People love easy money; especially now since it's not as easy to come by as it used to be. What if I told you that there's an incredibly easy way to earn from $300-$500 on any given Saturday or Sunday this summer with the following characteristics?
- No barrier to entry
- No overhead required (minimal equipment you could borrow)
- Unregulated
- Low/No Risk of Litigation (no insurance required)
- No Qualifications or Skills Required
- It's Easy
- You get to enjoy beautiful weather and venues
- Flexible Hours
- It's legal (I think? And if not; it's not prosecuted that I know of)
- ...And it's not a Multi-Level Marketing scheme!
As I was making my way toward the tents across the other side of the park, there was a guy at a pinchpoint near the bridge with a cart full of giant pretzels and water bottles on ice. People pay for convenience (save money when you stop paying for convenience!). I could have ventured all the way across the park only to find that the food options were even more expensive, so he had me.
It was a simple getup, all on one cart, and in my estimation, conservatively, he was netting over $100 an hour for what he was doing. He was selling pretzels at $3 each or 2 for $5 and selling water bottles for $3 each. I had to wait in line to grab 2 pretzels for the family and shell out my 5 bucks; he was doing about 2 transactions per minute. Here's my conservative estimate of his profit with assumptions on cost of goods sold:
- Water bottles = $.50 each; $2.50 profit each
- Pretzels = $1 each; $1.50 profit each in worst case where everyone buys 2
- Optimal time to sell ~11AM-3PM = 4 hours work
- Each hour, I assume he sold 100 water bottles = $250
- Each hour, I assume he sold 100 pretzels = $150
In my estimation, he was earning a profit of $400 per hour. For a 4 hour day, that's $1600
How could this be replicated?
- Every weekend, there are festivals and other attractions at local parks all over the country. Find the biggest ones, consider whether you think this would be a good venue and go.
- Buying water bottles in bulk is easy. Same with ice. Using your own, or borrowing several coolers and storing in your car on ice should provide ample storage space to stock up and go back for a refill as needed.
- Find a large scale pretzel supply. Or it doesn't even have to be pretzels. Perhaps it's fruit or junk food or whatever. I'd stay away from trying to go with meats, etc, as that's a much more involved proposition and may involve more liability from a food poisoning standpoint, etc.
What are you thoughts? Is this feasible, and do you have any ideas like this for easy money this summer?
Money-Saving Articles:
Save Hundreds per Year with Cash Back Credit Cards
How I Saved $250/Year for Life with Comcast
Stepping Outside Your Comfort Zone to Save Money Daily
If you enjoyed this article, make sure to Subscribe to this feed .
For Trading Updates and Post Alerts in Real Time, Follow my Premium Twitter Updates.
For delayed updates and recaps, follow my Basic Twitter Updates.
RECORD LOWS on Mortgage/Refi Rates - Compare your Savings and get Free Quotes: Mortgage Calculator
6 COMMENTS HERE
I love the idea but I was trying to think of a park where this could be done and all I can come up with are places that require tickets to get in so how could you bring a cart in?
This just happened to be a large local park with a lake, trails and woods. We have them all over, I guess it depends where you live.
Another place I saw this done was in town, there was a local 4th of July celebration/parade. The streets were lined with hundreds of people per block. It was a 95 degree day and a guy was walking up the side of the street with cold drinks. He must have made a killing. Same idea. There are probably numerous opportunities I hadn't even thought of yet.
ok, so I was a person who worked at those carts back in my college days. set up fees -- yes, even the govt leases it land for reservations. capital investment --need one of those cool carts that have the advertising, etc. easy $8k for a used cart. Storage of those carts. storage for your inventory. logistics -- special truck to carry your carts. dry ice to keep things(ice cream) cool. Electricity or gas to cook those pretezels. points of contact, connections, etc. Any competition? Usually one vendor gets it. Sanitation standards? I don't know the area, but it might be a little more regulated thank you think. (when competition complains, then the police come out). did you go out and do it?
What I saw was much more rudimentary. It was a single guy by himself, pushing a simple cart on wheels with a big cooler and pretzels on it. This was like the size of a shopping cart you use in the grocery store, but with a flat surface on top, not like an actual "stand" with umbrella, etc.
He had ice, not dry ice (now that you mention it, I forgot to include the cost of ice if you don't make it yourself in large quantities).
There was no electricity needed for pretzels. They were just stacked up in a pile of like 50 of them stuck together. He must have bought them from a baker or something. When you ordered two, he just pulled them apart and handed them to you.
The competition was the actual vendors across the other side of the park in their tents. They probably had no idea what he was doing. If licenses needed to sell actual food, presumably, no regulation of selling bottled water which is where the fattest margin appeared to be coming from.
I hadn't tried it out; kids, plans, no time on weekends. But it looked real easy to pull off a couple times a year if doing it somewhat small scale and cheap like this guy. Who knows, perhaps cops asked him to leave later, but I didn't see a cop the whole day.
As an educator facing a lean summer this might be just the ticket to close the budget gap. I'm going to look into cheap cart options. One more thing: roaming the web in search of bulk soft pretzel vendors is definitely not something you want to do when you're hungry.
http://alwaystheplanner.blogspot.com/2009/05/festival-of-frugality-remember-when.html
Post a Comment