Hello to all. I retired a few years ago and have been spending my time with family, travel, golf and volunteering. Now I'm ready to try being self employed and the vending business sounds appealing. I've been monitoring this chat site for a few weeks now and have enjoyed reading the questions and answers and thought this might be a good place to get some advice from some of the vending veterans. Without any prior experience it souds like the best approach for me to start out would be to buy an existing route from someone who would be willing to spend a few weeks training and sharing their knowledge. Hopefully this approach might help me avoid some hard knocks. I've run across a private ad for someone selling their route.
Here's a few questions I'm asking myself:
1) how can I be sure the seller actually owns the machines outright?
2) should I have an attorney or business broker handle the transaction?
3) since this is an all cash business how can I determine the asking price is reasonable?
4) if I should take over the route what should steps should I initially take?
Any thoughts you guys might be willing to share would be greatly appreciated.