S4 - Ep27 - Unlock the Potential of Ice and Water Vending Machines: The Ultimate Side Hustle with Ben Gaskell

Speaker 2: 0:11

Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for joining us. Our goal is to help you connect to real people who found success turning their side hustle into a main hustle, and we hope you can too. I'm Adam Kaler. I'm joined by Kyle Stevy, my co-host. Let's get started, all right. Welcome back, everybody, to the Side Hustle City podcast. Today we got a special guest, ben Gaskell. Ben, how you doing? I'm doing well.

Speaker 3: 0:40

Adam have yourself.

Speaker 2: 0:41

I am doing great, and it sounds like we were chatting a little bit before this. It sounds like you're down in Orlando and you're a native Floridian.

Speaker 3: 0:50

Yeah, there's not many of us. I think I know two. I've lived here my whole life.

Speaker 2: 0:56

I know a native Floridian who's actually in Cincinnati and he's trying to get back to Florida. But I think there's been more New Yorkers in Florida than actual Floridians.

Speaker 3: 1:08

Well, that's been the case for 30 years, I think.

Speaker 2: 1:11

Yeah, just keep coming, they don't stop.

Speaker 3: 1:15

Nobody retires and moves up more.

Speaker 2: 1:17

No, no, no, that's for sure, Unless they're trying to save money. Well, you could save money in Florida. There's plenty of communities in Florida where you don't have to spend an arm and a leg. Yeah, my dad was up in Melbourne for a while there and it wasn't that expensive. It was actually fairly priced. So there are places. But the cool thing is is so you are doing ice and water vending machines. Is that the case here?

Speaker 3: 1:40

Yeah, we're a manufacturer of ice and water vending machines. What we sell is, in essence, a business in a box. It's a vending machine that vends either 10 pounds of ice into a cooler or into a plastic bag, or a customer can refill their five or one or five gallon water containers with filtered water. And we have entrepreneurs that buy these machines and they'll place them either at a place of business that they own Car Wash, laundermat, marina, something like that Or we have folks that are entrepreneurial and they'll go find a location themselves, so they'll buy a machine and place it on somebody else's property and make money selling ice and water from one of our machines.

Speaker 2: 2:36

Oh wow, that's pretty interesting. So one of the cool things is is I was actually thinking about doing like renting space, like at malls and things like that, and then turning it into like a little vending machine store. That was one of the little side hustle ideas I came up with. I put a little video together about it and stuff. but what kind of now are you selling these machines or are you looking for space to put these machines in?

Speaker 3: 3:03

So we're actually a manufacturer. We build the equipment and sell it to the end user. We're not a bizop, we're not a franchise. We sell the piece of equipment to the end user. We give them assistance and as much as we can in helping them find a location, although location in all of vending is really up to the owner of the piece of equipment to find a place. They want to open their business. And then we're there for service and support after the sale. But we're not involved in the day-to-day operations of the machine. We don't take any part of the customer's revenue. We're just, we're a manufacturer of a of again, like a business in a box. We build the machine and sell it to the entrepreneur.

Speaker 2: 3:47

This is really interesting because you are in Orlando and it's such a heavily trafficked tourist area and you have tons of hotels. Do you get a lot of business from hotels?

Speaker 3: 4:00

No, not primarily hotels, although we do have these machines at hotel locations. We'll generally give ice away for free. There's one of those little tiny machines on every floor. Our machines are more the vending, so it's what this does is it offers the consumer, the person that's buying ice, and alternatives to buying ice from one of those merchandisers out in front of a convenience store where you buy the 10 pound bag of ice that's shrank now to seven pounds and you kind of get it and it's frozen, a big block and you throw it on the ground to break it up.

Speaker 3: 4:37

So rather than doing that, the consumer that's buying ice can buy ice from one of our machines that an owner has placed in a location and it's a better product, it's made fresh, it's made on demand. So we have, we have machines in just about every location. We sell all across the United States. We have machines in the Caribbean, but primarily the US, and we've got owners that have machines and everything from a church parking lot to a volunteer fire department, to the aforementioned car wash laundromat. It really doesn't matter Empty lot, paved or unpaved, we've got machines just about anywhere. As long as you put the machine where the people are, you can generate revenue.

Speaker 4: 5:25

So is this like a manual refill of the water then? So you don't need water line?

Speaker 2: 5:28

Yeah, it's got the bottle thing down here at the bottom and everything too.

Speaker 4: 5:31

You guys can't really see it if you're on the. I'm saying like a water source for the ice.

Speaker 2: 5:34

Oh yeah, how does that tap in, how does that tap into? I guess you guys come out and you kind of tap that into the to the water source there, at whatever building they're at.

Speaker 3: 5:42

Yeah, so the machine requires three connections power, water and drain. So the water is just a half inch water line Makes a connection And the water line is just the same. It's the same connection really that you would make if you were putting an ice maker in a restaurant or a bar that they require power, water and drain to make ice, and so that the ice maker is installed inside the cabinet of our machine. We happen to buy our ice makers from Scotsman, which is one of the better manufacturers or the best manufacturer of ice and one of the largest. So we didn't try and reinvent the wheel and build our own ice maker. We buy that from Scotsman and it makes the ice, drops the ice down into a hopper inside of our machine and customer buys the machine from that hopper. There's also a filtration system on board to filter that water that makes the ice and it also filters the water for refilling.

Speaker 3: 6:35

Five gallon water jugs or one gallon water jugs You've seen those just water only refill stations in grocery stores, wal-mart's, oh yeah, i think everyone in the country has one.

Speaker 2: 6:47

Well, yeah, and then you got to like give them the old bottle back and then you got to take a new bottle And you've got to make sense refilling the same bottle, especially like offices and stuff like that. If you've got one of those little water dispensers there, this would be nice to have there.

Speaker 3: 7:01

Yeah, and if you're buying a or swapping the bottle out in that model that you just mentioned, you're paying somewhere around five to six dollars for the water. You've already paid a deposit for the bottle. So you can keep the bottle and either come back and swap it out, pay it under six dollars for a full one, or take it to one of our machines and refill that bottle with filtered water for somewhere around, say, a dollar and fifty to a dollar seventy-five.

Speaker 2: 7:31

Whoa, that's a difference.

Speaker 3: 7:33

Yeah, so people will. They don't like to spend that kind of money, so they'll show up at one of our machines with one, two, five, ten, five gallon containers to refill at a time.

Speaker 2: 7:45

Wow, this is really interesting, i'm telling you. And finally, i got into this whole vending thing. A buddy of mine, he used to put vending machines all over the city And you know I came up with this idea for this mall vending machine idea. It's almost like a convenience store but made up of nothing but vending machines. So that's one of the things I wanted to do And I'm like well, what vending machines? And actually I was in Orlando and I saw one of the hotels I was staying in had this CVS vending machine. And then you go to the airports and they got cupcake vending machines. Now Kylie Jenner's got her vending machine, you got coffee vending machines. You got all these different vending machines. I mean, you could essentially build a convenience store, which is where you find most of these ice like ice anyway. Like build a convenience store made up of nothing but vending machines and then put one of these suckers in there.

Speaker 3: 8:31

Yeah, we 100% believe that. you know, vending is the future of the way a lot of products are going to be delivered to the consumer. If you look at the way just using ice as an example, because that's kind of what we're discussing the way that ice is delivered to the convenience store where you buy it today is really unchanged from the way that it was done in the 1800s. You know they used to hack out a big, giant hunk of ice out of the river or the lake and put it in the back of a horse and buggy and take it to town. That's the same thing that's being done today, except it's being done with. You know it's an expensive ice plant and diesel trucks and diesel fuel and expensive labor with a very large carbon footprint just to deliver ice to the place where consumers buy it. It's old, it's antiquated and, frankly, the only reason it's done that way is because that's the way it's always been done. So it's a way of delivering ice that's right for disruption And so our equipment makes ice at the point of use. We make it where the people are, so you get a much fresher product. As I'm sitting around for six months in the bottom of a merchandiser. You don't have to slam the bag on the ground after you buy it because it's frozen and thawed 10 or 15 times And generally the margins are so big with our equipment.

Speaker 3: 9:51

You know our machine can make 10 pounds of ice for 20 cents roughly. That bag of ice you can sell today for somewhere between $3 and $4. So there's a lot of margins. So you can under-price the competition, give them a better product And, if you've noticed, ice used to be sold in a 10-pound bag and is now sold in a 7. That was what we call shrinkflation. That kind of happened post-COVID in the inflationary times when all those costs went up. They just reduced the amount of product that the customer gets. So when our machine goes in you're automatically giving them 30% more ice, lower cost, better product And how to succeed in business 101.

Speaker 2: 10:32

Wow, yeah, i mean we've got a home city ice here in Cincinnati And I think they've got there. They go all the way up to Chicago and all over the place. And You know, when you go to their website they just got all these old trucks. It sounds like some of the stuff you're talking about, like some of these old-timey. You go to their history page and it's just showing like what it used to look like and you know Some of these old pictures of how they used to get ice. I remember my grandma telling me stories of having to go down the to get ice. Go down the hill and get ice from the ice Guy when he came by it just then you put it in a ice box and that was your refrigerator.

Speaker 4: 11:07

Yeah, those are the old, the old. My great grandpa was a ice. I guess I consider ice man. Oh yeah, what he is. He lost his thumb, big block smashed. Oh no, yeah, it's been both of those.

Speaker 2: 11:19

So well, you got rid of that. No more, no more losing thumbs with this thing. So how do you guys, how do you guys even come up with this? like, are you engineers or like, how did this come about?

Speaker 3: 11:30

Well, you know I joke around. I say all the time that ice vending is a 23 year overnight success, right? so yeah, a couple of farmers built the very first machine back in the year 1999-2000. Company kind of saw it, bought it, started building them, and so ice vending's been around for a very long time. Over the last couple of years, the growth has been exponential. So we found a product that we like, we started selling that product for a manufacturer as a distributor and then took over And then end up buying the entire company. So we've been building it ourselves since 2016.

Speaker 3: 12:14

And When you look at the interest and the growth in ice vending Just over the last couple of years and it really did kind of take off just prior to COVID and then even through COVID the growth has been exponential and And you know we attribute that to a lot of things. You know, people saw a lot of people losing their jobs working for other people and They decided you know, hey, i'd rather invest in myself. Then, then, and this is an easy way, this is a business I can wrap my head around. Right, we can. You put the utilities to this machine and, and the same day it's delivered, it can be making ice And you can be selling ice right away. It doesn't require employees, it doesn't require, like standard vending, for you to restock the machine every you know, every day. The machine literally makes it sound inventory. So you can run multiple machines So you know, with just one operator very easily and you don't have to quit your day job to do it.

Speaker 3: 13:13

So this is ultimately, this is a side hustle. We do have people that are doing it full-time, you know that have multiple machines. But most of our customers you know they're, they're bankers or truck drivers or or, you know, homemakers or whatever, and they just want to earn extra revenue to Spend time with their families or take their, their spouse to France or whatever it is that they want to do. And and this is a business That's a reasonably low Barrier to entry, capital investment and and installation, compared to most other company of jobs or most other side hustles that you could get into, and the ROI can be very high.

Speaker 3: 13:54

As you've got a good location, you know, you can really really get a good ROI from this machine. So so it's really been kind of kind of crazy. So the answer, the question, is no, i'm not an engineer. You wouldn't want me designing your your ice Machine. But we've got a group of very talented and capable engineers. We were lucky we're here in Orlando with UCF school engineering right around the corner, so we've got a steady supply of talented folks that Do all that for us.

Speaker 4: 14:22

So what you were saying that, depending on your location and you get a better ROI. What are some of the better locations you found in regards to like I know not cities, but like, just standard. When you go to any city, you're gonna find this there. This is the best place to put it like Give me a store, for lack of a better term.

Speaker 3: 14:40

Yes. So ultimately, with ice-mending, the nice thing is you have to work pretty hard to find a bad location. You know you could go into a Your town and pick. A major intersection will probably be four convenient stores, all on opposite corners And they're all selling ice. So if you put this machine in the end you know where people are. You want traffic, right. That's important. If you make the machine visible, if you make it accessible Common sense things that you would do You know customers need to be able to pull up to the machine with their vehicle.

Speaker 3: 15:13

Ice is heavy, water is heavy. You know you just kind of check these boxes And and just about anywhere you put the machine, it doesn't really matter what's behind it, right, it doesn't matter what parking lot this machine is in, it doesn't matter if it's in front of a car wash or if it's in front of a beauty salon. It's, it's a business in a box, that it's a business of its own. You know, of course Some locations do better than others because automatically you've kind of got some built-in Traffic, like, say, a marina, for example, where you've got a lot of boat traffic that's using, you know, ice continually. Places where People get sporting venues. You know soccer, softball, things like that. You know university towns, places where there's large events, you know. But you can really put these machines just about anywhere.

Speaker 4: 16:07

So you've got I'm just trying to think this through You have, if you go to I don't know we have, we used to have convenient here, i don't know what we call it anymore But if you go to convenient, you have like the chest full of bags of ice And you know that's the quantity of ice that you have in that and that thing. So if you're like at a marina, we have boats coming in and out all the time, i'm thinking like like norris or someplace like that where it's high traffic, how much, like how, how many people can come and get like uh, let's say Uh, i don't know size of a cool, like a yeti, big yeti, cooler, full of ice? How many, how many can serve off of one machine? I'm assuming they'd have to get multiple machines. Is that correct for high, high traffic places?

Speaker 3: 16:51

No, typically not so. So I don't. I've never done the the capacity to yeti conversion Stuff, but might be something I like to look into. But the largest ice maker that we can install in our machine does up to 1900 pounds of ice a day. That's almost a ton. We have a holding bin that's inside of the machine That holds up to 550 pounds of ice. So you'll start out every morning with 550 pounds if you're doing a you know 10 pound vent, that's you know around 55 bags that you've got ready to go, and then the ice maker over the next 24 hours can make up to an additional 1900 pounds. So there's a lot of production. There's a whole bunch more production out of one of our machines. Then there is ice sitting in a standard ice merchandiser.

Speaker 4: 17:42

See, and that's um, that's when you, when you talk to these guys that own these places, you're like, yeah, but you got to wait for the delivery truck to come. Yeah, exactly ice on a hot unlike. Meanwhile, there's a lot of weaker more all day, weekend, meanwhile yeah, meanwhile you got a ton of ice, literally a ton of ice Coming through this machine every day.

Speaker 2: 18:01

Well, and the crazy thing, i mean I can put one downstairs outside the. So I've got a catering company that's in my basement of my co-working space here And there's a 8,000 square foot or 6,000, whatever I've ever. Big debt is down there But she's constantly using ice to go to events and stuff. You know, and if this thing's got 500 pounds ice in it, that's plenty ice. But then I got an apartment building right next door to me. That's who knows how many units 200 units probably in that building, something it's. It's pretty big, but you know those people might come down and use the ice all the time. And you got uh Dollar tree right next door.

Speaker 4: 18:34

Some of those places have ice machines, but those things are gross as shit because you got to take the scooper in. Oh, you don't want to you got to you. Got to scoop it all out. Lord knows what people had on their hands. We've the previous to you, or what flew in there.

Speaker 2: 18:45

Yeah, kind of kind of rotten, but yeah, i mean, that's a really, that's a really cool idea, so, okay, so somebody wants to Purchase one of these ice machines. They got some ideas for some locations. You know how do they get the whole process started with you? What do they do? I mean, i see you got a contact form here on the website here. Um, what kind of money we talking about? Uh, how do you help them find? do you help them at all? try to find markets, like, how does all this work?

Speaker 3: 19:13

Yeah, so I mean to start the process. It's uh submit some information on that contact form and We have some lovely folks that don't call you up and and all they're gonna do is Set a time so that we've got uh an equipment specialist that can jump on a call with you at your convenience and Uh answer your questions. That call can last, you know, a minute. Uh, it can last an hour, um, i just all depends on how much you know, how many questions the person has. So they're there to kind of help you Through the process, to to make sure you understand the market, understand the machine, understand the ry possibilities, understand, um, you know how to find a location, all of that kind of thing.

Speaker 3: 19:58

We do try and help customers um Find locations. Uh, we've got relationships I wouldn't say relationships We, we. We know some Companies that do vending machine placements that we can offer a referral to. We're not in the placement business. Like I said, we're a manufacturer, we don't. We're not.

Speaker 3: 20:18

Uh, you know, we kind of build the business and it's up to the customer to place it where they'd like. They're going to know their homes down Better than we will, um, but there are some placement services if somebody just wants kind of white glove service. Uh, they don't want to do anything. They can contract somebody and they'll go find them a location and Um, and it, you know that that's, that's an option as well. So you know this.

Speaker 3: 20:39

The nice thing about this is it really is a side hustle, in the sense that If you're looking into ice vending and you're confident you can go out and find a location, you can do the whole thing on your own. But if you're just out there looking at franchises, or how do I make money, or what can I do, where can I place my money in order to grow it? um, you know you, you can really Uh, sit back and have the whole thing kind of done for you, um, and then at that point it's really just, uh, you know, some basic maintenance on the equipment, changing bags, removing money, that kind of thing.

Speaker 4: 21:11

Nice, well, that's not bad at all. So, like um, if I want to, if I want to get started, is there? do you guys have, like, uh, we're looking through the website as we're speaking to you. Is there like a list of Um? you know, frequently asked questions or I don't know, for our sales training, we have commonly heard objections. So if I approach this guy who owns this quickie mark and I say I can, you know, save you all this headache from your you know, home city, isis, they're filling the, they're filling the bins, but it's, it's just not, it's just not conducive to um yeah, it's not big revenue driver form, it's more hassle.

Speaker 4: 21:50

You can make more money having with this machine in here and we get part of the, we get part of the revenue to like release space or whatever from the floor. Do you have like a educational package that goes along with it?

Speaker 3: 22:00

Oh, absolutely So. If you look on our website, we've got, uh, uh, there's a place where we we write uh blog, so there's just a ton of content on there. Uh, we have our own YouTube channel that talks about how to find locations. We have information that we can offer the entrepreneur, the person that owns the machine. Uh, that, uh, we kind of call a leave behind, but really what it is is. It's a, um, you know, it's a one-sheeter picture of the machine, has your name and phone number on it, tells what it is, and it basically says Hey, I'd like to lease 20 square feet of your property and I'm willing to pay your rent. Put a machine on there, call me if you're interested, so that when customers out there, you know, looking for locations, i've got something to leave behind with their information. Um, so, so there's all sorts of resources that we offer. Um, so, as much as we're just, you know, kind of just a manufacturer, we also, you know, are there to help the customer through the process. Now, this isn't a Everest, can't just pop a machine out there for you and you're making money. This is just like any other side hustle that's going to take some involvement on the customer's part. You're going to have to do some, some footwork. But the nice thing is is that most of the kind of Quigley work is done in the beginning. It's just finding the location and, you know, organizing that, contract subcontractors to put in the water and the power and things like that.

Speaker 3: 23:22

Once the machine's up and running, um, really, we've, we've designed a machine that that's as easy as we can make it. Um, we, we have, you mentioned engineering, uh, we have a patented dispensing system in our machine that uses only one moving part. So most of our competitors, if not all of our competitors, use more than 10 or 12 different moving parts to just to dispense a bag of ice where our machine uses only a single moving part. And if the parts aren't in our machine they can't break. So we've engineered a machine that's as simple as we can make it. Um, and we've designed a program that's as simple as we can make it for the, for the entrepreneur, If they want to, to put place a machine in a in a uh location in their hometown and and run their side hustle, run their their own ice and water vending business. We try and make it as easy as we can.

Speaker 2: 24:12

So a good thing about me and Kyle. we know a whole bunch of uh guys who own a whole bunch of apartments. It's like big apartment complexes and that looks like. I was looking at your blog and it looks like that's one of the really good locations It says. I think one of your blog posts here says, uh, four clever locations for an ice machine apartment complexes, college campuses, the fairgrounds and camping areas. I mean apartment complexes, i mean Nate Barger.

Speaker 2: 24:34

and then, uh, what about mini malls? Osh Patel. I mean, how many mini malls does he own? or no people that own mini malls? I mean those little mini malls. sometimes he'll buy those up, like another guy that was on our podcast. he goes in and he scoops up those mini malls when they're cheap, because they they're, you know, maybe half full of tenants, and then he walks across the street to other mini malls and convinces people to come over and move into his place And then he gets it all full and then he sells it because commercial real estate's obviously priced on how much rent you got coming in. So he's been, he's got, he knows the locations, he's scouted this area pretty good, so I bet you, osh, could find some cool locations for us.

Speaker 4: 25:12

Yeah, I think so too.

Speaker 3: 25:14

We have mini machines in mini malls across the country, so those those places are absolutely fantastic locations. And one of the things we've got a very creative owner that that approached condominium complexes and um uh residential developments that pay an HOA fee And the HOA purchased the machine, or the HOA allows the owner of the machine to place the machine at their, at their property, and they raised the HOA a couple of dollars to everybody in the in the you know, the condo complex or the plant community, and that was enough revenue to get a good ROI for the machine owner And then everybody in the apartment or in the condo complex or community gets free ice and water, smart, and that's not much as you can use because it just you know so. So it's not based on on individual volume, it's a monthly kind of a subscription guarantee for the for the machine owner. So there's lots of creative ways. We have customers that place these at uh with uh construction sites because construction workers need to be hydrated, they need to be kept cool.

Speaker 3: 26:26

It's an OSHA regulation. They have to provide cold water And if you've got a machine that registers uh, you know a company card when the, when the employee pulls out their ice and their water for the, for the cooler, then the, the the contractor can prove that they did their part to make sure that the employee was hydrated in case there's a, you know, a heat stroke or something like that. Hey well, we, we, we have this ice water here. Oh, yes, there's. There's a lot of different ways that you can use these kinds of machines, along with just the classic, you know, selling ice, and we have a lot of creative owners that used it, them, in a lot of different ways.

Speaker 2: 27:02

What I'm looking on the site too is like the margins look insane, like it was like a 97% margin, yeah.

Speaker 3: 27:09

When you think about what makes a bag of ice, uh, it's power, it's water and it's a plastic bag. Um, so a plastic bag might be 10 or 11 cents. You could drive that cost down in. you know the economy of scale if you buy a lot at a time. You know electric and water to make 10 pounds of ice around eight, eight, nine cents, um, so you're going to be under 25 cents for your cost of goods sold And you can walk into any convenience store and see what I sell for today. Uh, um, I bought a bag uh last weekend. uh, which irritates me, being in the ice business.

Speaker 2: 27:46

I know that frustration.

Speaker 3: 27:48

So I have to buy ice. But uh, you know, i've paid uh 3, 49 for a seven pound bag and our machine does a 10. So so, yeah, there's a. You know, on our website there's an ROI calculator. Uh, it says, how much can I make? question mark up on the header And you click on there and you can really plug in the numbers and play around with it. Uh, one of the things we don't do as a company is we don't promise uh return.

Speaker 2: 28:15

We can't promise a return. Yeah, there's no way for anything. I mean people are like Oh, what kind of money am I going to make? I don't know. I mean it's different for every city. Do you guys have like an average amount or anything that people are making, or is there like a range or something like that Generally they make?

Speaker 3: 28:31

Yeah, so there's a lot of things that that enter into. how much can I make, right? Um it? a lot of. it depends on how. what are you going to sell your ice for? Um. you know that that's a big factor, uh, in, in, uh, what kind of revenue you can generate Um. so we tend to talk typically in, you know, in bags of ice Uh, and then the you know the profit is based on on what you're going to sell them for Um. you know a poor location can be as low as zero bags. right, you put them, you put whatever machines in the back of your, your, your backyard, it's not going to sell any Um, and you know, but probably a low performing location goes up somewhere. you know around 20 or 25 bags You probably have. um. you know typical performing locations that might be up to 40, 50 bags. You've got, you know, great locations that make 60 bags plus, 70 bags plus, and there's home run locations out there that that do a hundred, a hundred bags plus a day.

Speaker 3: 29:28

And when you look at this, i said ice vending is 23 year overnight success. The largest company, the oldest company that has been manufacturing ice vending machines, uh, sells an ice vending machine and they've that they've been selling now for 23 straight years And by the time you have it installed, it's $225,000. Wow, um, and people have been getting a return on that for, um, you know, 23 straight years. So it's, it's uh, you know, our machine is considerably less, or less than a fourth of that Um and so so how do you make an ROI, You? you, you have a machine that has plenty of production that costs less, that's. you get a faster ROI that way than buying one of these behemoth machines that's grossly oversized and expensive.

Speaker 2: 30:16

Oh yeah, oh big time. Yeah, i'm just kind of plugging in some numbers here and I'm getting a sense for about how much this machine costs. Um, but yeah, the profit calculator guys, if anybody wants to go in here and just kind of play around with this, right on the homepage, there is a section there that is the vending machine ROI calculator and you can go on there and you can just kind of plug in some numbers and, uh, and get a sense for you know what, what you're going to spend and how much money you could possibly make. But I could easily see for a lot of people This could, i mean this could replace your job.

Speaker 3: 30:51

It can. You're probably not going to replace your job with a, you know, with a single machine, but certainly you get a couple out there and and, uh, if this is what you want to do, uh, for a living, you really can. Um, you know, it's uh uh. Vending in general makes sense for a lot of reasons. Right, It's generally, it's uh. Low cost, low barrier of entry, fairly easy to install. A healthy ROI. Ability to scale is relatively easy. Once you've done one, you get the idea you can go to another one and you can corner the market. Run your own little mini-ice empire in your hometown. If you want, you can do that. This can be one of your side hustles because of the small amount of time that it will take you to run an ever-stice-in-water vending machine. It's an hour or two a week generally. Go do other things too.

Speaker 2: 31:53

Well, I don't know any business really that your return on investment is a year or less. I've been running a lot of these calculations here. Even on the moderate projections like low pricing, typical volume, low pricing, low volume The worst possible situation you can be in. Your return is a little over two years. That would be excellent for a franchise. If I wanted to go buy Dunkin' Donuts, i think the average Dunkin' Donuts manager you're essentially buying yourself a job when you buy Dunkin' Donuts. You're working there all day.

Speaker 4: 32:30

Gotta get up and make the donuts.

Speaker 2: 32:31

Get up, make the donuts. You got a higher college kid, You got a fire college kid. You got to deal with them not showing up. You got inventory. You got all this crap waste. You got rats running around. You got all kinds of problems. You're only going to make $120,000. That's going to be your profit at a Dunkin' Donuts, because I was thinking about doing one at Newport on 11. I looked it up I was like $120,000. That's not worth the hassle, On top of what the lease prices would be. Then you got well, that's after they assume all that stuff. But you're looking at this right here The return on investment. It cost a million and a quarter on the high end to open a Dunkin' Donuts, depending on where you're doing it. If you're in a great location, like down there at Newport, you're probably going to be spending that. If you're only making $120,000 a year profit, that's like a 10-year return.

Speaker 4: 33:15

On the website. It says the low price, low volume. Estimated net profit is $18,853.

Speaker 2: 33:24

That's what you're doing barely anything.

Speaker 4: 33:28

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. You're in a spot where people can't afford anything. I mean, i'm assuming if you were going to do low pricing, that's right, and low volume means they're not buying your ice as much as they would at a better location.

Speaker 2: 33:42

I'll call the guy that owns this Dollar Tree next door and ask him if I could throw the machine in front of his place.

Speaker 4: 33:47

He should pay you for it, just because of all the bags you've had to pick out of the trees.

Speaker 2: 33:50

That's right. We get Dollar Tree bags in our trees, So it's an ironic thing.

Speaker 3: 33:58

Dollar stores are Dollar Trees. in the southern United States I'll say Alabama, mississippi. I don't think you can pass one that doesn't have an ice vending machine in it in the Parkamot. So those are super common places to put a machine.

Speaker 2: 34:13

Oh, sounds like what I needed. They're right next door and I know the guy, so, yeah, i probably need to call him up. That's pretty interesting, wow.

Speaker 4: 34:21

So how does it work when you say you have a Scotsman inside of it? Do you the service provider for repairs? does that go through Scotsman or does that go through Everest?

Speaker 3: 34:34

Yeah, so the Scotsman carries a warranty through Scotsman. They have national service network. Everest has its own service department. We don't have a truck that's driving around in your neighborhood that says Everest on the side. So if it's something that is required to have somebody other than the owner working on the machine, we typically leverage the Scotsman service network. So they already have a truck, they have tools that are being dispatched and they work on our equipment. So that's generally how that gets handled if you need somebody to come kind of turn a wrench on your machine.

Speaker 4: 35:09

We have a Scotsman at our house. Oh, do you.

Speaker 2: 35:12

Yeah, it's nice.

Speaker 4: 35:13

Yeah, it's still working. Yeah, i took the whole thing apart because I'm an idiot. The ice was really hot. It wasn't forming solid. Yeah, i was like, oh, this son of a bitch is broken. So, without even going to Google or anything, I decided that today I'm an Iceman machine expert, So I got to take this thing apart. I'm like, should I do this? It's like cutting the red line or the green line on like a landmine. You're like, I'm German. I'll figure this out.

Speaker 4: 35:42

And then I was like, all right, i got to get online. It said, check the filter first. So I was like, oh okay, the air filter, the air intake. And I looked and it was just coated in dust. Oh yeah, so I wiped that off and the machine runs 100% perfect now. And here you are, taking it apart. I was in the back of the machine just like learning everything about it.

Speaker 4: 36:04

Yeah, you got to put it. I didn't have the bandana, but I had this jeans that didn't fit right, so my butt crack was out.

Speaker 2: 36:08

Yeah, i was all about it. Oh, you were getting ready. Man, this is great. I'm actually kind of sad that you came on the show, because now people are going to hear about this. I don't want them to know.

Speaker 4: 36:19

This is actually You're going to take all of your territory.

Speaker 2: 36:23

I know they're going to take all the territory. What's going on here? This? is awesome. So what are some of the feedback you've heard on some of these things from like, from customers and things I mean, is this like, is this surprising to a lot of people that this was available to them? Were they looking into other alternatives at some point and then they came across to you somehow, like, how did this whole thing? What's the feedback you've gotten?

Speaker 3: 36:51

So most of our customers are looking for ice vending. When they find us, oh There's not a lot of Ice vending is not something much like you guys probably weren't dialed into how all this works. Most people don't wake up in the morning and think, let me Google and see if there's such a thing as an ice vending machine. So usually people hear about it, they talk to somebody that owns a machine. They buy ice That's very common from an ice vending machine And then the kind of light bulb goes off and they're like, oh, i could do this. And then they call us and then our equipment specialist to walk them through the process And if they're interested, we have.

Speaker 3: 37:31

One of the things that's unique about our business is that we have a relationship with a finance company called LEAF LEAF. In there I saw that yeah, and they specialize in vending financing. There's no other kind of side hustle businesses that I'm aware of that when you're a startup, you can get 90% financing. If you want to start at your own restaurant, your own bar, your own truck repair shop, a bank is going to look at you and go you're a startup, you're a bad risk. I managed to be lending money to you And so you're going to have to have the capital. You're going to have to have cash in order to start that business With ice vending and because we have a relationship with LEAF, of course it's based on credit worthiness, credit dependent. You can't have bad credit and get finance for anything. But they offer to Everest customers 90% financing. If you put 10% down on a machine, they finance the balance. We even have a relationship with them and set up a program where the payments won't even start until your machine is done, being manufactured. So you place the order for the machine, the machine gets manufactured, gets delivered, your payments start and hopefully the revenue starts and you're paying off the machine. So we're starting to see we're getting a lot of interest from large classic ice sales locations to look into this as an option to the home city ices of the world. And once that fuse gets lit, really I think everybody's going to understand what this is all about.

Speaker 3: 39:19

But the growth just in word amount and just in people literally looking into this. We don't get a lot of people that are looking into buying a Dunkin Donuts franchise that suddenly pivot into an ice vending machine, but the interest has been so big. Our company has been on the Inc 5000 list two years running, and Inc 5000 magazine lists the 5000 fastest growing privately held companies in the United States, and that's out of 6.2 million privately held companies And we're in the top 5000 two years in a row. We've already qualified for 2023, and we're only in what may almost June So we'll be in it again next year, and so the growth is exponential.

Speaker 3: 40:06

It's been one of the biggest challenges we had last year was supply chain, like everybody else, along with stratospheric growth and interest in our product. So we've got the supply chain is much better, lead times are much more reasonable than they were And the interest is still there. So we're coming into season. The season starts this weekend. This is summer, yeah, and we're in the ice business, and so season starts Memorial Day and really runs through the end of the year. If there's an off season ice vending, it's the first quarter.

Speaker 2: 40:44

Well, i can see even putting this in the back of a truck and dragging it down to Longworth Hall for tailgates for Bengals, tailgates for FC tailgates, for Bearcats tailgates. I mean we got every sport.

Speaker 4: 40:54

And since then you have the waterline hookup.

Speaker 2: 40:57

Yeah, you just got to, like you get them to put the waterline in And then, whenever there's an event, you just drag the thing down or hook it up and boom. hook it up, maybe a couple hours for the tailgate.

Speaker 4: 41:06

So let's say, let's say we did win Longworth And we so. the way I'm seeing you do this is you get, you take your advertising, the one cheater you have, and you just basically scavenge the whole area of every store, every location you think this would benefit. You get them on board. They say, yeah, we would like to do that. I say, okay, i have an order, now I want to put, now I want to play some machine. How much you said lead time is better. now, because of the supply chain, issues are starting to dwindle. What is average lead time?

Speaker 3: 41:40

Average lead time is probably around 10 weeks. Today That's down from more than double that last year because of demand and supply chain problems And that's been the typical lead time. We can accommodate shorter lead times If the customer is ready to go, doesn't have to go through the process of securing financing, has a location already has cash or their own bank is ready to rock. We can accommodate much shorter lead times. But when you're just asking about a typical on buying one machine going through the process, you're probably about that long.

Speaker 2: 42:16

Interesting. You know what this reminds me of. Like when you go on Turro's website and you do the calculator and you look at the car and you say, hey, if I bought a $30,000 car, i could rent it for a hundred bucks a day and I'd make this much money. Like they have that same type of thing on this, but the return on this is much higher. And I'm already doing Turro as a side hustle just to kind of show all of our side hustle guests that you can actually make money at it And at the end of the day, you end up getting your car paid for is what it ends up being. Unless you're in a place like Miami or something with a lot of tourists and you buy a really, really nice car, then you can make up to like a 200% return on what you're paying for the car. But, like, when you look at this, i mean it's almost like you're buying a car, right, but you're buying a car that pays itself off in a year, around a year. I mean it could be less, it could be more. It really depends on the volume you're doing. I don't wanna put any ideas in people's heads, but I mean you buy one and you're doing all right.

Speaker 2: 43:14

I mean, this is a little. This is about the household income in Cincinnati Like the average household income $40 to $60,000, somewhere in that range. Actually, it's better because it's the net profit. It's net profit right. This is before. This is after you pay all your stuff.

Speaker 2: 43:30

Well then you pay your taxes on it, but then you find some right off somewhere.

Speaker 3: 43:35

You know, depreciate the machine, and of course that also does not include paying for the machine, right, that's. This is if you were a cash buyer.

Speaker 2: 43:44

Oh, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. So that's not including the return on the machine. Okay, and then whatever the rent you're paying to, whoever it is that's doing it, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 43:51

There's expenses involved, just like anything else. So you would you know, if you've got it to your return and a location that's doing that much volume and you get the machine paid off, then a hundred percent of that money is in your pocket after that, right? So you paid off the machine and now own an asset And then you put the money in your pocket moving forward. So yeah it's. you know, we found this kind of decided that this was a product that we felt and truly believed would grow, and we were right And it's been kind of an interesting ride, to say the least. But this is, you're gonna see this we'll end up being the blue box of ice. That's our goal is you know how red box was with DVDs. When you see the blue Everest box, you'll go okay, i know what that is, i know that's where I get my eyes because it's gonna be a again. you know it's better quality, made fresh, made on demand at the point of use.

Speaker 3: 44:57

And you know our machine dispenses ice. not only is it green and removing the carbon from typical ice delivery, but we also dispense ice directly in a cooler. You mentioned that, yeti. This machine will dispense ice directly into a cooler for the customer. That's what separates this from kind of just buying a bag of ice at the grocery store is vending into that cooler. That's your outdoorsman, your boaters, your hunters, your fishermen, your construction workers, landscapers the guys that you know really work for a living to carry that cooler around the back of their truck. They love vending ice right in the cooler, and every time you do that, you, as the owner, aren't paying for a plastic bag. you're also not putting a plastic bag in the environment.

Speaker 4: 45:41

And you don't have those grubby ass hands touching your ice. You're potentially touching a few of the ice cubes you have.

Speaker 3: 45:47

Yeah, that's right, we've got some interesting things. You know that scooping bin I have some vivid memories of working in the hospitality industry and you know the busboy is storing his lunch and you know, in that scooping cooler and they never restaurants never clean those out. We actually have an option on our machine called Everest Ice Shield, which is ozone disinfection. So it's a continual ozone generator that generates ozone. Ozone's 3,000 times more powerful than chlorine, but it's not toxic, it doesn't leave a residue, it's organic and it's continually disinfecting the entire ice pathway, including the ice maker, all the time, and so it prevents that mold, mildew, biofilm, bacteria all that that will build up in an ice maker over time and builds up in all our competitors ice vending machines, because they don't have this technology.

Speaker 3: 46:43

It's proprietary to Everest and it just runs all the time. So what that means to you as an owner is you're not having to break that ice maker down every nine days and clean it, because we're just continually disinfecting it. If the stuff's not growing, you don't have to break the machine down to remove it. So you know we've got a lot of. We really embrace technology and try and incorporate that into our equipment. That's one of the ways. We also have energy recycling components that recycle cold water and boost the ice maker performance by about 30%, so you're generating free ice in essence, And when you're in the ice sales business, free ice is good.

Speaker 4: 47:22

What's the profit thing here? the calculators based off of Everest.

Speaker 2: 47:28

I think this is like your yearly return after you. I mean, this is taking into consideration the cost of the machine, because it says ROI may vary slightly.

Speaker 4: 47:35

I understand that. Yeah, my question was so the profit calculator is based off of the Everest stuff. Is it Roman numerals? What the hell is that? Is that 15? No, it's not 15. What is that? X? that's 50. Vx 60. Is that?

Speaker 3: 47:51

60?.

Speaker 2: 47:51

Oh, it's VX.

Speaker 3: 47:51

Yeah, yeah, don't. No, that's five, i don't know what that is?

Speaker 2: 47:57

V is five. Right, yeah, v is five, and then X is 10. That's VX, it's just VX.

Speaker 3: 48:02

That's not a.

Speaker 2: 48:03

Roman numeral? I don't think, Because that would be negative five.

Speaker 3: 48:06

Yeah, right, yeah, exactly. Super Bowl negative five Yeah, no, no, that's just the VX.

Speaker 4: 48:12

So what am I asking? What's the life expectancy of that machine?

Speaker 3: 48:17

So the frame itself is made of powder-coated steel. We send all of our components through powder-coating. The powder-coating on our equipment is PPG powder-coating. The powder-coating goes through a 6,000-hour salt spray test. So we took it in a cabinet, very salt water on it for 6,000 hours and it cannot corrode in that 6,000 hours.

Speaker 3: 48:41

So the frame is very, very heavy duty. We only have one moving part. it's a big rotating barrel. That's pretty robust. It's using a two horsepower electric motor. You know it's the same electric motor that your pool pump uses and your pool pump is going to run, you know, 10 hours a day, whereas this electric motor runs six seconds at a time because that's how long it takes to bend the back of ice. So the machine is pretty robust.

Speaker 3: 49:08

When you look at the ice maker, you know if you're getting 10 plus years out of a Scott'sman ice maker, you're doing really well, right? I mean, it's done its bit for King and country and probably is going to be time to swap that ice maker out. you know, i mean, i think you're probably getting towards the end of the ice fan, of the ice maker at that point. We've been building machines. This machine has been built since 2008. We weren't building it back then. but there's there's units that are still in the field from 2008. Certainly, the majority of them are And you know all the units we've built since we've taken over are still there. So I would expect you know you get 10 years plus out of the ice maker and even longer out of the machine itself.

Speaker 4: 49:51

So I'm expecting that if you're in the northern part of the US, like we don't get much snow here but we get below freezing days, so we have to disconnect our hose from the house and do all that winterizing We did minimal winterizing. It's not like we're in Minneapolis or anything. Do people come and pick up their machines to winterize the machines, or are they cool just to stay at the site that they're in if they're out, if they're located outside?

Speaker 3: 50:17

So both we have customers that will winterize their machine. I have customers that are in marinas, and the marinas are only open Memorial Day to Labor Day, so they just make their money in that four months and then shut the machine down and come back when the marine opens again. We offer an all seasons insulation package that is recommended or necessary for operation in cold weather. The insulation itself is not enough, right? You can insulate your house like crazy If you don't have a heater inside, your pipes just were going to freeze. So the insulation helps what we tell customers to help them with, placing a heat source inside the machine. You're not trying to hang orchids inside the cabinet, you're just trying to maintain a temperature above freezing. So we have these machines operating. You know, we've got machines all across Illinois, michigan, ohio, colorado I mean you name it, places that get cold all the time, and we have a mix of people that decide to winterize, people that operate the machine year round.

Speaker 3: 51:22

We've got a remote management software tool that allows you to log on from your, you know, sitting in your living room and take a look at your machine. You can see what temperature it is inside the cabinet. I like really the world of internet access. That's cool, yeah, so you monitor it, it'll send you an email if there's a problem. But you can also track sales and you know export spreadsheets and you can then to bag it ice to somebody standing in front of the machine, from your, you know, from from again anywhere in the world.

Speaker 3: 51:57

So if you have a customer that needs you know to put their money in and felt like they didn't get what they had coming to them, you just say are you standing with the machine? Yeah Well, all right, hold on, here comes the ice and hit a button on your, on your phone, and it'll then dice right at the machine. So we have that ability. So so you can operate these machines in in lots of environments. You can operate them below freezing with adequate heating. You know there are places in this country that you cannot, but you're not going to be able to operate these machines. You know, if it's 20 below zero, right North Dakota kind of stuff, you just need to winterize at that point.

Speaker 2: 52:34

Well, yeah, nobody up there needs ice. They got ice right now.

Speaker 4: 52:38

So let's talk about like point of sale. If someone's not paying with cash or paying with a card due, does it link directly to my bank or does there is a central clearinghouse? How does that go?

Speaker 3: 52:51

Yeah, there's a. So we have to buy the hardware that gets installed in the machine from a supplier And we buy a company called Niax. Any Yax they're, you know, two co-compensate uses. They're the kind of a leader in the industry. And so we buy the physical hardware where the customer swipes their card. Any vending machine you've ever approached to buy a soda bag of snacks and use your credit card, that's what you're, you're you're tapping your card, inserting your card or swiping your card on.

Speaker 3: 53:22

That company also handles the back end process. So they you set up an account with them. They connect directly with your bank and then you can set up to have that money deposited into your account. I think you can do it as often as bi-weekly or maybe even weekly, but for certainly once a month. That gets deposited into your account And they handle the whole, you know, plus they hand, they take on all the risk if there's credit card fraud. That's on them. So so, yeah, that's it.

Speaker 3: 53:52

If you, our machines don't come standard with coin and bill acceptance, you can get it. It's not a problem, we can install it. You know, it's 2023. Almost everybody has a debit card or credit card or a card of some kind in their pocket And it's just a lot cleaner because you eliminate the need to have to have me to come back to the machine to pull cash out. Now, of course, there's customers that like to have the ability to accept cash. They like cash. It's a, you know, that's non-reportable, or or or income that you decide if you're a report or not, i guess. So a lot of people do like the cash And there's certain areas where you would put the machine where you'd want cash. If it's a lower income area, you're going to want to allow, you know, the acceptance of bill and coin.

Speaker 2: 54:41

Well, they might have the right idea carrying cash instead of using their credit card. They're going to start tracking everything you buy here pretty soon. They're going to know exactly how much ice you bought. They're going to cut off your ice supply. They already are. Yeah, they already are Anyway. Yeah, it's coming. So, but this is awesome, man, i really appreciate you coming on today. This has been an eye-opener for us And it seems like a totally legit side-oil. So, if you want to earn some extra cash, not really having to put in a whole lot of time And this is the way to- go Well.

Speaker 3: 55:12

We recommend anybody who has any questions give us a, you know, go onto our website. It's everesticeandwatercom. You spell out the and and so everesticeandwatercom, and fill out the thing, and we've got some great people that will answer your questions. It's a, you know, it's a phone call. There's no high pressure for sales. It's just here's how it works. They'll answer your questions. A lot of what they're going to tell you is kind of what we've been talking about. You've kind of heard a lot of what you'll you'll hear, but you'll be able to ask direct questions that you might have and get them answered by one of our one of our folks. And then, if you're interested in moving forward, they can give you a pricing. They can give you all the information. They can give you all the links to everything for finding a location. They can refer you to a location finder service. They can send you a credit application if you'd like to fill that out. So there's some capable people that are ready to help you. If you want to get your side hustle started, we're here for you.

Speaker 4: 56:08

I like the fact that this could be like it could be like a bougie ice, you know what I'm saying. Like you don't even have to get rid of the bends, you just give people the option Yeah right, Your machines, right next to the bend for the bags of ice, the more expensive bag of ice.

Speaker 4: 56:25

Which one do you want? Well, you can just price it the same, whatever And like. Which one do you want? Yeah, do you want the one that you know? right, there has been, the water's gone in, it's gone through the filtration. Has the ozone like? see, you know that all the everything is going into the pipes hasn't been bacteriized.

Speaker 2: 56:43

Yeah exactly.

Speaker 4: 56:44

And so then you, just then you can like compete directly with them, right, right there. You don't have to have the owner of the store make a decision and say, oh, i know that you're, i've been ahead this contract with this ice provider for 25 years. I need to kick them out and use our machine.

Speaker 2: 57:01

Yeah, just put the machine right by and say Watch here you go Yeah, it's like red box, like putting a red box next to a blockbuster back in the day. You know.

Speaker 4: 57:09

I forget what blockbuster was, even like.

Speaker 2: 57:13

It's been so long. Anyway, well cool. Well, this has been. This has been great, man, I really appreciate you coming on. And yeah, Ben, anybody interested definitely get on that website and check it out. Everest, ice and water calm. All right, Ben, thanks sir. Thank you, John, I appreciate your time. Alrighty, thanks for joining us on this week's episode of Side Hustle City. Well, you've heard from our guests. Now let's hear from you. Join our community on Facebook, Side Hustle City. It's a group where people share ideas, share their inspirational stories and motivate each other to be successful and turn their side hustle into their main hustle. We'll see you there And we'll see you next week on the show. Thank you.