Buying a Peppridge Farm route?

★ signal-weak r/smallbusiness · ↑ 83 · 💬 122 · 2025-09-02 · kw: buy box price · open on reddit ↗

Tool

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Issue

Route buyer faces $450,000 acquisition cost with $3,500/month loan payments, but net income is only $4,100/month after loan repayment, leaving ~$600/month actual profit while carrying undisclosed risks (truck maintenance, fuel, health insurance, customer churn) and working 24 hours/week—effectively buying an expensive job rather than a business.

Cost

$450,000 upfront + $3,500/month loan payments over 10 years; actual monthly take-home after loan: ~$600 after accounting for stated expenses

Recommendation

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extracted with

anthropic/claude-haiku-4.5 · 2026-05-08

Body

Some guy is willing to sell me his route for $450,000 with a $50,000 down-payment. He told me the route nets $9600 and that the loan payments are about $3500 monthly for 10 years. I would pocket the rest. This doesn't take into account diesel for the truck, out of pocket health insurance, or any other potential expenses. He said the accounts on the route only have to be worked 3 days out of the week for about 7-8 hrs. So 24 hours weekly for a $4100 monthly income. Does anyone have experience running a route? Is this a good idea or am I just buying a job? It sounds nice to only work 3 days out of the week to essentially make what I am making now but it might sound too good to be true. What if the box truck breaks down? Cookie sales go down? That's out of pocket.

Top comments (5)

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[score=494] CurveAdministrative3

Sounds like you are buying a very expensive job

[score=160] BigRonnieRon

Overpriced by a factor of 4x-5x. Maybe 10x+ overvalued. You're already netting <40k/yr assuming what he says is accurate which it's not since there's the truck, the mileage, the 40 hours a week you could be doing something else. At 1-2x earnings, yeah sure you're buying a job but might be OK. At 5x? Total ripoff

[score=220] TheOneNeartheTop

You can just go out and get a job for $4100 a month. Why would you pay for it?

[score=30] rling_reddit

Or just find one or two people with an existing route and ask them. In nearly all of these situations, you are buying a moderate to low-paying job that comes with risk. You didn't mention your age, but is it the right time to make a 10-year committment? My BIL just got rid of his MATCO route after making less than minimum wage.