Vending machine business plan

A vending machine business plan is the standard small-business outline with a handful of per-machine numbers in it: the machine price, monthly sales, product cost, card fees, the location’s commission, and what it cost to get the location. One of our smart coolers cost $4,000 and does about $500 a month at a gym. After product, card fees, and a 15% commission, $272 a month is left, and the $4,250 spent up front comes back in month 16. The worked example shows each step. To skip the writing and get a projection file, use the business plan template.

Traditional or lean: pick the format by who will read it

SBA describes two formats (SBA¹):

• Traditional. A standard structure that can run to dozens of pages. SBA says lenders and investors commonly request it, and suggests it if you plan to ask for financing from traditional sources.
• Lean startup. Typically one page, built from short headings such as key partnerships, cost structure, and revenue streams. SBA says it can take as little as an hour and that some lenders and investors may ask for more.

If you are paying for the first machine yourself, I think a lean plan with the per-machine numbers below covers what you need to decide. If a bank, a microlender, or a partner will read it, write the traditional version. The rest of this page follows SBA’s traditional sections in order.

What goes in each section of a vending business plan

Executive summary

SBA asks for what the company is, why it will succeed, and, if you are asking for money, financial information and high-level growth plans (SBA¹). For a vending plan that means one paragraph with the machine count, the locations, the total you need, and the monthly profit per machine from your projection. Write it last.

Company description

SBA wants the problem you solve and the customers you serve, listed specifically. For an operator the customer is two parties: the business that hosts the machine and the people who buy from it. Name each location you have signed, with its opening hours and the commission agreed, so a lender can check them.

Market analysis

Two published surveys give the industry picture. Automatic Merchandiser’s State of the Industry report puts 2025 vending revenue at $40.04 billion, up 18.3%, with smart coolers at 33.5% of the equipment respondents had deployed (Automatic Merchandiser⁹). Cantaloupe’s payment data shows 78% of food and drink vending sales were cashless in 2025, with the average card purchase at $2.45 against $1.57 in cash (Cantaloupe¹⁰). Cantaloupe’s figures cover only machines running its readers. Vending industry numbers has the rest of both reports.

Industry size says little about one machine. The part of the market analysis that predicts sales is the location: how many people pass the machine each day, during what hours, and what else they can buy nearby. Vending machine locations covers what to ask a host before signing. If I had to cut this section to one paragraph, I’d keep the location and drop the industry totals.

Organization and management

State the legal structure. SBA lists the choices as sole proprietorship, partnership, LLC, or corporation. Whether a vending business needs an LLC, and what registering costs by state, is in business license and LLC.

Give the industry code. The Census Bureau classifies operators who sell through vending machines they service as NAICS 445132, Vending Machine Operators. Operators of coin- or card-operated amusement machines fall under subsector 713 instead (Census Bureau⁸). Lenders and insurers ask for the code.

Then say who restocks, how often, and who covers if that person is unavailable.

Product line: machines, readers, and stock

Name the machine model and attach the quote. How much a vending machine costs has published prices by type, new and refurbished. Name the card reader: we run Nayax and WeVend. Card readers compared has each reader’s price and fees.

List what you will stock and your target product cost as a share of sales. Ours runs about 25%.

Marketing and sales: how you get locations

For a vending business, marketing means getting locations to say yes. Say whether you will pitch businesses yourself or pay a locator, and what each placement costs. We pay a locator $250 per placement. Locators that publish prices charge more; locator prices compared has the list.

State the commission you will offer. A vendor blog, VendBuddy, puts typical commissions at 5% to 20% of gross sales and gyms at 10% to 18% (VendBuddy¹²). We could not find a survey behind those figures. One of our locations takes 15%.

Funding request

SBA asks how much you need, whether as debt or equity, on what terms, and what it will buy, such as equipment (SBA¹). For vending, the use of funds is a short list: machines, readers, the first load of product, locator fees, registration and permits, and insurance.

Size the request against the programs that lend at that size:

• SBA microloan. Up to $50,000 through nonprofit intermediaries, an average of about $13,000, rates generally 8% to 13%, and up to seven years to repay (SBA⁴). The regulation says intermediaries should generally not lend more than $10,000 to one borrower, and need a reason to go past $20,000 (13 CFR §120.707⁵).
• SBA 7(a) Small. SBA does not require collateral on loans of $50,000 or less (SBA³). SBA says the contents of the application vary with the loan size and the lender, and the lender tells you which documents to bring (SBA²).

For a new business, SBA says loan eligibility is “typically based on its owner’s personal credit score” (SBA¹). Rates, fees, and the dealer and lease options are in vending machine financing.

Financial projections

SBA asks for a five-year outlook with forecast income statements, balance sheets, cash flow statements, and capital spending, and for the first year to be broken out quarterly or monthly (SBA¹). SCORE’s free projections workbook covers three years and includes start-up expenses, a sales forecast, cost of goods sold, and a break-even analysis (SCORE⁷).

A vending projection is built from one machine’s month and multiplied out. The inputs a lender will question are:

• Monthly sales per machine. Your own machine’s history if you have one. If you do not, say where the estimate comes from.
• Product cost as a share of sales.
• Card fees, as the reader’s percentage plus any monthly charge. A smart cooler platform can add more; smart cooler monthly fees compares 10 platforms on the same $500 month.
• Commission, from the location agreement.
• Insurance. Insureon reports a median of $37 a month, or $442 a year, for general liability bought by vending operators through it (Insureon¹¹). Insurance costs has the other policies.
• Your time. Restocking hours are a cost even when you pay yourself nothing. Say how many visits a month the machine needs.

Of these inputs, I’d spend the most care on monthly sales per machine. Product, card fees, and commission are all shares of it, so an error there runs through every line.

How much vending machines make collects what has been published on sales per machine.

Appendix

SCORE’s startup template suggests supporting documents such as contracts, leases, purchase orders, managers’ resumes, and market research (SCORE⁶). For vending, attach the signed location agreements, the machine and reader quotes, your seller’s permit and any health permit, and the insurance quote.

Worked example: one smart cooler at a gym

Every figure here is from our own fleet. The gym cooler’s sales, product cost, and card fees are one machine. The 15% commission is what one of our locations takes, applied here to show a location that charges one.

The arithmetic:

• Product: 25% × $500 = $125.
• Card fees: 4% × $500 = $20, plus $8 = $28.
• Commission: 15% × $500 = $75.
• Operating profit: $500 − $125 − $28 − $75 = $272 a month.

Up front: the $4,000 machine plus a $250 locator fee = $4,250.

Payback: $4,250 ÷ $272 = 15.6, so the cumulative cash position turns positive in month 16.

The full $4,250 goes out before the first sale; month 1’s operating profit brings the shortfall to $3,978. The table holds sales flat at $500 from month 1; a new location may start lower, and we have no published figure for how long one takes to build. Before showing it to a lender, I’d run the table a second time with lower early months.

Lines the example leaves out, which your plan should fill in:

• Insurance. At Insureon’s $37 monthly median, operating profit falls to $272 − $37 = $235, and payback moves to $4,250 ÷ $235 = 18.1, so month 19.
• The first load of product. You buy it before the first sale. At 25%, a month of stock for $500 in sales costs $125.
• Registration and permits. These depend on the state, the city, and whether the machine holds refrigerated food. Business license and LLC has the fees by state.
• Platform or software fees, if your cooler’s platform charges them.
• Your time restocking.

The business plan template starts from these same fleet figures. Change the inputs to your own quotes and it builds the 12-month table, the start-up costs, and a plan document with these section headings.

Templates, PDFs, and example plans

• Our template. A 12-month projection and a plan document, downloaded as a Markdown file and a CSV. Paste the plan into Google Docs or Word and export it as a PDF. Open the template.
• SCORE’s startup template. Free, with instructions and 11 fillable worksheets covering executive summary through financial plan and appendices. Its last section explains how to adapt the plan for a bank loan (SCORE⁶).
• SCORE’s financial projections workbook. Three years of income, cash flow, and operating expenses, with diagnostic checks on the numbers (SCORE⁷).
• SBA’s example plans. Fictional traditional plans for a consulting firm and a toy company, and a lean plan for the toy company (SBA¹).

We did not find a vending-specific example plan published by SBA or SCORE. The example above is the vending part; the SBA and SCORE files give the format around it.