In this episode of JackQuisitions, Jack sits down with Micah Stanley, founder of a rapidly scaling nightlife vending business that went from one college-bar machine to 100+ machines across multiple states in under two years.
What started as a failed brick-and-mortar vape shop turned into a highly profitable, asset-light business model built around placing high-margin vending machines in bars, nightclubs, and casinos. Micah breaks down how he spotted the opportunity almost by accident, why nightlife vending works when traditional vending doesn’t, and how he navigated regulation, compliance, and logistics across three states.
You’ll hear how Micah scaled from refilling machines himself to running partner-operated routes, why trust is the real bottleneck in this business, and how location quality matters more than almost anything else. They also dive deep into ID scanners, state laws, excise taxes, hardware mistakes, sourcing machines, and why most people overcomplicate getting started.
If you’re interested in unconventional cash-flow businesses, location-based models, or scaling without employees, this episode is a must-listen.
🔍 What You’ll Learn
- Why nightlife vending is far more passive than traditional snack vending
- How Micah scaled from 1 machine to 100+ across 3 states
- The real reason most people don’t start vape vending (and why it’s usually wrong)
- How to legally sell age-restricted products using ID scanners
- Why location > machine > product in vending economics
- The biggest hardware mistakes first-time operators make
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🔗 Connect
Jack Carr - https://www.x.com/thehvacjack
Micah Stanley -
IG: Micah.stanley
youtube.com/@micahstanleyvending
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JQ 36
[00:00:00] If you have an entrepreneurial brain, whenever you buy from a vending machine, you're like, man, who owns this vending machine? It's such an easy business model to grasp. You know, all you need is a location, a machine, and the product. What does your team look like? Now? For me, it was all about finding the right partners to actually trust.
You could have a hundred machines, but if you don't have somebody you can trust to fill 'em, you could say goodbye. How are you convincing the business owners to let you
put your machines in their establishment?
People are going to leave your bar. In search of these things like nicotine, if they can't find, find it in your bar.
Walk into a bar. There's a 90% chance you won't see a vape vending machine on the wall. And if you don't see a vape vending machine on the wall, that's an opportunity for you to put one there.
Welcome back to Jack Acquisitions. I'm your host Jack. I run and operate multiple businesses. I've bought four businesses in the last two years, which we've scaled to a. Collective over $15 million in revenue. And today I have an awesome guest. I have Micah. Micah, how are you [00:01:00] doing today? I'm doing great man.
How are you? Doing well, Micah. I have been a huge fan of your content that you've been pushing recently. You do a lot more work. A little bit outside of our general niche of home service. You are in the vending machine game, is that correct?
Yes. The vending machine game, specifically. The nightlife vending machine game, I would say.
Sweet man. So, so walk us through 1 0 1 for what is Night Life Vending Machine and how did you get started into this?
Yeah, so nightlife, vending machines are machines that you place in bars, nightclubs, casinos. And essentially what you're doing is you're selling products like nicotine, emergency chargers, um, honey packs, disposable cameras, and really anything that, uh, people on a night out would need to buy that the bar doesn't already offer.
And the way I got into it was, was actually interesting. So I had a, I started a vape shop in 2023, [00:02:00] and I had everything going. I signed a lease. I bought all the inventory. I bought the sign, and the sign guy tried to pull a permit for, to be able to put the sign on the outside of the brick and mortar shop.
Yep. And the city decided that they didn't want any more vape shops in town. So they got into a scuffle with me about occupancy, and the landlord kind of misrepresented what the store was. It was zoned for retail, but the occupancy was supposed to be like a dental office. And so they were getting really nitty gritty with me.
And at the time I didn't really have any money to like get a lawyer and get it changed. They basically shut me down. Mm-hmm. So I had all this inventory and we had this idea to put the vape vending machines in the college bars. 'cause this is in Lincoln, Nebraska, so University of Nebraska, big college tone.
And we had that idea to attach coupons, but we were gonna, we were gonna attach coupons to the vapes. And put the vape vending machines in the bars. But that was gonna be like phase three of our [00:03:00] brick and mortar shop. We were trying to build this big brick and mortar delivery brand and then we were gonna add the vending machines, but we just had to scrap all of it 'cause we had all this inventory and they wouldn't let us open the store.
So we pivoted to just doing the vending machines and I honestly didn't think that it was gonna do that well, especially 'cause this bar is only open Thursday, Friday, Saturday. But Sure, sure enough. The first month that I put it in there, it did just shy of $3,000 in revenue and I was like, holy crap, we gotta, we could, we could just take this and just scale this.
Yeah. To infinity and. And that's how it started.
So tell me this, did you have any experience with any other kind of vending machines prior to these, I'm gonna call 'em vape vending machines. Uh, did you start with like food or, you know, the electronics vending machines or you went straight to just vape 'cause of the situation?
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I went straight to vape because of the situation. I, I mean, I, I, I definitely had thought about vending machines before and it was, it was definitely, it's something that I think everyone kind of thinks of, right?
Whenever you buy, if, if you have an entrepreneurial brain, whenever you buy from a vending machine, you're like, man, who owns this vending machine? Like it mm-hmm. Because it's just so, mm-hmm. It, it's such an easy business model to grasp, you know, all you [00:05:00] need is a location, a machine, and the product. Um, and no, I didn't have any, I had experience in wholesale real estate and reselling, so like buying stuff off of Alibaba and, and reselling it.
Those were the two kind of hustles that I had done. Um. Before I opened my vape shop and then ultimately opened the vape vending machine business.
Okay. So update us now. So you started off with one in a college town. Where are you now? Are they, do you, I'm assuming you have a few more than that.
Yeah, so now I have, I have uh, 20 or about 30 machines now in Lincoln, Nebraska, Omaha, Nebraska, bluff, Nebraska, with one in Columbus, Nebraska.
And then I have about five in Charlotte, North Carolina. Then we have around 70 in Cleveland, so I'm hovering at a just under, oh my goodness. 110 machines.
That is too cool. Yeah. So 110 machines. I mean that, that's a full-size business, especially in three different markets. You have to have a few people.
Mm-hmm. [00:06:00] Restocking and filling, I'm assuming a few different. Tobacco licenses or something around that. Yeah. To to own, um, to, to buy products at wholesale and then Yep. To walk me through, like, the first thing that comes to my mind is I go like, liability. Right. In all three of those states, you're gonna have to show ID to be able to get to buy those, even though it's in a bar.
That's, you would assume everyone's 21. Like how does that part work? I guess I have three questions there, so
in No, that's good. That's good. Those are good questions. So the, there's three different states that I operate in, um, North Carolina, Ohio, Nebraska. We'll start with Nebraska because I started there.
The law clearly states in Nebraska that you can operate a vending machine that sells these kinds of products as long as you are inside of a location that has a liquor license for consumption. Which just means a bar essentially. Yep. Um, or it could be in a place that isn't generally open to the public, so technically I could go put these in like warehouses and stuff like that.
I've never [00:07:00] tried that. That could work. But I haven't tried that. Technically that's legal. Um, and so that being the case, there's separate laws obviously where you have to. Make sure that people are 21 before they buy nicotine from you. Um, but as far as the actual vending machine placement, that's what the law is.
In Nebraska, we put ID scanners on the machines in places that aren't already 21 plus. So places that are 21 plus, meaning they have a bouncer at the door, um, we view it as sufficient for that bouncer to edd that person before they come in because people who aren't. 21 get allowed in, but places that aren't 21 plus, which are more like sports bars and things like that, those places we put ID scanners on, and that's basically just where you scan the, the back of the barcode on your id, um, before you have to, before you purchase Ohio States, that you have to be in a generally 21 plus area.
So. What the [00:08:00] word generally means is kind of ambiguous. Um, yeah. Right. But generally, if it's 21 plus, you're pretty much just talking about bars again, right? Yeah. Uh, so most of the laws, most of the state laws are written, um, to have language that. Essentially means you can only put these things in bars.
And where do you find that language? That language is in like the, uh, a TF something or another for the state? Or what, what does that look like? Where, where should people be looking?
It's so the people make the mistake of, of asking chat, GBT, um, chat, GBT, there's a lot of nuance in the, in the laws because.
Vape could mean tobacco, and tobacco could mean cigarette. And all of these words that they use in the language have different definitions per state. So some states define vapor products as tobacco, so if they use the word tobacco. They're also talking about vapor products. Mm-hmm. Some states define them [00:09:00] differently.
Some states tax vapor products the exact same as tobacco, and they'd all just bundle it all up into one. And some states have a separate tax for nicotine. Synthetic nicotine, like zens vapor products and tobacco all have different taxes. So it, it, it's really hard for chat GBT to figure that out. Um, I guess because what, what chat GBT does is it pulls from the internet and there's a bunch of different websites that try to interpret the law and.
Put it out there on their blogs. But if one of those websites interpret the raw, the law wrong, then chat, GBT pulls that and gives you false information. So the only way to truly know what your state statute is, is to look at the code, and you can find that typically on a.gov website. nebraska.gov, for example.
Mm-hmm. Um, and you could just navigate on that website to find the actual, uh, statute, which you can typically look up in the search bar and find exactly [00:10:00] what you're looking for.
Yeah. You can also call the offices. I mean, so I used to run a alcohol product business. We used to sell wine and it was you, you hit the nail on the head is just like when you're working in these industries, there's so much nuance.
We used to sell. Mead honey wine, but we could call it honey wine and, and labeling around wine and how you do it is always, it's very intricate on how you present the label and what words you can and can't use. And where you say it's from has to be bottled in a certain area, but it doesn't have to be pulled.
But there's just so much nuance to every single one of these laws because it's written by bureaucrats who make money. Yeah. Making sure their law law stays into place. And so, yeah. Long story short, yeah. Call or.gov websites are amazing. Um, so that, that's awesome, man. This is such a cool little niche. I could definitely see the draw to it.
Um, so, uh, my guess is you're not the first, you were buying these, these machines from somewhere or like, talk to me a little bit about where you get the actual, like hardware for. Is it already [00:11:00] done or were you guys some of the first to put ID scanners on this? Like, what does that look like?
Yeah. Okay. So I started off, two years ago, I was buying machines from a company called Discount Vending.
Mm-hmm. Um, nothing against them, I just think that their machines are extremely overpriced. Um, they did have a full service where you would literally ship them the products and they would like configure your machine. To figure out, uh, exactly how to make it so your products are venable, um, which is cool, but also you could just inform yourself and figure that stuff out on your own, um, with like a video guide or something like that.
So they were charging upwards of like 10 grand for, for a vape vending machine. Um, now, at the time I had already put all my money into the vape shop. So what I did was I had, I had my last, I had like $2,000 left on a 0% interest credit card. Um, and so I used that as a down payment on another loan for their in-house financing for that [00:12:00] $10,000 vending machine.
And, um, luckily it worked out, but I wouldn't recommend people do something like that. But it worked out six months into it, I was like, man. This isn't really scalable. If I keep having to finance, finance, finance these $10,000 pieces of equipment, um, I gotta find something that's cheaper than this. So I was looking around and at the time there was nothing else available other than discount vending and Chinese machines, unlike Alibaba.
And so I tried three different manufacturers from Alibaba. Um, one of them I bought the machine. It showed up six months later with no communication, no payment processor onboarding, none of that. So I actually thought I got scanned by that one, but in the meantime, two other machines showed up and there was one that I bought like three of, and another one that I bought one of.
And neither of them were very good at all. Like one of 'em didn't have an ID scanner at all, and there was no ability to put [00:13:00] an ID scanner on. It only had the QR code age verification, which. Kill sales by 80%, by the way. Um, that's why we pivoted to the ID scanners. But the other, the other one had the ID scanners, but they didn't work.
You could, you could literally scan a bag of Doritos and it would say that you were old enough to buy vape. Good to go. So, yeah. So increased sales by
80%.
Yeah, I know. So I, I had no, like, I had no good options. Um, my only. What I was gonna do was I was gonna hire, I was gonna have to hire like a software developer to take one of these Chinese machines and, and actually make them, make it like sufficient and scalable.
Um, but I ended up not doing that because one day I looked up vape vending and I found vape tm.com. It was probably on page two or something like that, but I was always kind of scouring the internet for looking for competition and other people Yeah, in the industry. 'cause there wasn't very many people.
And I saw these machines and there were ones that I had never seen before. They [00:14:00] didn't look like any of the ones that I had ordered yet. And so I called up the number and the CEO answered Jordan. And I had a conversation with him. Um, and he, he was also in the industry. And, um, he already had a bunch of locations so we, so we hit it off pretty quick and so I tr I traveled down to Cleveland, Ohio and, 'cause I wanted to test the machines 'cause I had wasted at this point.
So much money on all these machines. Mm-hmm. Um, and none of them were good. So I wasn't about to just buy another machine from a guy. Like I wanted to go make sure it was real in person. So I drove 12 hours up to Cleveland, Ohio, um, with the idea that if I liked the machines, I was gonna buy a bunch, put 'em in my car and drive back.
So I ended up, I, I walked, I was trying to make sure that it wasn't just some dude in his garage. Right. Um, and it definitely wasn't. It was they have a full warehouse, um, third generation amusement company. Um, and Jordan had already already hired a software developer, [00:15:00] made his own software for the machine.
So he had already done basically what I was like thinking that I had to go do. Um, so it was like, this is, this is a no brainer. These machines are way better. They have ID scanners. The ID scanners are modular, meaning. If you place a machine and one day the legislation changes that says every machine needs to have an ID scanner, you can easily just screw one on where that's the only machine that has that.
So, um, everything was pointing to like, these are the best machines. So I just started getting my machines from, from vape, tm, and. They aren't they, they're about one third, the price of that $10,000 price point. So that's, that's the machine. Awesome.
That's the machine story.
Yeah.
Too cool. And so when, what, just outta outta curiosity, when did you
start, what was the year?
Uh, 2023. Okay. So this is in two years you've placed over a hundred. Locations. That's wild, man. Mm-hmm. So talk to me a little bit about that. Right? So you start, you start in your hometown, you place a couple in the local bars, it starts [00:16:00] working, you are making good margin. Uh, you're moving through some of this old product that you've already purchased.
Um, yeah. Like to, to move into a hundred locations. I mean, it seems a lot more difficult. Uh, what, what does your team look like now and. What, what does moving into a hundred locations like at what point did it become you refilling and restocking to you now running this business of I need to find locations, I need to restock locations, I need to buy inventory.
Like there's probably a few moving parts and people in the mix now, I would assume. Yeah,
no, there definitely is because each state you can't. Each state has different laws around like shipping, nicotine products too. So it's not like we have one centralized, uh, place and then we ship all the products out to the bars.
We actually have to have one centralized place in each state where we ship the products to. Um, and the way that I've been able to scale it, it's not like it's just me. Um, it's not like it's just me in three different [00:17:00] states with with people who work under me. That would be extremely, I've seen people try to do that.
It's extremely challenging to operate this on a national level. There's only one guy I know. Uh, head Rush vending, that, that has been able to do that successfully so far. Um, but for me it's like impossible because I don't have as many connections as he does. Does, um, or did, and the reason why is because you're dealing with these, these products that people wanna steal, right?
Um, they're, they're, uh, age restricted products. And so imagine, you could imagine you putting an Indeed listing out for someone to fill a vending machine. Yeah, and it's a vape vending machine. And so you give this random person that you don't know all this product, and I've been burned a couple times doing that.
So the way that I structured it is I have partners in those routes. So like in Nebraska, that's my hometown route. My parents actually run the route for me. Um, and that, that just consists of filling the machines when they need [00:18:00] filled. Um, and then in North Carolina, I have a partner that runs those machines.
For me. Um, and he fills 'em the machines when they need filled. And then in Cleveland we have a full-time, uh, tech that just 'cause we have 70 machines that just fills the machines full-time and installs them when we need more. So it's all about, for me it was all about finding the right partners to actually, to actually trust.
Uh, because you could, you could have a hundred machines, but if you don't have somebody you can trust to fill 'em, you could say goodbye. 'cause it's all about having a good service and. And, uh, having a good relationship with those account owners. So as soon as the machine isn't filled up, those people are, those people get, get angry and, and they want you to, they wanna kick you out.
So you really have to have a good service, which means you have to always have the machines filled.
And so with that being said, what does it look like for, so first question, is one person enough to fill 70 machines? Like, where's the max? How many machines can one person run? So.
[00:19:00] Here, here's the beautiful thing about this business is that it's, it's high ticket, high margin, but it's low volume.
So a snack machine that's doing $300 a month, you're gonna have expired product. Um, you're gonna have to fill that machine maybe twice a month, right? Yeah. But because what's gonna happen is someone's gonna, there's gonna be one guy who really likes Doritos, and that's like basically fueling the entire business.
So you're gonna have to keep going back and filling that. One thing with, with vape, vending, a machine that does $300 a month, if you have a slim wall or a mega wall. You could, you, you could not refill that machine for two months and you'd be perfectly fine because $300 is equal to like eight vapes. So the machines can hold 80 to 240 vapes depending on which model you get.
And so if you get, if you fill a machine, and by the way, this product doesn't expire for [00:20:00] two years, so Yeah. That's awesome. In, in every way. It's, it's more passive than. Then snack vending and these other vending models. Maybe the only thing that would be more passive is those charger rental machines, because you never even have to restock the chargers 'cause people return 'em.
But other than that, this is probably the most passive, I would say, um, vending model. Uh, just because of the, just because of how high ticket it is and the volume isn't actually that high.
Yeah, that makes total sense from a model perspective. And so I love it, man. That's, that's too cool. And how are you convincing?
The, the business owners, how are you convincing the business owners to let you put your machines in their establishment? Are you offering the percentage fee or is there some other, um, methodology that you're focusing on?
Yeah, so I'd say 90% of the machines that we have, we do offer a split to the owner.
Um, I've negotiated some of, we always offer a split to the owner, by the way. Um, [00:21:00] I've negotiated some of the places to not offer a split. Some of the places that are only gonna do like 200, $300. I just talked to the owner and I say, look, we can't. We, we'd love to keep this machine here, but we can't give you a split.
Um, but 90% of them are on a split. But that's not the main way that we, that we pitch the machine. The, the value add of the machine. The value pitch is that people are going to leave your bar in search of these things like nicotine if they can't find, find it in your bar. Um, and when people leave the bar, sometimes they take big groups with them, and now you have.
One to five people leaving because one person wanted nicotine, and none of those people are gonna order any more drinks. They're gone. Right? They go, they're at, they're to the convenience store or they're to a bar that already has a vape vending machine inside of it. Um, and that, that is a, that is a leaky bucket inside of their, inside of their business that they probably weren't even aware of.
So you have to make them problem aware first. [00:22:00] Um, now sometimes you reach out to these bar owners and they just think it's such a cool idea and they understand that it's gonna make money right away. Um, and sometimes they just say yes right away. But for the ones that need convincing, you really have to, you really have to stress the fact that it's a value add to them, and that they're gonna sell more alcohol with these products, um, inside of the vending machine.
And not only that, not only are you gonna make more money. With drink sales, we're also gonna slice you off a little bit of the profit. And that could range anywhere from 10 to 50% depending on the volume.
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Yeah. I mean, and that's an awesome idea because as a bar owner, right, margins aren't tight in bars and depending the bar, I would imagine, but it's, it's an easy source of cash where you don't have to do anything else, right? To get some, mm-hmm. Some mailbox money every single month for just hosting a small space on your wall, which you already have and is sitting there.
So it's a wonderful idea in the sense that. Uh, nicotine and alcohol have always gone together, especially with the older generations. Mm-hmm. Like people only used to smoke when they drank as a social thing, and now you're combining the two and saying, Hey, it's like the old school cigarette machines, but now it's a vape vending machine, so I love it.
This is too cool. Okay, so you give 'em a little bit of, of, of that mix and so how are you, how are you culminating large? Right. So a hundred locations over. Two years. Um, I mean, that seems [00:24:00] fast. That seems fast to me. Yeah. How are you doing B2B and how are you driving and finding these owners? Are you just Googling, or what, how are, what's the methodology?
I'd say 80% of my locations were landed remotely. Um, and that comes from my background in wholesale real estate. So I, I knew how to find, I knew how to basically find anyone's number on the internet just through that experience, um, as I use true people search.com. So if, if you have a, if you have a bar in mind, right?
Um. You can look up on Google, who owns
Yeah.
Jack's bar and Grill. Right. And typically there will be some sort of article about the reopening of the bar because bars change hands all the time. Um, there'll be some article about the reopening of a bar, some, some article about some fight where someone got shot or something.
Where the owner made a statement and they'll have the owner's [00:25:00] name in that article, Google AI will pull that name and tell you the name of the owner. So you take that name of the owner, you put it in true people search.com, and it'll typically give you a phone number to call and you just cold call the owner.
Um, that's how I got my first location and that's how I've got most of my locations. Um, aside from the snowball effect, that starts to happen once you start getting a couple machines. Yeah. Um, but it really, it's been mostly remote sales and that doesn't mean that you won't have to go shake the guy's hand in person.
I'm just saying that's how we make initial contact typically is completely, remotely, completely cold. Um, and that's, yeah, that's how we've done it.
I love this so much. You know, the, the crazy part about this is in preparation for this episode, that's exactly what I did, is I went and there's two local dive bars in my, my city.
I went. And it's the only type of bar I actually go to is dive bar. So like I look up the two that I go to and I said, Hey, I wonder if I can find their [00:26:00] information. That's the exact procedure I did. I Googled, who's the owner. They had an article about getting shut down in 2020. They had the names of the two owners that they got shut down because in 2020 they were, uh, causing a disturbance because everybody wanted to.
To go to the bar because of COVID. And then lo and behold, I was able to search surname, untrue people search, grab their phone numbers and have that information, just like I said, as in preparation to see how easy or how difficult it would be to get a hold of them. Um, so like that's the exact method I used as well, and I was able to get three, three owners of two bars in within like 20 minutes.
Yeah. Like it wasn't that difficult.
No, it's not that difficult. And, um, it's, that's awesome. That's that's so funny. You did the exact same thing. Um, it's, yeah, it's, I mean, it's. Everybody's number's out there, man. It's 2026. You can find if you wanna get ahold of somebody. Chances are, you can do it with a little bit of research on Google and a couple of those skip tracing websites, you should be able to get ahold of whoever you're looking for.
Okay, so looking at this from like a [00:27:00] 32,000 foot level, what am, what am I missing here? Right. This seems like an extremely easy business is hey, I call a couple bars. Uh, I get my, my units in place. Put them on the wall, they start generating a couple thousand dollars a month that's split. So I'm making just say, a thousand to $2,000 a month net.
Like where's the, mm-hmm. Why isn't everybody doing this? What's the difficulty? What's the hard part that I'm missing?
I think people get scared by the word vape. Um, or nicotine. I think that, I think that there's so much regulation around these products that one, when people hear about this model. I'd say 50% of people just assume it's illegal right off the bat and just completely dismiss it.
Um, the other 50% might do a little bit more research. They might use chat GBT, for example, to try to figure out if it's legal. And if you look up chat, g on chat, GBT or Google, like a lot of the times it, it'll tell you it's illegal when it's [00:28:00] not. Um. I think a lot of people get scared just by the regulation and by the misinformation that's out there.
Um, but I personally, I personally think that the, the juice is worth the squeeze regardless of if vapes get, get regulated or not, because we've been testing other products like emergency chargers, honey packs, uh, disposable cameras, and they do sell. Right. And we've also been experimenting with selling advertisements.
On our screens and the, what we've been able to sell so far is $35 a month per screen. Per month. So you could imagine, um, in a local area, if you have, I'm horrible at math, but if you have 10 machines and they're each doing $35 a month, that's three $50 per month extra. On those 10 machines, but you, you can bill that upfront.
So you can kind of turn this into an advertising agency too. Mm-hmm. If you want, you can reach out to injury lawyers, real estate agents, all the people [00:29:00] you see on billboards are typically, they typically have a marketing budget that you can advertise on these screens. So. Um, really it's, yeah, 35
bucks a month is not a, a killer deal.
Like talking about difficulty too, and to get yourself into 10 different bars, I mean, that's probably the cheapest as somebody who owns a business that does advertising quite a bit like that, is an extremely cheap way to get yourself in front of a lot of people from a branding, from a branding angle.
Yeah. I, I, I don't know how effective it would be. I mean, there's probably some studies on it. Um, yeah. But it's no different in my mind than. People who put theirs like behind the urinal or behind the toilet or in the bathroom on the wall, like there's plenty of places. It's just a very cheap option. Um, to, to get your name flashing in front of people kind of over and over again, especially in a locale, like a local service business would be great for that.
But
yeah, I think DUI lawyers would be perfect too. Yeah, I mean, I haven't reached out to any of them yet, but I was gonna say, once you have to [00:30:00] tie
your name to, uh, you do have to tie your name to a vending machine that sells vape. So like I do. Correct. Yeah. I guess there's a downside there to, to some certain businesses, but.
I mean, I don't know. No, definitely. It depends on the people and the location and the place. That's, that is extremely interesting. So, so that's what I'm missing is that, is there any kind of additional taxation and taxation work that you have to do behind the scenes?
Yes. Yes. So most states have a wholesale tax on vapor products.
Meaning, um, if you buy, like in Nebraska for example, it's 10% of the wholesale price. So if I buy a vape for $10, I owe an extra buck on top. Um, and I pay that directly to the state. Um, Ohio also has an excise tax. Um, some states are banning flavors. I mean, it, it is, it is like an ever-changing industry. Um, something that, that I think a lot of people get wrong is they get, they get discouraged or they get.
[00:31:00] Um, angry. When the state decides to put an excise tax on vapor products, I think that's a complete wrong way to look at it, because if a state is putting an excise tax on vapor products, that means that they have, they, they want to make money off of that, and they will make money off that. They'll make a lot of money off that.
And then when Big Tobacco comes along and tries to give them a check to get vapes banned. They're a lot less likely to take it because they already have all of this income coming in, um, from the taxation of that product. So I think that excise tax, I think that. If, if, if the state puts an excise tax on vapor products, it's the best thing that could happen.
As long as it's not like Washington, um, or DC or Minnesota. They have a 90% excise tax, which makes it kind of hard to run this business. Almost impossible.
Yeah, I could imagine.
Yeah.
Well that's awesome man. Last question. If you had to give any advice to somebody starting out in [00:32:00] this business, what advice would you give them?
Get up on your soapbox. Tell them what they should not do or they should do immediately.
Yeah. I think a lot of people get stuck in the weeds of like figuring out how to like start the LLC, what machine should I buy you? You could really simplify this, um, by doing, doing easy things like. Use legal zoom maybe if you don't know how to do any of that stuff.
It's only like an extra 200 bucks. Uh, for LLCs and things like that. Um, there's really only one vape machine provider, and if you look at their Trustpilot reviews, they have like 83 5 star trustpilot reviews on vape tm.com. So that's, those are two easy, simplified things. You know how to make the LLC, you know how to get the machines.
It's really just about the location because with a vending business, if you don't have a location, um, you don't have a business. Your entire business model is built upon other businesses letting you put your machine [00:33:00] in their business. So you have to get a location. Um, if you're just starting out, I would just test the waters.
Drive downtown, wherever you live, walk into a bar and there's a 90% chance you won't see a vape vending machine on the wall. And if you don't see a vape vending machine on the wall, that's an opportunity for you. To put one there. Um, so I think people try to overcomplicate it and kind of get lost in the an in the analyzing of things.
So it sounds to me like first step, make sure your state's laws are, uh, they approve of this kind of stuff. Second step. Mm-hmm. Find a location. Third step. Then you worry about the rest. Worry about the wholesale. Worry about the licensing. Worry about getting the, the unit. 'cause it sounds like location is always gonna be kind of the, the crux of this.
Yeah, a hundred percent. It's all, it's all about the location. And, and don't get me wrong too, I will put a warning out there. Do not just go find any bar to put these in if, if the average age of the people at that bar is 60 years old, [00:34:00] your machine will only do $200 a month, and I can promise you that. So a nice jazz bar.
It's not a thing. Yeah, a jazz bar, something like that. I mean, unless you're gonna be putting cigarettes inside the machine, which. Is typically the same. Um, the, it's the same, not the same margin, but it's typically the same laws surrounding it. You can put cigarettes in, but you're gonna have to jack the price those cigarettes up like crazy.
Um, mm-hmm. I, I, look, I, I would just stay away from the places that are 60 years old, like I. I can't stress it enough.
Yeah. Awesome. Well, Micah, thank you so much for coming on today and talking about your business. Where can people find you? Where can they learn more? Where can you share more of your experiences?
Yes. I have a YouTube channel. It's Micah Stanley Vending. Um, and then I have a Instagram, it's Micah Stanley. But those are the two places that I, that I post the most content, uh, YouTube is, is probably where you'll find the best information about how to start the [00:35:00] business and things like that. So, uh, yeah, I'd love if you check me out.
Awesome. We will put
that in the link below. Thank you guys for listening. Like share, subscribe, leave a comment what you think about vape vending, and if you are gonna go out and do it anytime soon. Appreciate it guys.
