Baking This Half-baked Idea
You are absolutely welcome to take this half-baked business idea and turn it into a fully fledged business, especially if it is in service of creating affordable housing in line with my vision
The above linked post is about healthy vending machine lunches. It's a list of ingredients without any actual recipes AND even if I came up with recipes per se, making food at scale in an industrial setting is different than making a serving for one person at home.
You would need to research:
1. Vending machine options.
2. Packaging.
3. Contact a test kitchen and get an estimate on turning the ingredients lists into actual recipes.
4. Figure out the process for doing that at scale.
5. Find locations willing to let you install vending machine lunches. (Possibilities: Mall food court, transit stations, public parks, housing developments.)
6. Pricing. (I would like to see these in the range of $5 BUT you need to also make a profit or the business dies. It requires research.)
7. If you want it to take EBT, you will need to research that probably separately from the above.
A lot of this should be done in parallel.
In other words, start a separate file for each issue but don't wait until one is done to start the next. Start researching all the pieces together, even though you may need to somehow separate that information.
You need to line up ALL the pieces before you can start a business and life is a moving target. If you research them in order, info on the first will be out of date before you are finished.
Like any business, you will also need to investigate details like naming the business, getting a business bank account etc.
Generally speaking, if you use your real name you can probably use your personal checking account. In other words, "Joe Bob's vending machine" can ask merchants to pay Joe Bob personally but "Creative Made Up Vending" (typically called a fictitious business name) cannot take checks payable to Joe Bob.
I imagine if you only take cash in your vending machine, that simplifies such details but also may hurt sales. A lot of vending machines now take credit and debit cards -- some ONLY take plastic and no cash -- and if you want it to take EBT, I assume you can't just ask the food stamp office to make checks payable to Joe Bob.
Look up such rules for where YOU live and/or intend to operate. Talk to any small business organizations that can help you with some of those legal and paperwork details. They will vary a LOT depending on where you are.
And also note that food prep tends to have a bunch of separate rules on top of everything else. SOME US states allow "cottage industry" food prep done from home if the dollar amount is low enough. Others will require you to find a certified proper commercial kitchen to make and sell ANY food items.
The food industry is notoriously hard to start a new business in and tends to have extremely slim margins (so slim that upgrading all your lightbulbs to low wattage bulbs can be the make or break for a restaurant).
That's not intended to discourage you. It's more like an explanation for why I would give the idea away for free.
I want more healthy, cheap, convenient food options on planet Earth because I spend all my time here and I want that for ME. I'm willing to give people a leg up to try to get that.
