Starting and running a vending machine business in Singapore

Each sale earns its margin: the price less what the item cost you. Out of that come the site owner's share, payment fees, transport, servicing and the machine itself. A made-up example for one drinks-and-snacks machine in an office block:

Change one line and the picture changes fast. The same machine doing 15 sales a day barely covers its fuel and the site's share. A new machine at a weak site loses money every month; an old machine at a strong site pays for itself.

Prices vary too much for one figure, so get written prices from at least three suppliers. What drives the cost:

Good sites have people who stay for hours and few other places to buy: factories, warehouses, dormitories, offices without a pantry shop, gyms, workshop waiting rooms and condominium clubhouses. A busy mall corridor often sells less than a quiet factory canteen, because people walk past instead of staying.

Site owners usually ask for a share of sales, a fixed monthly rent, or both. A share protects you in slow months; a rent can work out cheaper at a busy site. Put the deal in writing:

SFA takes a risk-based approach. Machines that prepare food inside, such as cooking, juicing or mixing ingredients, or that sell raw meat or seafood, need an SFA licence. Machines selling only pre-packed food don't, but SFA says the products must still come from SFA-licensed sources, and every food vending operator must display the Nutri-Grade mark for drinks high in sugar or saturated fat.

Even without a licence, keep the habits SFA asks of operators: chilled items at the right temperature (dairy below 7°C), your contact details on the machine so customers can report a problem, packaging checked for damage when restocking, older stock sold first, and food removed before it expires. Check with SFA before adding anything prepared or heated in the machine.

Count cash the same way every time, ideally with two people, and compare it with what the stock count says sold. Card and QR sales come from the reader's own report. Small gaps between cash counted and items sold are normal, from jammed coins or free vends after a fault, but a gap that grows at one machine needs a look. Bank cash often, and never leave a full cash box in the car.

A machine that swallows coins once loses that customer for weeks. Log every fault with the time, what's wrong and whether the machine is out of order, and fix urgent ones the same day. Keep repair costs per machine: one that breaks every month may cost more than it earns, and is a candidate to replace or move.

Vending is on Business, which includes up to 300 machines. Each machine is its own location with its own stock, its own price for each item, slot numbers and a full level per item. The Machines to visit board puts first the machines due a refill, judged from how fast each item has been selling (or a week since the last visit when no full levels are set). Sold-out items, open faults and site agreements ending within a month show on Today.

What to bring lists every item below its full level, machine by machine and in total, by area or route (worked out from the postcode if you haven't set one), and prints with tick boxes for the van. On a refill visit you count what's left and enter what you put in, the cash taken out, and the card and QR sales from the reader's report. The app works out what sold, records it as a paid sale so sales, profit and tax all count it, moves the stock from your main stock, and records any cash short against the count. Add up to 8 photos and have the site's person sign with a finger.

Each machine has a site owner with their cut as a percentage of sales, a monthly rent, or both. Once each month is over, the site fee goes into your expenses as rent, and site statements show what's due, ready to mark paid. Faults & servicing logs what's wrong, how urgent it is, who's fixing it and whether the machine is out of order, counts the hours it was down, and puts the repair cost into expenses. The machine report shows sales and margin by machine and by site, with the fastest and slowest sellers.