How to get a Coke machine for my business, from a bottler or an operator

Who places Coke and Pepsi machines: the bottler or a vending company?

Coke and Pepsi machines are placed by two kinds of company, and the same two routes answer how to get a soda machine for your business. The bottler is the regional business that makes and delivers the drinks; a vending company buys the drinks and runs branded machines on its own route. Coca-Cola’s business site sends machine requests to a local Coca-Cola representative, and vending companies such as Vending Group advertise free Coca-Cola machines.

Coca-Cola’s bottlers are regional, which is why CokeSolutions, the company’s site for business customers, routes requests to a local contact. Coca-Cola Consolidated, the largest Coca-Cola bottler in the United States, serves 14 states and Washington, D.C., and Swire Coca-Cola, USA serves parts of 13 western states. Coca-Cola UNITED, the third-largest, takes requests from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee.

PepsiCo takes new customers through a request form on PepsiCo Partners, after which a PepsiCo representative calls. Its equipment page offers branded vending machines and coolers, plus Quik Pick, a smart cooler that charges the buyer’s card once the door closes.

One vending company can run both brands. The Los Angeles park vending report lists the 43 machines in the city’s agreement with First Choice Vending, Inc. It names 17 as Coke machines and 3 as Pepsi machines, alongside Dasani, Gatorade and Powerade machines, 9 snack machines and 6 snack-and-drink machines.

Does your business qualify for a bottler’s machine?

Your business qualifies for a free branded soda machine when the provider expects steady sales. Of the pages checked for this guide, only Vending Group and its affiliate Vending Solutions publish numbers. Vending Group’s list is the fuller one: at least 40 full-time employees at an office, 60 employees for a retail break room, 40 hotel rooms or 100 apartment units.

The thresholds are from Vending Group, which also says it does not place snack machines on their own. Coca-Cola’s new business request form asks for your business type, such as “Office & Professional” or “Recreation/Amusement”, and how many people can use the machine, from 1–20 up to 75–100. It also asks whether you need a snack machine.

Coca-Cola UNITED adds a caution on its own form: equipment is “subject to availability,” and the bottler asks for 72 hours to reply. A request is a starting point, not a guarantee.

Our view: below about 40 people on site, ask for a drink machine as a convenience and expect no commission. A provider stretching to serve a small site has every reason to visit it less often, and an empty cola machine can annoy staff more than no machine at all.

What does a bottler machine pay your business?

A bottler machine pays your business whatever you negotiate, and often nothing: none of the bottler pages checked for this guide publishes a commission rate. The highest published rates come from large accounts. Los Angeles’s park vending company, which runs Coke and Pepsi machines, agreed to pay the city 25% of gross sales, and Williamson County, Texas, signed for 23.25% after sales tax.

Williamson County’s 2012 agreement covered 35 cold drink and snack machines at 15 county sites, and the Los Angeles terms cover 43 machines, so both are accounts with dozens of machines to trade. A single drink machine at a small office has far less: VMFS USA’s guide for operators rates a standard office of 50 to 100 employees at 0%.

A locator’s own survey of the same question puts a wider range on it. PinPoint Vending’s figures for what vending owners pay locations give 5% to 20% of gross sales, or a flat $50 to $300 a month, as the industry norm, and split that by venue: 5% to 15% for offices, gyms and schools against 15% to 30% for gas stations, retail and malls. Its own signed agreements run higher, at 30% to 50% of revenue after cost of goods, but those are specialty machines in entertainment venues rather than a soda cabinet in an office.

The same guide explains why operators like branded drinks: buying direct from Coke or Pepsi can bring an operator’s product cost down to about 30–35% of the price, in exchange for strict volume commitments.

Here is the scale for one machine, as an illustration, not a forecast. Assume 300 drinks a month at $2.00, the price VMFS USA uses for a 20-ounce soda in its own example, for $600 in sales.

A 10% commission on gross pays you $60 a month and 5% pays $30, or about $18 after the $11 to $12 of power you pay, worked out below. At 0%, the machine is a perk that costs you that power. Our guide to vending commission rates for business owners covers how to negotiate the rate.

That trade is the one PinPoint Vending’s guide to free vending placements describes from the operator’s side: free “means the host takes no cut of your sales”, not that the placement costs nothing, and the venues that host for nothing tend to be the small ones a large operator will not service.

Can a bottler’s machine sell other brands?

A bottler’s machine sells that bottler’s brands, because merchandising them is why it is placed. Coca-Cola’s equipment page says the machines’ graphics feature its brands and that the equipment is designed to merchandise its portfolio. A 72-inch stack machine holds 6 to 8 brands, and larger models up to 12. A vending company’s machine can mix colas when its supply deals allow it.

The specifications are on Coca-Cola’s vending machine page. PepsiCo describes its vending equipment the same way, as a means of “showcasing popular PepsiCo brands.” Vending companies have more room: Vending Solutions, a Vending Group affiliate, lists Pepsi, Coke, Diet Pepsi, Diet Coke, Dr Pepper, Gatorade, Powerade and Red Bull among the drinks it stocks.

That freedom has limits too. VMFS USA warns operators that direct bottler relationships often dictate which shelves of a machine go to the bottler’s products, so a vending company’s mix can still lean toward one brand.

Our view: if your people split between Coke and Pepsi drinkers, a vending company that stocks both serves them better than either bottler’s machine. Write the brand list into the agreement either way, so a supply deal you never saw cannot change it.

What does a bottler agreement ask of you?

A bottler or vending company asks you for a spot, power and access, and the details come from the machine. Coca-Cola lists its stack and glass-front machines at 72 or 79 inches tall, 28 to 52 inches wide, 32 to 37 inches deep and 536 to 787 pounds. They are rated at 6 to 10 amps with a cord about 6 feet long, so the outlet has to be close and the doorways wide enough.

The University of Maryland’s placement list for its Pepsi machines gives the same picture: 32 to 40 inches wide, 72 or 79 inches tall and 11 amps at 120 volts. None needs a dedicated circuit, four of the five types call for recycling, and extension cords are banned. Our guides to vending machine dimensions and vending machine electrical requirements cover the clearances and the circuit.

The power is usually yours, but it is negotiable: the Los Angeles terms add a utility charge of $10 per machine each month, paid by the vending company. ENERGY STAR’s certified closed-front drink machines, the stack type Coca-Cola lists, are rated at 2.66 to 2.91 kWh a day. At 13.97 cents a kilowatt-hour, the U.S. commercial average for January to July 2026 (EIA Table 5.6.B), one machine costs about $11 to $12 a month to run.

Federal energy limits apply only to machines made from August 31, 2012, and were tightened in January 2019 (10 CFR 431.296). Ask for the build year; vending machine electricity use shows what an older machine costs.

One federal appeals case shows why upkeep belongs with the machine’s owner. In Fischer v. Red Lion Inns (8th Cir. 1992), a soda machine with a frayed power cord shocked a guest at a hotel. A Pepsi bottler owned, filled and serviced it as one of about 10,000 machines, and the court held that Nebraska law gave the bottler a duty to inspect it.

The hotel kept its own duty of reasonable care for its premises, so write the split into the agreement. The owner inspects and maintains the machine and its cord, carries liability insurance naming your business and fixes faults by a deadline; you keep the outlet and the floor around it in good order. Our guide to vending machine liability tells the case in full and covers the insurance wording.

General information, not legal advice. Sources checked on October 5, 2026.

Bottler machine or full-service vending company: which pays more?

Bottlers and full-service vending companies publish no standard rate, so compare what each brings. A bottler’s machine carries one company’s brands and its own service line, while a full-service vending company can add snacks and more than one brand, which gives it more sales to share. Owning a machine keeps every sale but makes the stocking, repairs and permits yours.

Our view: ask both, sending the bottler’s form and getting one written offer from a vending company. Choose on the lineup, the repair deadline and the snack option before the commission, which at a small site matters least. If owning tempts you, run the buy-or-host break-even first; for every way to get a machine, see our guide to a free vending machine for your business.

What should you check before a soda machine goes in?

Check the provider, the space, the power and the paperwork before a soda machine goes in, because each is harder to change once a cabinet of more than 500 pounds is in place. The list below works for a bottler’s machine and a vending company’s alike; get the answers in writing and keep them with the signed agreement.