10 Cups a Day in Month One, 28 by Month Six

Before the Table: What This Is

This note looks at space for 4 units over 11 months at a scenic area visitor 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.

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 8.3. 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.

The First Three Readings

The best month in this model nets about 7890, the weakest about 2484. 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 12.1 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.

Where space Shows Up in the Arithmetic

The placement question is really a waiting question: where do people already stand still with nothing to do?

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.

Placement is a lease on attention. The best spot is wherever people already wait with nothing to look at.

The Follow-Up Worth Answering

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.

Checks Before the Cabinet Lands

1. Time how long people stand idle within three metres of the spot
2. Measure the delivery path: door widths, turns, lift depth
3. Confirm power, floor load and who else uses the socket
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

Anyone can rebuild this table from their own site. The sequence that avoids double counting:

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

Where the Pattern Changes

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

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.

What Survives the Meeting

The model earns its place by being attackable. If nobody can point at the input they dispute, the conversation has not started yet.

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.

Where the Model Bends

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.

If a supplier's payback figure is shorter than the one this model produces, the useful question is which input they changed - volume, price, or the cost lines they left out. The honest comparison is two models with the same inputs, not two headlines.

Common questions

What makes a good spot inside a building?

A place where waiting already happens - lift lobbies, clinic queues, parcel lockers - with a clear path for restocking and a socket that is not shared with something critical.

Does footfall predict sales?

Only loosely. Dwell time and sightlines predict better than raw traffic counts, which is why a corridor can underperform a waiting area beside it.

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

• Month One Is Not the Business: 13 Cups, Then 32
• Service at an exhibition centre, Written Down Instead of Guessed
• On Paper, 9 Months. Read the Assumptions First
• The Host Took 22%: What Is Left on 32 Units at a motorway service area