I was thinking about starting a business similar to the Honor Tray.

Honor Tray provides snack services to all types of businesses in Southern California, such as law, dental and medical offices, automotive and beauty shops, and various retail stores such as clothing stores. The trays are packed with name-brand snacks such as Hershey, Mars, Nabisco, Frito-Lay and more. Their service is free; that means and businesses don't pay to have a tray left, employees or customers only pay for the snacks they take. When they select a snack, they deposit their money in the coin box in the upper-left corner of the tray. The service person comes by on a regular basis, takes the old tray out, and leaves a new one.

Well, my idea is to provide trays like these with other products. For example, at motels or hotels I would leave travel size toilettries, at restaurants a mint and dessert tray, at business offices things like a sewing kit, band aids, and other business related items.

Please give me your thoughts. I'm also looking for a name for this business venture and vendors. Thank you for reading.

www.materialgirlz.ecrater.com

Why reinvent the wheel? Do the candy business.

Motels: don't they give free items?
Restaurants mint and desert...similar to the candy
Business offices: sewing kit, band aids...perhaps but they may have a first aid kit on site...what about aspirin? Some employer will not privide dedicines of any kind for legal reasons.

I agree with the other poster. Motels, restaurants, any place with paying customers is going to provide these items. I'm not sure the items you mentioned for the offices would work either. You would need many, many, many employees to go through enough product to make it profitable.

I have another idea for you. I attended a wedding a couple of years ago and they had stocked the counters in the restrooms with sample size lipsticks, safety pins, hair pins, bandaids, clear nail polish, hyienge items, nail file, and a lot more. There was a little note next to each basket thanking guests for coming and use anything in the basket they might need.

This strikes me as similar enough to your original idea that you might be interested in it. You could market directly to brides or to wedding planners,etc.

Rachel