On Paper, 9 Months. Read the Assumptions First

What This Note Covers

This note looks at space for 147 units over 39 months at a factory floor corridor, 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.

What Was Assumed, and What Was Not

Cup volume is stated per unit per day. Revenue is cups x 30 days x units x price per cup, taken at 13.5. 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 581069, the weakest about 233013. 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 8.6 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 two square metres around a cabinet decide most of its economics: sightline, queue space, and whether the restock trolley can reach it without moving furniture.

Power and drainage get mentioned last and cause the most delays. A socket shared with a floor polisher is a fault report waiting for a date.

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

And Then They Ask This

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.

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.

Before You Sign: Six Checks

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. Time a full purchase from tap to cup at the busiest hour
5. Check the price and payment wording is readable at arm's length
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

Your Site, Same Method

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

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 this argues for one venue over another. It argues for choosing the menu and the restock window after the rhythm is known, not before.

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

Keep one number on the first page: cups per day you are planning for. Everything else in the ledger is downstream of it.

What Would Change This Conclusion

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.

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 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

• Service at a factory floor corridor: What 14 Months on 3 Units Showed
• Before the Second Capsule Order: exit risk at a hotel lobby bar
• Service at an exhibition centre, Written Down Instead of Guessed
• The Gap Between $27,712 and $14,813 Is the Whole Risk