Month One Is Not the Business: 12 Cups, Then 32

The Short Version First

This note looks at money for 2 units over 11 months at a billiards lounge, 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.

Assumptions, Stated Plainly

Cup volume is stated per unit per day. Revenue is cups x 30 days x units x price per cup, taken at 8.5. 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.

The Ledger, Month by Month

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.

Where the Rows Disagree

The best month in this model nets about 5357, the weakest about 1607. 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 8.6 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.

cost in Six Rows

Two operators can buy the same cabinet at the same price and end up with different businesses, because one priced the route and the other priced the machine.

The line operators underestimate is the one that never appears on a quote: the hours a route spends reaching the site, which lands on the business as a cost per cup even though nobody invoices it.

Payback quoted as a single month is marketing; payback quoted as a band, with the assumptions listed beside it, is a plan a buyer can argue with.

The Harder Question Behind It

Telemetry has changed what unattended means. Stock, faults and sales report themselves, which moves the operator's job from finding problems to deciding which problems matter this week.

The useful split is between what a dashboard can see and what only a visit can see. Routes built on that distinction are shorter than routes built on habit.

Before You Sign: Six Checks

1. List consumables, site share, power, parts and route hours as separate lines
2. Convert the total to a per-cup figure before comparing suppliers
3. State the cup volume the payback assumes, and what happens at half of it
4. Check what the dashboard reports and what it omits
5. Record the first three faults with date, part and cause
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

Where the Pattern Changes

The same cabinet produces different curves in different venues. These four patterns are the ones operators describe most often, and each changes which line of the ledger moves first.

A venue can change category within a year - a new tenant, a shift pattern, a bus route. The pattern is a snapshot, and the walkthrough is what confirms it.

The Takeaway, Stripped Down

The first thing to keep is the habit of arguing with numbers rather than with adjectives. Every payback claim decomposes into five inputs, and four of them are checkable before signing.

The trial period does the work that due diligence pretends to do. Thirty days of real cups beats three months of projections.

Keep one number on the first page: cups per day you are planning for. Everything else in the ledger is downstream of it.

What Would Make This Wrong

The model is sensitive to volume first, the host share second, and access third. Two of those three are negotiable before signature.

Compare models, not headlines. Two payback figures built on different cup volumes are not a comparison; they are two advertisements.

Common questions

What belongs in a first-year cost model?

Equipment, installation, the first capsule order, a spare-parts kit and the site share - then the running lines: consumables, power, parts, connectivity and the hours the route takes.

Why quote payback as a band?

Because the inputs move. A band with the assumptions written down stays honest when the site turns out slower or faster than the walkthrough suggested.

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

• The Host Took 22%: What Is Left on 32 Units at a motorway service area
• From 9 Cups to 18: a shopping mall atrium Ramp, Measured
• $7,564 in a Good Month, $2,458 in a Bad One: Plan for Both
• Payback in 5 Months: 4 Units at a library study area, on Paper