Qualify
Identify the recurring purchase occasion, repeat population, alternatives, placement, access, security, host expectations, and route fit before treating a site as an opportunity.
SMALL VENDING ROUTES
Vending Machine Route Guides
Start with the location, rebuild the economics underneath the sales, then operate each machine as a small store that has to justify its place on the route.
A location-first operating cycle
The route improves when each decision creates evidence for the next one instead of treating a machine purchase as the starting point.
Model
Look below gross sales at product, payment, commission, waste, service, repair, and installed-equipment costs. Test weak, base, and strong cases.
Match
Choose equipment for the customer, location, operator, and economics rather than trying to invent a location for equipment already purchased.
Operate
Use par levels, product evidence, deliberate pricing, standard service visits, stock preparation, and records instead of refilling everything by habit.
Measure
Track machine contribution, route hours, faults, stockouts, downtime, and host condition so a busy machine is not automatically mistaken for a good route asset.
Decide
Keep, improve, renegotiate, replace, relocate, or exit as evidence changes. Growth should increase control rather than simply increase machine count.
FREE PRACTICAL GUIDES
Work through the decisions that determine whether a route stays controllable
These guides cover the highest-leverage decisions before purchase, at launch, during service, and when evaluating an existing route.
VENDING MACHINE ROUTES
How to Evaluate a Vending Machine Location Before You Buy a Machine
A busy property is not automatically a good vending site. Start with why people would buy there, then test the site, placement, terms, service burden, and quality of the evidence.
Read the guideVENDING MACHINE ROUTES
Vending Machine Economics: What to Calculate Before You Buy
Gross sales are useful but incomplete. Rebuild machine contribution, test weak, base, and strong cases, and compare the result with the full installed cost of the equipment.
Read the guideVENDING MACHINE ROUTES
Used Vending Machine Inspection Checklist: What to Check Before Buying
A used-machine inspection cannot eliminate every future repair, but it can reduce avoidable surprises and stop a low purchase price from hiding a weak deployed asset.
Read the guideVENDING MACHINE ROUTES
Vending Machine Par Levels and Product Mix: Use Sales Evidence, Not Guesswork
Treat the first fill as a hypothesis. Record what sold and what remained, adjust par deliberately, and use KEEP, EXPAND, TEST, or REPLACE decisions across comparable service cycles.
Read the guideVENDING MACHINE ROUTES
How to Plan a Vending Machine Service Route Without Visiting Every Machine
A route should answer which machines need attention, in what order, and what stock each one needs. Fixed weekly visits are a starting habit, not a permanent rule.
Read the guideVENDING MACHINE ROUTES
Buying an Existing Vending Route: A Due-Diligence Checklist
A route listing can package strong and weak machines together. Verify what is being sold, rebuild each machine's economics, inspect the route, test host transfer risk, and define walk-away conditions.
Read the guideTHE COMPLETE SYSTEM
The Vending Machine Route Operating Manual
Warren Holtby's manual develops the full Qualify → Model → Match → Place → Stock → Service → Measure → Decide cycle, then carries it through equipment selection, host conversations, site surveys, compliance checks, product and par decisions, route planning, monthly scorecards, route acquisitions, and scale gates from the first machine to ten.
Evidence before assumptions. A scorecard cannot predict sales, and a worked financial example is not an earnings forecast. Use actual quotations, site evidence, current provider terms, and the rules that apply to your own location.