Box in a Box

Marty made his daily pilgrimage to the mailbox. As usual, it’s crammed with one or two bills that needed paying and a plethora of junk mail. By far, the biggest offender of landfill stuffing is the funeral industry. He always received at least two and up to five letters per week, inviting him to various restaurants. After attending a seminar about burial and cremation options, he was offered a free meal. Marty never thought of caskets and corned beef complimenting each other, but apparently morticians do.

Annoyed with the relentless bombardment of junk mail, Marty did some independent research on the funeral industry. What he found was dead people make many living people very wealthy. The average cost of a casket to the funeral home is $300 to $500 dollars. The home sells them from $1200 to $1600 on average, generating up to 500% in profit. The high-end boxes can cost $5000+. Cremation urns, although much cheaper, are as profitable. With margins like this, he wanted in.

Marty owned a small but profitable vending company. He wanted to expand his company by offering items people wouldn’t expect to find in a vending machine. Besides candy, soda, and chips, some of his machines, placed in hotels, offered hair care products, t-shirts, underwear, and slippers. He idolized Carvana. The person who invented car vending is a genius. He knew he could attain the same level of success.

Like real estate, vending is all about location. He decided the best place for his new machines are churches, synagogues, mosques, and nursing homes. Similar to regular vending, the facilities taking part receive a small commission. Hospitals should also be a great place, but they were reluctant because having a casket vending machine in the lobby projected a negative image.

Product placement is also very important. Churches positioned in wealthy neighborhoods receive machines stocked with a high-end line of products, still selling for less than the local funeral home. Churches and nursing homes situated in poorer neighborhoods receive machines filled with coffins, which are cheaper, instead of caskets. These machines even offer a build your own kit complete with hammer and nails. Since there are no laws requiring a body to be placed in a box, burial shrouds are also available.

At first, funeral home associations lawyers threatened to sue Marty for unfair business practices. A few of his machines were vandalized, and some morticians refused to work on bodies when the family supplied their own casket. That stopped when Marty’s attorneys quietly reminded them that there were no laws on the books requiring embalming. The only reason for their profession is to stop the corps from emitting a putrid stench before it’s buried. If people can stand the smell, morticians are unnecessary.

In time, Marty’s machines became the norm. His vending company grew into a nationwide organization. It even surged past his idle, Carvana.