How to choose a vending company for your business: a host’s scorecard

What should a vending company provide your business?

A full-service vending company supplies the machine, stocks it, repairs it, collects the cash and pays your business a commission, with no charge to you beyond floor space and electricity; on an office vending machine, that commission is often small or nothing. Commission is your share of the machine’s sales. Before you compare offers, find out whether each one is a percentage of gross sales or of net sales, meaning sales minus the cost of the product.

Three kinds of company will offer you a machine: an operator that owns and services its own machines, a drink bottler that places its own branded machines, and a matching service that signs your venue and places an independent operator’s machine. Our guide to getting a free vending machine for your business compares the three models. The checks in this article apply to all of them.

What a fair share looks like depends on the machine. On PinPoint Vending’s marketplace, the 81 signed listings that state a venue share as of October 5, 2026, most of them cotton candy machines in family venues, put the venue’s share at 40% of net sales in 55 listings, 50% in 12 and 30% in 11. On the cotton candy listings, net sales are what remains after a flat $1.80 per unit for cost of goods, a figure written into each agreement.

Those are novelty-machine figures from entertainment venues, so do not hold a snack or drink offer to them. Compare like with like, on the same base, using our breakdown of what vending companies pay a host.

Which costs should the vending company cover?

The vending company should cover what its machine needs to stand safely in your space: delivery, any new outlet or circuit, anchoring against tipping and every repair. Your business normally keeps the floor space, a little staff time and the electricity. ENERGY STAR’s list of certified refrigerated drink and combo machines runs from 2.08 to 3.97 kilowatt-hours a day. At the January to July 2026 U.S. average commercial rate of 13.97 cents a kilowatt-hour, that works out to roughly $9 to $17 a month.

Four costs deserve a line in your notes before the first sales call:

• Power. Older machines use far more than new ones, and commercial rates in the lower 48 states ran from 7.67 cents a kilowatt-hour in North Dakota to 26.39 cents in California from January to July 2026. Our guide to how much electricity a vending machine uses has the monthly cost by machine type and state.
• The outlet. The National Electrical Code requires ground-fault protection for vending machines (section 422.5), and some machines need their own circuit. See vending machine electrical requirements before anyone promises “it just plugs in.”
• Floor space. A 39-inch-wide snack machine takes 9.75 square feet before anyone opens the door, according to Seaga’s specification table. Our vending machine dimensions guide adds the clearance the machine needs around it.
• Access. Under section 228.1 of the 2010 ADA Standards, at least one machine of each type you offer must meet the operable-parts rules, including a 48-inch maximum reach and a clear floor space of 30 by 48 inches. Our vending machine ADA requirements guide explains who is responsible.

Ask who pays for anything new. A host-written vending machine policy at Bemidji State University makes the machine’s owner responsible for installing circuits when existing ones are missing or inadequate, and requires machines to be secured so they cannot be rocked or tipped. Williamson County, Texas, drew the same line in its signed vending contract: the county supplied the utilities, and the contractor was responsible for the electrical connections. You can ask any vending company for the same.

How do you find vending companies near you?

Find vending companies near you by starting with the machines already in your area: the operator’s name is usually on the cabinet, and nearby businesses can tell you whether that company shows up. Then check reviews that mention restocking and refunds, and confirm each company in your state’s business registry before you call.

• Read the decal on machines at nearby businesses. Pennsylvania goes further and makes operators display their name and address on each machine (61 Pa. Code § 31.28(c)).
• Ask two or three neighboring businesses who services their machines and how often a visit gets missed.
• Search “vending service” with your city name, and read the reviews for restocking, refunds and response time rather than the star rating.
• Confirm each name in your state’s business registry, the same check the scorecard below ends with.
• Shortlist three companies, then put the 11 questions below to each of them.

A company that already services the building next door drives past you on its route, which is worth more than a higher rate from one that would make a special trip.

How often should a vending company restock and service the machine?

A vending company should restock on a fixed schedule matched to your traffic and fix a reported fault within a deadline written into the agreement. PinPoint Vending’s operator contract template sets a response to a reported fault within 2 business days, and the Purchase College Association in New York told bidders in 2024 that its 60 campus machines were replenished weekly.

A host that writes the contract itself can ask for more. Williamson County, Texas, named a weekly service day for each building, though quiet sites could get fewer visits, and gave its contractor 24 hours to answer a call and 24 hours to fix or swap a broken machine, with refunds due within 72 hours. Those are a large public account’s terms, but they show what a written standard looks like.

The Purchase College bidder Q&A adds a detail worth copying: the association had asked for extra visits from time to time when foot traffic rose. A good service clause flexes the same way. Ask each company four questions:

• How often will you visit, and who decides when to add visits in a busy season?
• What happens when the machine sells out between visits?
• How fast will you respond to a dead machine, a jammed bill reader or a card reader that stops working?
• Who refunds a customer who loses money, and how does the customer reach you?

Refunds matter more than they look. If the answer is “your staff can hand them a dollar,” the vending company has just made your front desk its customer service department. Our guide to service standards when a vending company is not restocking sets out the intervals and the escalation steps, and our guide to removing a vending machine from your business covers the exit if the visits stop altogether.

How should a vending company report and pay your commission?

A vending company should pay your commission monthly on a fixed date, with a statement showing each machine’s sales and how your share was worked out. The Purchase College Association’s 2024 vending request for proposals required commission payments by the 20th of the following month, and the operator template cited above uses the 15th, with a meter or telemetry reading attached to every statement.

The base matters as much as the rate. If the company figures your share after expenses, ask for the list of what it may deduct, closed in the contract. That operator template allows only four deductions: what the product cost, card fees, sales tax and refunds paid to customers; a vaguer phrase such as “operating costs” lets a company shrink your share without touching the rate.

Ask for the right to check the numbers. Purchase College told bidders it would require a machine audit on request: a breakdown of the last two times a chosen machine was stocked, what was in it and whether cash was pulled, with college staff allowed to watch. Most small businesses will never run an audit, but a company that agrees to one is telling you something about its records.

Two more points belong in the payment clause:

• A minimum, if you have the traffic. Large hosts negotiate guarantees: Purchase College expected any bid to at least match its existing $70,000 annual guarantee across 60 machines.
• Tax. Commission is business income. How it is reported depends on your business, which our guide to taxes on vending commission covers.

What insurance should a vending company carry?

A vending company should carry commercial general liability insurance and name your business as an additional insured, which extends the policy to claims made against you over the machine. Ask for the certificate of insurance (COI) before installation, not after. The same operator template sets the floor at $1,000,000 per occurrence and makes the operator responsible for injury or damage caused by the machine or its servicing.

When the certificate arrives, check four things: the insured name matches the company signing your agreement, the policy dates cover today, your business appears as an additional insured, and the per-occurrence limit matches what was promised. If anything looks off, call the insurance agent listed on the certificate.

The risks are not abstract. In 2002, staff at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission documented three electrocutions involving vending machines between 1995 and 2002, two of the victims children. They proposed the ground-fault protection that later appeared in the National Electrical Code. Tip-overs are the other hazard. Our guide to vending machine liability covers both, along with the indemnity clause that decides who pays if someone is hurt.

Which contract terms should you accept or refuse?

Accept a written agreement with a short first term, a renewal you control, exclusivity limited to one product category and a firm removal deadline; refuse automatic multi-year renewals, exclusivity over your whole building and any fee charged to your business. The operator template cited earlier runs 12 months, renews for 12-month periods unless either side gives 60 days’ notice, and requires removal within 10 business days.

Read your own paperwork before theirs. Franchise agreements can control what goes on your floor: sample clauses collected by Law Insider bar franchisees from installing vending machines, games or rides without the franchisor’s written approval. One counts all vending income on the premises, whoever collects it, toward the franchisee’s royalty and advertising fees. A landlord’s lease can carry similar limits.

Our clause-by-clause guide to the vending service agreement gives wording to ask for on each term. Take this as a general guide rather than legal advice (sources checked October 5, 2026), and have a lawyer read any agreement that runs longer than a year.

What questions should you ask a vending company, and which answers rule it out?

Ask each vending company how often it visits, how fast it fixes faults, how it reports sales, what your share is based on, what insurance it carries and how you get out. Five answers should end the meeting: no written service schedule, no sample sales report, no certificate of insurance before installation, no penalty-free exit, and no current host willing to take your call. The scorecard below sets out 11 questions, the answer you want to hear and the answer that should send the company home.

Call that reference and ask three things: how many service visits were missed last quarter, whether commission ever arrived late, and how refunds are handled. Then confirm the company is real. Look it up in your state’s business registry; LLCs and corporations must name a registered agent, which the U.S. Small Business Administration describes as the party that receives official papers and legal documents for the company.

Our opinion: negotiate the commission last. A higher rate on a machine that sits empty for a week pays less than a lower rate on one kept full, and the service schedule, the statement and the exit clause decide which machine you get. Pick the company that will sign those three, then talk about the rate.

What should your vending service provider checklist cover?

Your vending service provider checklist should cover every promise from the sales call and the documents that prove the company can deliver. Print this list for the meeting, work through it line by line, and do not sign until every item is in writing or settled to your satisfaction.