ICE VENDING: A highly profitable business!

As with all business ventures, the key question is: How much money will I make? One of the more profitable businesses to consider owning is one or more ice vending machines. Two key elements to running any business are: employees and operating costs.

First, an ice vending businesses can be run without employees as any maintenance required can be done by the owner. Collecting your profits (cash and credit combos or credit alone acceptors can reduce or eliminate this need), cleaning the machine, changing filters and keeping the location clean are fairly straight-forward requirements. If an owner does not want to perform these tasks or lives out of the area, they can hire a reliable firm to maintain the machine as needed.

Second, operating costs are low. Rent is one potential operating cost that is flexible. There is no rent if the owner also owns the property where the machine is located. As an alternative to paying rent, rental space for a machine location can be negotiated with a property owner in exchange for a profit-sharing agreement.

Utilities can be a major issue when choosing an ice vending machine. With machines that use freezers, there can be significant storage costs to run the freezers to keep the ice cold. With more streamlined units, such as the machines sold by Bag of Ice, the storage bins are insulated. Thus there are no storage costs which mean that any utility costs are limited to those needed for creating and selling ice.

Utility costs to make the ice average $0.50 per 100 lbs of ice. Plastic bags cost about $0.15. Thus each 20lb. vend would cost the owner $0.25 if a bag is used. If the customer chooses to put the ice directly in his ice chest (an option that is available on all Bag of Ice models), the cost reduces to only a dime! Other costs are fairly basic and related to quarterly maintenance like filter replacement and should be a part of any business plan.

When choosing a machine, keep in mind: the more parts, the more the machine will need maintenance or repair. Bag of Ice machines boast the fewest moving parts and provides one of the most reliable machines on the market.

So, how much money can you make? If you sold 30-twenty pound vends per day on average for the year at $2.50 per vend, then your gross revenue would be $25,000; increase your sales to 50 vends per day and your gross revenue would be $42,000. Not bad for an investment that can be as low as $35,000. And with a lifetime of 20+ years, the machines provide a long-term cash flow.

For an added bonus, it is easy to supplement this income with water sales by adding a water dispenser to the unit. Given that a gallon of purified water costs less than a cent, almost all of the water sales are pure profit!

Of course no one can guarantee your profit, but it is easy to see that there is a lot of money to be made by selling frozen and purified water. Contact info@bagofice.com for more information on this growing industry.

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