4 Months to Break Even, and the Inputs That Would Break It

What This Note Covers

This note looks at ux for 1 units over 12 months at an exhibition centre, 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.

Six Inputs and Where They Came From

Cup volume is stated per unit per day. Revenue is cups x 30 days x units x price per cup, taken at 15.3. 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.

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.

Three Things the Rows Show

The best month in this model nets about 7069, the weakest about 3845. 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 4.1 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.

The the cup Reading

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.

Queues form for reasons that have nothing to do with drink quality - a slow payment step, an unclear price, a pickup slot at the wrong height.

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.

The Follow-Up That Matters More

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.

A route that runs on memory works until the memory takes a holiday. A route with a written cadence survives a new hire, a flu season and a public holiday in the same month.

A Short Check List

1. Time a full purchase from tap to cup at the busiest hour
2. Check the price and payment wording is readable at arm's length
3. Confirm the pickup slot height works for a seated customer
4. Write the weekly cadence down and time one full cycle
5. Count the minutes per visit, not the minutes per machine
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

How to Reproduce This at Your Own Site

Reproducing the ledger takes five measurements and one honest average:

1. Count cups for one week at the busiest and quietest hours, then average honestly rather than optimistically
2. Write down price per cup and the consumable cost per cup from an actual order, not a list price
3. Add the site share, power and parts as separate monthly lines
4. Divide equipment spend plus installation by the steady net, and treat the result as a band
5. Re-run the model at half the cup volume before signing anything

Four Venues, Four Different Curves

Put the same cabinet in four rooms and you get four different ledgers. These are the patterns worth recognising before the walkthrough.

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.

Three Sentences to Keep

Start with this: a ledger is a negotiating document. It is only useful if the other side can see which line you disagree with.

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

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 inputs move the result more than anything else: cups per day below the modelled floor, a site share above the modelled band, and a restock route that cannot reach the machine inside the host's hours. Each is checkable before signing, and none requires a pilot.

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

Common questions

What matters most to first-time users?

Whether the payment method is one they have, whether the price is visible before they commit, and how long the cup takes.

How is consistency measured?

By the repeat rate rather than the first sale. A menu that tastes the same on a Tuesday morning and a Friday evening is what produces repeats.

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

• 23% of the Till Went to the Host: an exhibition centre Ledger
• On Paper, 9 Months. Read the Assumptions First
• Month One Is Not the Business: 12 Cups, Then 32
• Where 24% of Revenue Went, and Why Nobody Priced It