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> And what income is more passive than vending machine coin revenue? Automated vending has had a bit of a renaissance, with social media influencers buying old

> And what income is more passive than vending machine coin revenue? Automated vending has had a bit of a renaissance, with social media influencers buying old machines and turning them into a business. Iunno, where I grew up, vending machines were controlled by the mob. Up to mob hits in the HQ’s parking lot. Makes me wonder if pay phones are the same after the telco offloaded them.

asveikau 2y ago
I would imagine that's even more attractive to them in the old days, when they dealt in coins and bills. A modern vending machine probably mostly gets credit card transactions, which are traceable.
- adamc 2y ago
  Yeah, same thought. Their attractiveness for laundering money may be diminishing.
- stult 2y ago
  It's easier to launder money with services than goods anyway because you don't need to dispose of excess merchandise to make the books balance. Like if you want to claim to have sold 10000 cans of soda despite only selling 1000, you need to buy 10000 cans of soda or even the most superficial review of your accounts will reveal the scheme. The ideal laundering mechanism is a service with a high ratio of price to variable cost, like car washes or laundromats, because then it's easier to overstate income without needing to jump through hoops to overstate the matching costs. These days, it's almost trivial to launder via wash trades with the proliferation of online services with effectively zero marginal costs. e.g., setting up a freelancer account and a separate business account on some platform like Upwork and then hiring yourself. So I'd be surprised to see anyone laundering via sale of goods unless they are deeply incompetent or it's an opportunistic scheme of some sort (i.e., they are exploiting a unique opportunity that pops up).
  - VirusNewbie 2y ago
    >These days, it's almost trivial to launder via wash trades with the proliferation of online services with effectively zero marginal costs. like an MS Paint drawing of a monkey, but on the blockchain.
  - maxwell 2y ago
    I was thinking the other day that self-storage facilities seem ideal: you don't even need to account for discrepancies in utility usage, as in missing water at car washes and laundromats. Just say units are rented and paid in cash. Not aware of any KYC laws but haven't looked recently.
    - potato3732842 2y ago
      There are no KYC laws for self storage because it's already standard practice so you can sue the person who pays cash for one month of storage and then crams the locker floor to ceiling with hazmat.
      - maxwell 2y ago
        Makes sense. Also would probably hit into full occupancy pretty quickly. I guess you could use it as a warehouse for black market goods or something too though.
  - mtnGoat 2y ago
    Great theory lesson, but… You are basing all of this on a non cash world. Cash is still king in many parts of society that aren’t entirely on the up and up. These are the OGs of this sport and definitely aren’t incompetent. Plus sale of goods is very easy to fake if you have multiple parts of the vertical covered. things don’t make sense if you’ve never done them.
    - toyg 2y ago
      This. Once the money is digital, in most cases it has already been washed - or it didn't really need to be washed in the first place.
0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
I have also heard that vending machine locations are highly contested. You can buy the machine, but you are not going to have the pull to deploy it at the airport. Those contracts were signed long ago.
- hyperhopper 2y ago
  Then why are there so few? And containing such a small variety of goods? In Japan anywhere from a busy subway to a remote park, there will be rows of vending machines everywhere, with more varieties of sodas, coffees, soups, ice creams, candies, hell even clothes or meat! And those are just the common types. You're never far from what you want in an automated fashion. Why are we so behind in America when there seemingly is excess on the supply side for the chance to supply more goods and deploy more machines, and demand on the consumer side for better, more convenient, more available, and more varied vending machines goods?
  - crooked-v 2y ago
    There are many huge contextual differences between the US and Japan when it comes to vending machines, but the most obvious one is that Japan is eminently walkable, while the US is so pedestrian-unfriendly that there's no guarantee that people will even be around your row of vending machines in the first place.
    - hifromwork 2y ago
      I agree, but in my very walkable european neighbourhood I don't see any vending machines either (except on the train stations, in waiting rooms, etc). Granted, there are small shops every corner, so vending machines don't feel necessary, but sometimes it would be useful to have some.
      - wongarsu 2y ago
        In Germany a lot of vending machines have appeared over the last ~10 years, and there are a lot more popping up all the time. And not just in the big cities. Nowhere as many as in Japan, but for example in my area there's a farmer selling fresh eggs in a vending machine, a meat packaging plant selling meat and sausages, an ice cream/frozen yoghurt vending machine (some local Ben & Jerry's competitor), a bunch of vending machines for CBD stuff, a pizza vending machine at the local university (it makes hot pizza), multiple old shops in pedestrian areas converted to house 5-10 vending machines, etc. Especially the model of renting shops to fill them with vending machines seems to be getting popular. They regularly get into fights with the city whether they have to obey the legally allowed opening times for stores or can be open 24/7. That and farm shops putting up vending machines.
bongodongobob 2y ago
Even if not the literal Mafia, there are companies that will get violent over territory. I used to work with a guy who had an arcade game side business in the 90s and would lease or whatever to bars. Starting out, he didn't know about the territories and put some machines where they shouldn't be. The group that "owned " the territory found out he was putting machines in their turf and started vandalizing his machines and warned him to pull out or they were going to vandalize him. He ended up slowly selling off his machines because the competition and craziness of it all was too much to deal with.
jcrawfordor 2y ago
It is a rather interesting question if organized crime got into the payphone business. Not that I know of, and something that I didn't get into (because it's kind of a tangled patchwork and not really that relevant) is that states do generally regulate PSPs, although that regulatory scheme is often very lax. Still, it might deter organized crime that in most cases they would have to register with the state as a PSP and file reports. Of course, I know that some places imposed similar regulatory regimes around vending machines and other coin-op businesses, in part because of issues with fraud and crime.

asveikau 2y ago

I would imagine that's even more attractive to them in the old days, when they dealt in coins and bills. A modern vending machine probably mostly gets credit card transactions, which are traceable.

adamc 2y ago
Yeah, same thought. Their attractiveness for laundering money may be diminishing.
stult 2y ago
It's easier to launder money with services than goods anyway because you don't need to dispose of excess merchandise to make the books balance. Like if you want to claim to have sold 10000 cans of soda despite only selling 1000, you need to buy 10000 cans of soda or even the most superficial review of your accounts will reveal the scheme. The ideal laundering mechanism is a service with a high ratio of price to variable cost, like car washes or laundromats, because then it's easier to overstate income without needing to jump through hoops to overstate the matching costs. These days, it's almost trivial to launder via wash trades with the proliferation of online services with effectively zero marginal costs. e.g., setting up a freelancer account and a separate business account on some platform like Upwork and then hiring yourself. So I'd be surprised to see anyone laundering via sale of goods unless they are deeply incompetent or it's an opportunistic scheme of some sort (i.e., they are exploiting a unique opportunity that pops up).
- VirusNewbie 2y ago
  >These days, it's almost trivial to launder via wash trades with the proliferation of online services with effectively zero marginal costs. like an MS Paint drawing of a monkey, but on the blockchain.
- maxwell 2y ago
  I was thinking the other day that self-storage facilities seem ideal: you don't even need to account for discrepancies in utility usage, as in missing water at car washes and laundromats. Just say units are rented and paid in cash. Not aware of any KYC laws but haven't looked recently.
  - potato3732842 2y ago
    There are no KYC laws for self storage because it's already standard practice so you can sue the person who pays cash for one month of storage and then crams the locker floor to ceiling with hazmat.
    - maxwell 2y ago
      Makes sense. Also would probably hit into full occupancy pretty quickly. I guess you could use it as a warehouse for black market goods or something too though.
- mtnGoat 2y ago
  Great theory lesson, but… You are basing all of this on a non cash world. Cash is still king in many parts of society that aren’t entirely on the up and up. These are the OGs of this sport and definitely aren’t incompetent. Plus sale of goods is very easy to fake if you have multiple parts of the vertical covered. things don’t make sense if you’ve never done them.
  - toyg 2y ago
    This. Once the money is digital, in most cases it has already been washed - or it didn't really need to be washed in the first place.

0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago

I have also heard that vending machine locations are highly contested. You can buy the machine, but you are not going to have the pull to deploy it at the airport. Those contracts were signed long ago.

hyperhopper 2y ago
Then why are there so few? And containing such a small variety of goods? In Japan anywhere from a busy subway to a remote park, there will be rows of vending machines everywhere, with more varieties of sodas, coffees, soups, ice creams, candies, hell even clothes or meat! And those are just the common types. You're never far from what you want in an automated fashion. Why are we so behind in America when there seemingly is excess on the supply side for the chance to supply more goods and deploy more machines, and demand on the consumer side for better, more convenient, more available, and more varied vending machines goods?
- crooked-v 2y ago
  There are many huge contextual differences between the US and Japan when it comes to vending machines, but the most obvious one is that Japan is eminently walkable, while the US is so pedestrian-unfriendly that there's no guarantee that people will even be around your row of vending machines in the first place.
  - hifromwork 2y ago
    I agree, but in my very walkable european neighbourhood I don't see any vending machines either (except on the train stations, in waiting rooms, etc). Granted, there are small shops every corner, so vending machines don't feel necessary, but sometimes it would be useful to have some.
    - wongarsu 2y ago
      In Germany a lot of vending machines have appeared over the last ~10 years, and there are a lot more popping up all the time. And not just in the big cities. Nowhere as many as in Japan, but for example in my area there's a farmer selling fresh eggs in a vending machine, a meat packaging plant selling meat and sausages, an ice cream/frozen yoghurt vending machine (some local Ben & Jerry's competitor), a bunch of vending machines for CBD stuff, a pizza vending machine at the local university (it makes hot pizza), multiple old shops in pedestrian areas converted to house 5-10 vending machines, etc. Especially the model of renting shops to fill them with vending machines seems to be getting popular. They regularly get into fights with the city whether they have to obey the legally allowed opening times for stores or can be open 24/7. That and farm shops putting up vending machines.

bongodongobob 2y ago

Even if not the literal Mafia, there are companies that will get violent over territory. I used to work with a guy who had an arcade game side business in the 90s and would lease or whatever to bars. Starting out, he didn't know about the territories and put some machines where they shouldn't be. The group that "owned " the territory found out he was putting machines in their turf and started vandalizing his machines and warned him to pull out or they were going to vandalize him. He ended up slowly selling off his machines because the competition and craziness of it all was too much to deal with.

jcrawfordor 2y ago

It is a rather interesting question if organized crime got into the payphone business. Not that I know of, and something that I didn't get into (because it's kind of a tangled patchwork and not really that relevant) is that states do generally regulate PSPs, although that regulatory scheme is often very lax. Still, it might deter organized crime that in most cases they would have to register with the state as a PSP and file reports. Of course, I know that some places imposed similar regulatory regimes around vending machines and other coin-op businesses, in part because of issues with fraud and crime.