Vending Machine HQ publishes operating guides, location leads, and tools for people running small vending routes. This page explains who writes it and how it makes money, so you can judge the advice accordingly.
Founder & Lead Editor, Vending Machine HQ
Ray Calder is the pen name of the founder of Vending Machine HQ. Ray runs a small vending route and writes the guides here from hands-on operating experience — machine sourcing, location pitching, stocking, and the unglamorous parts nobody puts in a course. Ray writes under a pseudonym for privacy; every figure published on this site is either drawn from real route data or cited to its source, and corrections are welcome.
Every revenue and cost figure on this site is either drawn from route data or cited to its source. Where a number is a range rather than a measurement, it is written as a range. If you find a figure you think is wrong, say so and it gets corrected or removed.
Machine recommendations on the shop page use affiliate links, which means we earn a commission if you buy through them. That does not change which machines we recommend, and we say so on the page rather than burying it. The course and lead plans are paid products — that is the main way this site makes money.
You will restock machines yourself. You will get told no by location owners. Machines jam, products expire, and some placements never make money. Guides here try to say that plainly instead of selling an easier story.
The bylines on this site are a pseudonym used for privacy. The experience behind them is real and the author is one person, not a content farm. What you will not find here is an invented résumé — no borrowed credentials, no stock-photo headshot, no claims about scale that cannot be backed up.
Found a figure that looks wrong, or a guide that is out of date? Send it through the contact form. Corrections get made and noted rather than quietly edited.