Running Your Own Penny Press for Fun and Absolutely Zero Profit
Here’s the story of how I ran an ambulatory penny press.
You know those souvenir penny press machines you find at tourist traps? We made one. But instead of a single overrated attraction, our machine moves around our city, highlighting local favorite businesses. It’s called Local Crush.
We ran Local Crush for a full year-long circuit, with the penny machine hosted at twelve local favorites. Each month the host business chose a local charity, and all the quarters spent go directly to that nonprofit.
It’s a limited-time opportunity for penny collectors - visit each location once per year, and collect all the designs.
This post will be a recap that covers:
- what we did
- why we did it
- how it went
- and should you do this in your city?
First, here’s what it looks like, in one of our host stores:
We documented the journey mostly on instagram! But this is my restrospective report.
Why we did it
Our family has always liked collecting pressed pennies. We’re not super hardcore about it, but if a place we’re visiting has a machine, we’ll definitely get one. A pressed penny is kind of the ideal souvenir: they’re super cheap, they can only be attained by visiting the location, and they don’t fill up your suitcase (or your home) with junk. You can keep a lifetime’s collection in a spare jar.
You know, like this.
We’ve always imagined owning one of these machines. But I don’t run a tourist destination! And then the more we thought about it, we wondered - why should the tourist traps have all the fun? Wouldn’t it be great if the darling small businesses we love had this too?
So that’s what we did.
What we did
Well, we ordered one. There are a few companies around the country that still make these machines, and while it was a little more complicated than just picking something up on amazon, it’s not that much more complicated.
First, however, we started talking to the proprietors of our favorite local businesses. It’s kind of a weird pitch: would you let us station a penny press machine in your business? And use your logo to make a pressed penny souvenir for your business? And donate all the money to a charity? But it’s only there for a month? Certainly it took some explanation here and there.
But in general: yes! I don’t think we had anybody turn us down, once we got the idea across.
After we found the right vendor, we worked with them to set up the first two die wheels. Our penny press can hold 4 custom designs, and so we used three spaces slot for a local business, and then one for the Local Crush brand itself. I did a lot of variations.
With that plan, we need four separate die wheels, and we need to change them out once per quarter. The die wheels look like this:
Once we had the first two wheels, we put our order in with the machine manufacturer, and they built out the cabinet itself and the die wheels. We drove out to Colorado and loaded it up into our car to drive home!
The machine itself is kind of ugly, so we designed a vinyl wrap for it, and Erika constructed a big eye-catching topper sign.
How it went
It went great, I think?
We definitely achieved the first goal: make the press, move it around the city, and draw some attention to local favorite shops and charities.
- Total locations: 12
- Total nonprofits: 10 (some stores chose the same charity)
- Total raised for local charities: $1380.00
- Total pennies crushed: 2,760
Could anybody make a profit at this? Not the way we’re doing it, that’s for sure. Did we spend more on the press than we generated in quarters? Definitely. Plus, of course, we gave away all the quarters. Even if we were keeping the proceeds this would have lost money. But that wasn’t the goal, of course - we wanted to create something new for our city.
I often thought about how this would compare with a ‘normal’ penny press, where we are in a tourist trap location and relying on throughput of lots and lots of foot traffic. This is a different model, of course, relying instead on repeat visitors. I suppose even if we repeated this process, we could eventually break even and recoup the cost of the press itself.
What’s next
The actual day-to-day of running the press was… kind of a hassle? Not a big hassle. But we moved the press every month, and that means every month we had to coordinate with store staff to let them know when we’d make the transition (and remind them that they agreed to this a year ago and make space for it). Then we’d have to go pick up the press, and get it established in the new location. No a big deal, just a minor schlep.
But! We got to know the owners of twelve local favorite businesses, and in some very small way give back to our community. That was the best part. We had several other businesses reach out to join the next cycle, which I think is a vote for its future.