Where 24% of Revenue Went, and Why Nobody Priced It

Before the Table: What This Is

This note looks at time for 4 units over 20 months at an airport gate area, 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 13.9. 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.

What Moves First in These Rows

The best month in this model nets about 19541, the weakest about 8525. 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 3.3 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.

time: What the Ledger Shows

The operators who scale are not faster at any single task; they are more predictable about which tasks happen on which day.

Time disappears in this business in fifteen-minute pieces: a wiped tray, a restock note, a call from a host about a screen. None of it shows on an invoice and all of it decides how many sites one person can carry.

Time budgets should be written in visits per morning rather than sites per operator, because that is the unit the route actually respects.

The Follow-Up That Matters More

Space is the constraint nobody prices correctly. A cabinet on a two-square-metre footprint can be worth a corridor and worthless in a lobby, and the difference is rarely about the machine.

Flow beats footfall. A thousand people walking past a cabinet convert worse than two hundred who queue beside it.

Six Things to Confirm

1. Write the weekly cadence down and time one full cycle
2. Count the minutes per visit, not the minutes per machine
3. Decide which tasks are daily, weekly and quarterly before the first site opens
4. Time how long people stand idle within three metres of the spot
5. Measure the delivery path: door widths, turns, lift depth
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

Running the Same Numbers on Your Site

Reproducing the ledger takes five measurements and one honest average:

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

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 these patterns is better than another; they are different rhythms. A menu and a restock cadence that suit a shift-change site will look wrong at a clinic, and the reverse is also true.

What Survives the Meeting

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.

Finally, put the planned cup volume in writing. Most placements fail on volume, not margin, and a written number turns that failure into a month-two conversation instead of a year-ten post-mortem.

The Conditions Behind the Result

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

How much time does one site take per week?

It depends on the venue, but the shape is constant: a short daily check from the dashboard, one physical visit per restock cycle, and quarterly work on filters and reconciliation.

When does a route stop scaling?

When travel between stops starts to dominate the day. The usual sign is a route that needs a second morning for the same number of sites.

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

• 24 Units, 10 Months, One Table: service at a hotel lobby bar
• Service at a factory floor corridor: What 14 Months on 3 Units Showed
• Month One Is Not the Business: 13 Cups, Then 32
• From 9 Cups to 18: a shopping mall atrium Ramp, Measured