The Koerner Office: How a 'Boring' Ice Machine Side Hustle Prints Cash

**Chris Koerner** (0:01)
So Chris Koerner just covered something in the Koerner Office that sounds almost too boring to be interesting, but hear me out. A guy named CJ in Fort Worth is running ice machines as a side hustle. Four locations, no employees, and it's throwing off serious cash. Ice machines? That's the business? I mean, I've seen those roadside kiosks, but I never thought about who owns them or whether they actually make money.
That's what makes it brilliant. CJ calls it a cash cow, and the margins back that up. The bags cost around seven to ten cents, total overhead is about fifteen cents per bag, and he's selling ten pounds for two dollars and twenty pounds for three fifty. We're talking ninety percent profit margins.
Ninety percent? That's incredible. But who's buying ice regularly enough to make that work?
That's the key. CJ targets tradespeople like pool service providers, electricians, and landscapers who need ice every single day. The best locations have heavy car traffic and space for trailers to pull in. Convenience isn't a bonus here, it's literally the entire business model.
So location is everything. How does someone even get started? Do you buy land or lease space?
Most of his sites are leased through revenue shares, usually between 20 and 32 percent, with owners of places like self-service car washes. Some use flat-rate leases, and CJ even rents extra space to food trucks to offset utility costs. Smart. But what about getting into the business yourself? I imagine new machines are expensive. Here's where it gets interesting. CJ says networking is the real entry point. Contact local independent owners, many of whom are older and ready to exit. You can find distressed machines for as little as five hundred to a thousand dollars.
He recommends buying existing locations rather than building from scratch because you get an established customer base and avoid the lengthy permitting and construction process. That makes sense. Though I'm guessing it's not completely passive, right? Correct. Remote monitoring handles some tasks through a smartphone app, but jams, cleaning, and cash collection still need attention. CJ pays a technician six hundred to a thousand dollars monthly for onsite work. The bigger point is that scale happens gradually. He believes there's still room in the Fort Worth market despite hundreds of machines already operating there. Start small, avoid financing, and reinvest profits because debt becomes a burden in slower winter months. What kind of returns are we talking about?
If you buy machines at two to three times annual profit, you can recover your investment in one to three years. After that, it shifts from side income into nearly pure profit. Not bad for something that sounds this boring on the surface.