more, or less, than VTI?

hell, with interests rates being what they are, but 100k into high interest savings, bonds, certificate accounts, etc. and catch an easy 4.5% ($4500/mo.) with little to no risk, overhead, or random youth stealing your stuff.

I think you mean $4500/yr, or $375/month. Pre-tax.

The guy is math-illiterate and assumes everyone has $100,000 in cash lying around. The people in the article all started with under $5,000, the low cost of entry is the primary appeal of a vending machine business.

as someone who has looked into this extensively and even owns a few machines, the biggest cost of machines besides "rent" is credit card devices and fees. there's coin op mechanisms, but nobody carries money so you get much less sales. unless the feds redo the coinage system... good luck

https://archive.is/ls2fx

Considering how much people steal in walmart, i dont see this going well unless this is mainly added in secured places

It's much harder to steal out of a vending machine than it is to grab something off a shelf in a store and walk out.

With sufficient value?

A pickup truck, a stout chain, and one of crowbar / sledgehammer / angle grinder / cutting torch goes through that right quick.

And there's a lot of economically depressed parts of the country where those things are in abundance.

Yeah, that's a lot more work and required tools than just taking something out of a shop. A lot easier to get busted too if you're walking around with those tools.

Buy my course on vending machines

Yep, there's a good chance that the people selling the proverbial shovels and pick-axes are getting richer than those mining the gold.

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