Best Month $5,569, Worst $2,199: the Spread That Decides It

Before the Table: What This Is

This note looks at money for 1 units over 19 months at an internet cafe counter, 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.

The Assumptions Behind the Numbers

Cup volume is stated per unit per day. Revenue is cups x 30 days x units x price per cup, taken at 12.7. 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.

What the Table Says First

The best month in this model nets about 5569, the weakest about 2199. 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 3.4 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.

Reading the Rows for cost

A cost model that stops at the invoice is a shopping list, not a plan. The lines that decide whether a placement earns are consumables, the site share, power, parts and the hours the restock route consumes.

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.

The useful test is per cup, not per unit: everything divided by cups sold is the only number that survives contact with a slow month.

The Follow-Up Worth Answering

Risk in unattended retail is mostly concentration: one site that carries too much of the month, one supplier of one capsule line, one person who knows how everything works.

Diversification is not a corporate word here; it is the difference between a bad month and a closed operation.

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 share of revenue the largest site carries
5. Confirm a second source for the capsules the menu depends on
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. Take a full week of cup counts, including the two dead hours nobody likes to record
2. Price one cup from the invoice, including the capsule, the cup and the lid
3. Put the host share, power and spares on three separate lines, never one
4. Divide total equipment and installation spend by steady monthly net, then round the answer into a range
5. Halve the cup volume and see whether the site still earns - if it does not, say so before signing

The Venue Changes the Curve

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

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 a Buyer Should Take Away

Keep the arithmetic visible. A total without its lines is a price; a total with its lines is an argument you can win or lose honestly.

The trial is the only instrument that turns a guess about a venue into evidence, and it is priced in one clause: the move-out term.

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

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

A payback quoted in months is only comparable when the inputs match. Otherwise it is two different questions wearing the same unit.

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

• 23% of the Till Went to the Host: an exhibition centre Ledger
• From 9 Cups to 18: a shopping mall atrium Ramp, Measured
• Before the Second Capsule Order: exit risk at a hotel lobby bar
• Payback in 5 Months: 4 Units at a library study area, on Paper