The Gap Between $27,712 and $14,813 Is the Whole Risk

Scope and Shape of the Note

This note looks at risk for 7 units over 17 months at a dormitory ground floor, written from the buyer's side of the table. The figures are modelled rather than measured: cup volumes, price per cup and cost lines follow stated assumptions, and the arithmetic is left visible so a reader can substitute their own numbers.

Where the Numbers Come From

Cup volume is stated per unit per day. Revenue is cups x 30 days x units x price per cup, taken at 12.7. Cost is consumables, the site share, power and parts. Payback is equipment spend divided by steady monthly net. No figure here is a quotation.

The model keeps the ramp separate from the steady state: the early months carry a lower cup count, and the steady figure is the plateau the site settles into once regulars appear. A reader who expects a different ramp can replace it without disturbing anything else on the page.

Month by Month, Line by Line

The columns are shown separately because the argument is rarely about the total. It is about which line moves fastest when a site underperforms, and which lines were fixed before the first cup was sold.

How to Read These Rows

The best month in this model nets about 27712, the weakest about 14813. The gap is the site's own variability rather than a change in cost, and that gap is what a trial period exists to measure.

At the modelled plateau, payback lands at 7.3 months. Read it as a reading of these assumptions, not a forecast: halve the cup volume and the same placement reads very differently.

Consumables scale with sales, so they rarely surprise anyone. The site share and the route hours are the two lines that do surprise operators, because both are agreed before the first cup and neither moves when the site underperforms.

Where exit risk Shows Up in the Arithmetic

Concentration is the quiet risk: one host with three sites, one supplier with the only capsule in stock. Both look like efficiency until the year they do not.

Risk in unattended retail is mostly concentration: one site that carries too much of the month, one supplier of one capsule line, one person who knows how everything works.

Diversification is not a corporate word here; it is the difference between a bad month and a closed operation.

The Follow-Up Worth Answering

The customer's experience is about eight seconds long: can I see it, does it take my payment, will the cup be there. Everything else about the machine is invisible to them.

Consistency is the product. The tenth cup tasting like the first is what turns a first-time buyer into a regular, and a capsule system buys that consistency cheaply.

Six Things to Confirm

1. Check what share of revenue the largest site carries
2. Confirm a second source for the capsules the menu depends on
3. Keep the move-out terms in the machine folder, not in an email
4. Time a full purchase from tap to cup at the busiest hour
5. Check the price and payment wording is readable at arm's length
6. Confirm the trial period and the move-out term before delivery
7. Write the modelled cup volume into the plan and review it after month one

Five Steps to Your Own Table

The method, stripped to five moves, runs like this:

1. Measure a week of cups in the venue, then discount the first two days as novelty traffic
2. Use the real consumable cost per cup, not the one in the brochure
3. List site share, power and parts separately so nothing hides inside a single number
4. Turn the payback into months, then into a band, and note which input the band depends on
5. Run the whole thing again at seventy percent of the volume and keep both outputs

Same Machine, Different Rooms

Four venue types, four rhythms. What changes between them is not the equipment but the hour at which the money arrives.

Read the four as templates, not as verdicts. Two venues with the same label can behave differently once the host's own schedule is taken into account.

The Takeaway, Stripped Down

Keep the arithmetic visible. A total without its lines is a price; a total with its lines is an argument you can win or lose honestly.

Second, insist on a trial with a written move-out. It is the cheapest option in the deal and the only one that produces a number rather than an impression.

Third, agree the number you expect the site to do. Without it, every later discussion is about impressions; with it, the second month has something to measure against.

The Inputs That Would Flip It

Three assumptions carry most of the weight - daily cups, the host's percentage, and access hours. Change any one of them by a fifth and the payback moves by more than the others combined.

When somebody quotes a faster payback, ask which of the five inputs differs. A shorter number is usually a different assumption, not a better machine.

Common questions

What is the biggest risk in a placement?

Concentration - a single site or a single supplier that the numbers depend on. It is measurable, and it usually shows in the first quarter's ledger.

How is risk limited on a new site?

A trial period with a written move-out, a modest first capsule order, and a menu that does not depend on one line.

What do the modelled numbers actually mean?

They are the arithmetic of stated assumptions, not measurements. Every input is listed in the assumptions section so a buyer can replace it with their own.

Why show six months instead of a full year?

Because the first six months contain the decision: the ramp, the plateau, and the first sign of which cost line moves when the site underperforms.

Related reading

• 10 Cups a Day in Month One, 28 by Month Six
• Best Month $5,569, Worst $2,199: the Spread That Decides It
• Before the Second Capsule Order: exit risk at a hotel lobby bar
• Service at an exhibition centre, Written Down Instead of Guessed