Payback in 4 Months: 25 Units at a convenience store frontage, on Paper

The Note in One Paragraph

This note looks at money for 25 units over 21 months at a convenience store frontage, 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 14.3. 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.

One Table, Seven Lines

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 148897, the weakest about 96707. 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 3.9 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 cost Shows Up in the Arithmetic

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.

A payback figure computed on a full machine and a payback figure computed on a machine that sells two lines are different businesses pretending to share a name.

Margin is decided before the first cup, in the spread between the capsule price and the cup price. Volume decides whether that margin is ever paid.

The Question After the First One

Every placement has three people attached to it: whoever restocks, whoever cleans, and whoever takes the complaint. When those three are assumed rather than named, the machine is the thing that suffers.

An one-page card with a name, a number and the three most likely faults converts a stalled machine into a two-minute fix; without it, the same fault becomes a story about the supplier.

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. Name who restocks, who wipes and who is called first
5. Put the contact card inside the cabinet door, not in a drawer
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. Write down cups per day for seven days, including the slow ones
2. Read the price per cup and the consumable cost off two actual invoices, one month apart
3. Add the host share, the power bill and the spare-parts line as three rows
4. Divide equipment plus installation by the steady net and round outward, never inward
5. Repeat the calculation at half the cups; the difference between the two runs is the risk

Four Site Types, Four Patterns

Traffic arrives on a schedule in every venue, and the schedule differs. Four common shapes, and what each one moves first.

None of this argues for one venue over another. It argues for choosing the menu and the restock window after the rhythm is known, not before.

The Takeaway, Stripped Down

First, the model is a way of arguing, not a promise. If a supplier's number and your number disagree, the disagreement is in one of five inputs, and the conversation is worth having line by line.

Second, the trial period is the cheapest instrument in the whole purchase. It converts an opinion about a site into a reading, and it costs nothing beyond a written move-out term.

Write the volume down before delivery. The common failure is not a bad margin on good volume; it is a good margin on volume that never arrives.

What Would Change This Conclusion

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

The useful reply to a better number is a request for its assumptions. Nine times out of ten the gap is a cost line that was left out rather than a saving that was found.

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

• 10 Cups a Day in Month One, 28 by Month Six
• The Gap Between $27,712 and $14,813 Is the Whole Risk
• 23% of the Till Went to the Host: an exhibition centre Ledger
• Before the Second Capsule Order: exit risk at a hotel lobby bar