Vending Franchises

Vending Franchises in the UK

Despite its name sounding reasonably niche, vending is one of the biggest franchising sectors in the UK. With around 1 vending machine for every 55 people, vending businesses in the UK come in all shapes and sizes. They also serve a wide range of goods. The first thought that will likely cross your mind when you think of a vending franchise is vending machines. Whilst this is one good example, there are many other types of vending businesses for sale in the UK.

What is a Vending Franchise?

In order to become a vending franchise, a vending business needs to set up and establish itself as a successful business. This might be a local supplier of vending machines; it could be anything vending related. It might even be a local engineer business who services these machines. Once a business has been deemed successful, the owner might make the decision to franchise their business.

There are numerous reasons to franchise a business, from increased brand awareness to increasing availability across multiple areas. Entrepreneurs will invest in the franchise – a process where they’ll purchase the rights to trade as the business in their own area. This gives the entrepreneur – known as a franchisee – the rights to run their own business under the franchisor’s brand. And there are many benefits of investing in a vending franchise over starting up alone. Some reasons to invest in a vending franchise include:

• A “Business-in-a-Box” route to business ownership,
• Gaining an established and recognised brand name,
• Benefitting from thorough training and support provided by the franchisor
• National marketing campaigns and group purchasing power
• A safer route to business ownership, favoured by banks who can lend up to 70% of the investment

An Excellent Entry Point to Franchising

Franchising in itself is a brilliant way to get in to business ownership, because it minimises the risks associated with owning a business. If you were to go down the route of starting up alone, you’d have a lot more work on your hands. Finding suppliers, designing a brand and trademark, establishing a business model, the list goes on.

However vending franchises in particular are a fantastic starting point. There are many benefits to investing in a vending franchise, let’s take a look.

Low Cost Vending Franchise Opportunities

Vending is widely considered one of the most affordable types of franchises. A typical vending franchise can be bought from less than £1,000 and the costs associated with the business depend on how much stock and how many machines you run. In the context of a typical snack vending franchise, your costs will depend on how many machines you buy and rent out. Obviously, the more machines you have, the more stock you will need to supply, and this will increase costs but turnover as well.

A Scalable Business Model

Because you can scale the size of your business, the business is scalable. This means the more machines you buy and rent out, the bigger your costs but the bigger your turnover as well. As you scale the business and serve more clients, your turnover increases. But so does your workload. Some vending franchises offer servicing and repair as well as supply, making the vending sector huge.

A Franchise for Everyone

And thanks to the scalable nature of most vending franchises, you can start out big or small. This makes vending businesses ideal for parents, or an ideal starting point for anyone looking to get into business ownership. Thanks to the low investment, you get reassurance and financial security of knowing that if you do change your mind, you’re not chasing back thousands of pounds.

If you do decide to start out small, the business can even be run alongside another job (or franchise). There are a lot of part time franchises out there, and vending franchises are a good example.

Types of Vending Franchises UK

So - we’ve established that the most recognised is supply and repair of vending franchises. But what types are there that distinguish vending as a diverse franchising sector?

Coffee Machine Franchises

There are a handful of coffee machine franchises in the UK. These businesses enable franchisees to enjoy multiple revenue streams through:

• Provision of the coffee machines themselves as rental
• Supply of coffee and vended products
• Maintenance and repair of the machines themselves
• Reselling the machines back to the supplier when finished

Some good examples of coffee vending franchises, trading as of 2021, include Cafelavista and Drinklink.

Your Typical Snack Vending Franchise

Franchises like Tubz pride themselves on a fantastically low investment. As the world’s leading vending tower franchise, Tubz franchisees can enjoy variable franchise package sizes depending on their budget and commitments. But there are other similar franchises out there as well, some of which simply supply the snacks in a box rather than vending tower. With the latter, the snack boxes sell themselves so you don’t have to. These types of vending and retail businesses keep overheads low and profits at a maximum.

Demand for Vending Franchises

There is considerable demand for vending machines. Coffee and snack machines are becoming more and more prominent in the workplace and local businesses such as supermarkets, leisure centres and garages. While sweets and snacks are the most popular and widely recognised, coffee vending machines are too establishing a prominent presence in the market.

Just as there has been an increase in the number of vending machines, so too, has the number of items vended from each. Stats show an onward increased growth in the vending sector. And with over half a million vending machines in the UK, these machines vend more than 7 billion items per year! That’s nearly 20 million products vended from vending machines each day – and part of that money is going into vending franchisees pockets!

Could you be a part of one of the biggest franchise sectors in the world? Discover vending franchise opportunities at Franchise Planet.