About Us — JB Vending Services

I'd spent years saving every bit of pocket money I could from doing chores around the house and odd jobs around the neighbourhood. One afternoon, while scrolling through Facebook Marketplace on my dad's phone, I came across an old black vending machine listed for $1,000.

I remember asking Dad, "How do you reckon this would go at your work?"

His answer was simple.

"Go for it. It's your money."

So I did.

The seller owned a large fleet of vending machines and was upgrading to newer models. When he heard how old I was, he did something I'll never forget — he let me pay it off at just $20 a week over an entire year. He wanted to make sure I still had money left over if something went wrong, and that generosity gave me my start in the vending industry.

At 12 years old, I was spending my weekends hunting through Woolworths and Coles catalogues looking for the best specials so I could stock the machine as cheaply as possible. After finally paying it off, I started making my first real profit.

Instead of spending the money on myself, I invested it straight back into the business.

The first upgrade I wanted was a card reader. There was just one problem — the vending machine was too old. Most people probably would've given up, but I started calling every vending company I could find until I eventually came across someone who had the exact same model. The owner was kind enough to sell me the control board I needed, and after plenty of trial and error, I finally got contactless payments working.

That one upgrade completely changed the business.

As the years went on, I bought more second-hand machines, but something always bothered me.

Why did brand-new vending machines all look the same?

Companies were charging $8,000 or more for machines that looked almost identical to designs that had been around for years. They worked, but they didn't feel modern, exciting or built for today's businesses.

So I decided to build something different.

It took months of research before I finally found a manufacturer who could build the base machine to my specifications. From there, I worked on everything else — designing the branding, improving the features, researching better technology, and creating the business I had always imagined.

The day my first machine arrived was something I'll never forget. Seeing my own logo on a machine that I'd spent months designing was surreal.

That was the beginning of JB Vending Services.

Building the business while finishing school wasn't easy. Between classes, assignments and exams, I was also building a website, creating social media pages, setting up business systems and learning everything I could about the vending industry.

Then came the moment every new business hopes for — our first machine order. Not a second-hand machine I happened to own, but a machine that we'd designed and built ourselves. That feeling is hard to describe.

Since then, we've continued to grow. More customers, more custom machine designs, more improvements and more opportunities to push the industry forward.

I've travelled overseas to visit our manufacturing partners, walked through factories, explored the Canton Fair looking for new ideas, and constantly looked for ways to make our machines better than they were the day before.

Today, JB Vending has supplied custom vending machines to businesses across Australia, we're bringing stock into Australia for faster delivery, and we're taking on what might be our biggest challenge yet — building our own vending machine operating system.

That means completely redesigning how vending machines work, with our own customer interface, owner portal, mobile apps and cloud-based management platform.

It's a massive project, but that's always been the goal.

Not to follow the industry. To improve it.

To everyone who believed in a 12-year-old kid talking non-stop about vending machines — thank you.

To every customer who's trusted us with their hard-earned money — thank you.

And to my family, who backed some pretty crazy ideas from the very beginning — thank you.

If you'd told me all those years ago that a random Facebook Marketplace listing would become my career, I never would've believed you.

But I'm incredibly glad I clicked on that old vending machine. Because without it, none of this would exist.

And we're only just getting started.