Thank you for seeking more advice on this subject and not blindly falling for a sales pitch or an idea that appeals to you. Your friend's father is correct and you should heed his advice. It sounds like he knows what he's talking about.
Healthy vending is a segment of vending that is seeing more traction in the industry, but it is still not what the end user, the person dropping coins into your machines, wants to buy from that machine. Therefore you will have lower sales than industry standards (which are a bunch of empty numbers anyway). Requests from accounts for healthy products have come and gone for several decades now. Prior to the government getting into everyone's business and dictating that healthy products should be in all schools, those location requests would be met to some extent by the vending operator, who always found that the "healthy" products wouldn't sell and eventually they would be pulled in favor of what the people really wanted to buy.
Turn to the 21st century and with all of the government blathering about obesity in America (they are correct) many school districts have thrown out the standard profitable vending products in favor of Kale chips and diet soda and waters. This product lineup, however, won't draw customers to your machine, nor will fancy graphics plastered on the door of the machine, beyond the initial curiosity. This is not what the school children want to eat, nor what their parents buy for them to eat at home. This is a case of trying to force guidelines down the throats of an unwanting public, other than the cow-towing school administrators.
There is a healthy eating trend in America today that didn't exist years ago. More healthy products are available now than ever before. But to put them in a vending machine at much higher pricing than standard candy and chips to sell to an unwanting public, is a disaster in the making for the vending operator.
I will add that generally the machines sold to you for this venture will be from substandard manufacturers, many of them imported. Seaga, though assembled in the US, is a substandard brand of machine. Their technical support and written manuals are terrible, with many parts not available for replacement for whatever reason. Their parts prices are also more than average compared to other US manufacturers.
The fact that you're interested in several of these machines must mean you have been in contact with or been to a biz op seminar where this "opportunity" has been presented to you. I can say that you will generally not get all that is promised to you by these biz op scammers and you will pay much more than the machine is worth. If you want to target the healthy side of vending yourself, you can purchase your own good, used snack machines made by AP or National or USI or AMS, put your own healthy graphics on them and go get the healthy vending locations yourself. You will save most of your money doing it this way and learn more about the business than you ever will handing your money to a salesman.
Thank your for looking into this more and not throwing your money away yet. You should thank your friend's father for his advice and perhaps ask for some guidance in how to get into vending yourself. I'll bet it will be something along the lines of "start with a couple of can soda accounts, get your feet wet, then decide if you still want to do vending. It can be hard work and not very profitable, but by growing slowly you can build yourself a business." Good advice, if you ask me. Hey, you did!
