How to Approach a Business About Placing a Vending Machine

Walk in mid-morning on a weekday, ask for the owner or general manager, and make a 30-second offer: a share of sales, no cost to them, you stock and service it, it needs a standard outlet and about nine square feet. Ask to see where it would go, leave a one-pager, and follow up within 48 hours.

That is the whole method. The rest of this post is the script, the follow-up, the three objections venues raise, and what Pinpoint has learned from negotiating host agreements with 329 venues in 34 states. If you have not picked which businesses to approach yet, start with the pillar guide on how to find vending machine locations and come back here for the conversation itself.

What do you need before you walk in?

You need six things, and four of them fit in a folder. Owners say yes to people who look like they have done this before, so the folder matters more than the pitch.

1. A one-page summary. Your name, phone, what the machine is, a photo of it, its footprint, the revenue share you are offering, how often you service it, and one line on insurance. No income projections for the venue: you cannot know them yet and a number you invent will be the first thing they remember when it is wrong.
2. A photo of the machine. On a phone is fine. Owners want to see what will sit in their lobby.
3. A tape measure. Most machines need 3 ft by 3 ft plus door clearance. Measuring the spot in front of the owner turns a maybe into a plan.
4. A certificate of insurance, or a quote for one. Commercial locations commonly ask for $1 million per occurrence in general liability and want to be named as an additional insured before installation, according to VendSoft's vending insurance guide. You do not need the policy in hand to pitch, but you need to know what it costs and say so.
5. A draft agreement. One page. What goes in it is covered in our post on whether you need a contract for a vending machine location.
6. Your service promise, as a number. "I restock on a seven-day cycle and respond to a fault within 24 hours" is an offer. "I'll take good care of it" is not.

Step 1: Choose the venue and find the person who can sign

Pitch the person who can sign a 12-month agreement, not the person at the counter. Pinpoint's scouting rule, written on our about page, is that a location is not qualified until "the person who can sign a 12-month host agreement, has." Managers who "think it's fine" produce placements that get pulled the first time the owner walks past.

Before you drive anywhere, check three things from the parking lot or Google Maps: is there public foot traffic (not just staff), is there a spot with a wall outlet and a path wide enough to wheel a machine in, and does the business have a single local owner or a corporate office? Of the 26,311 venues Pinpoint has scouted, most drop out at this stage, before anyone is pitched, and the single most common reason a placement fails is the outlet and the path, not the pitch.

For an independent operator with one or two machines, the venues that say yes most often are the ones where the machine is a treat, not a utility: bowling alleys, indoor playgrounds, trampoline parks and family entertainment centers. Those four categories make up 50 of the 157 signed, unplaced venues in Pinpoint's public listings as of September 2026, with average traffic between 50,000 and 92,000 visitors a year. Chains and franchises usually route you to a regional office; for those, a cold call to the office beats a walk-in.

Step 2: Walk in and say this

Go on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., after the morning setup and before the afternoon rush. Never during a Saturday birthday party at a family venue; the manager is running twelve things and your offer becomes one more.

At the counter:

"Hi, I'm [name]. I run a small vending business here in [town]. Is the owner or the general manager in today?"

If they ask what it is about, answer in one sentence: "I place [cotton candy / snack] machines in family venues and I'd like to show them one." If the owner is not in, ask when they usually are, leave the one-pager with your name circled, and come back on that day. Do not pitch the counter staff; they cannot say yes and they will not remember the details.

With the owner or GM, the whole pitch is under a minute:

"Thanks for a minute. I place [machine type] in places like yours. Here's what it looks like [show the photo]. The deal is simple: you get [X]% of what it sells, paid monthly with the sales report, I stock it and service it, and it costs you nothing. It needs a standard outlet and about a three-by-three space. Can I show you where I think it would go?"

Then stop talking. The question at the end is the point. If they say yes, walk the floor with the tape measure, find the outlet, take a photo of the spot, and ask two questions: "Who signs agreements for the building, is that you?" and "What's the busiest day here?" If they say no, ask what would have to be different, thank them, and leave the one-pager anyway.

Before you leave, set the next step out loud: "I'll email you the one-pager and the draft agreement tonight and stop back Thursday morning. Does that work?" A pitch without a scheduled next step is a pitch that gets forgotten by dinner.

Step 3: Answer the three objections venues raise

Venues raise the same three objections, in roughly this order. Have the answers ready before the first walk-in.

"We already have a vendor" or "we don't have the space." Do not argue about the existing vendor. Ask what they sell. A snack-and-soda contract almost never covers cotton candy, ice cream or a novelty machine, and an owner who just said no to a fourth soda machine will say yes to a category the venue does not have. On space, measure. Nine square feet is smaller than most owners picture, and the spot next to the party room or the shoe counter is usually free.

"What's in it for us?" or "we'd want more than that." Answer with the share and how it is calculated, never with a dollar figure. Industry guides such as VendingExchange put the national average at 10 to 15 percent of gross sales, paid monthly, with a range of 5 to 30 percent depending on traffic. If the owner pushes for more, offer a higher share calculated after product and card-processing costs rather than a higher share of gross; it is the difference between a placement that lasts and one you pull in month three. The full picture of what to offer is in our post on how much vending machine owners pay locations.

"What if it breaks?" or "what if someone gets hurt?" This is the objection that kills deals when it is not answered in numbers. Say your service response time (24 hours is a reasonable promise for a machine within your driving radius), say your insurance limit, and say that the agreement lets them have the machine removed with 30 days' notice. Offer to put all three in writing. An owner who hears "I'll handle it" hears risk; an owner who hears "$1 million general liability, you're named on the certificate, 24-hour response" hears a business.

Step 4: Follow up by email within 48 hours, then by phone

Send the email the same evening, while the owner still remembers your face. It has one job: to be the message they forward to a partner, a spouse or a regional office, so it must repeat the terms exactly as you said them.

Subject: [Machine type] at [Venue name], the details from today

Hi [Name],

Thanks for walking the floor with me today. As discussed, here is the summary:

• Machine: [type and model], [W x D] footprint, standard 110 V outlet, photo attached.
• Spot: [where you agreed], next to [landmark].
• Your share: [X]% of [gross sales / sales after product costs], paid monthly with a copy of the sales report.
• Service: restocked on a [7]-day cycle, faults fixed within [24] hours, my cell is [number].
• Insurance: $1 million general liability, [Venue name] listed as additional insured; certificate attached / to follow.
• Term: [12] months, either side can end it with 30 days' written notice.

The one-page agreement is attached. If it looks right, I can have the machine in on [date]. I'll stop by Thursday morning as agreed.

[Name], [Business], [phone]

If you have not heard back four business days after the email, call. Do not ask "did you get my email?" Ask for a decision on the date:

"Hi [Name], it's [name] from [business]. I sent over the summary on [day]. I'm scheduling installs for the week of [date] and wanted to know whether [Venue name] should be on the list."

One walk-in, one email and two calls is enough. If there is still no answer, move on and re-approach in 90 days; something at the venue will have changed. How many venues you need in the pipeline to make this work is the subject of our post on how many businesses you have to pitch to get a location.

Step 5: Put the agreed terms in writing before the machine moves

Never install on a handshake. The agreement is one page for an independent placement and it covers the same nine points as the email: the parties, the machine, the spot, who provides power, the share and what it is calculated on, when it is paid, the service response time, the insurance, and the term with how either side ends it.

The reason is not lawsuits; it is memory. Six months in, the owner remembers 40 percent and you remember 30, or the new manager thinks the machine belongs to the venue. A signed page settles both in ten seconds. Our post on vending machine location agreements has the clause-by-clause version.

What do venue owners actually ask about? Pinpoint's view from the table

Pinpoint negotiates host agreements on behalf of operators, so we have this conversation for a living. Across the 329 agreements we have signed, the questions from the venue side come down to three, and the order rarely changes.

Revenue share, and what it is a share of. All of them ask. What they ask second is more telling: "a share of what?" Our agreements run 30 to 40 percent of machine revenue to the venue, calculated after expenses, and the exact figure is shown on each location before an operator chooses it. In our public listings, 69 of the 85 signed venues with a recorded share sit at 30 to 40 percent; a minority of 14 sit at 50 percent, and those are high-traffic retail sites such as gas stations, malls and delis with 250,000 to 360,000 visitors a year. Owners of entertainment venues accepted 30 to 40 percent readily once "after expenses" was explained; owners who started at "half of everything" were, in our experience, the ones who had been burned by a machine that never got restocked.

Service, in specifics. The second question is some version of "who do I call when it's empty on a Saturday?" Venues do not care about your route schedule; they care about the one afternoon a child is crying in front of a jammed machine. This is why our operator terms require the machine to be kept "stocked, clean, operational and serviced within the agreed response time." We put a number on it because owners asked for one, each time.

Liability, before space. Owners ask about insurance before they ask how big the machine is. Our terms require operators to "carry liability insurance naming Pinpoint as an additional insured," and the venue's counterparty is Pinpoint rather than the individual operator, which is the answer most owners were looking for: a company they can call. If you are pitching on your own, a certificate of insurance in the folder does the same work.

Our opinion after all of these: the share is negotiated in the first five minutes, but the deal is won on the service and liability answers. An operator who leads with a higher percentage and has no answer for "what if it breaks" loses to the operator who offers less and has a certificate in hand.

What do you do if nobody says yes?

Treat the first ten walk-ins as calibration, not results. If ten owners said no, one of four things is wrong, and each has a fix:

• You pitched the wrong person. Counter staff and shift managers cannot sign. Go back on the day the owner is in.
• The venue has no reason to want a treat. Offices and workshops want a snack machine for staff; family venues want a novelty machine for guests. Match the machine to the crowd, or change the list of venues.
• The offer had no numbers. Add the share, the service window and the insurance limit to the one-pager and say them out loud.
• The venue is not yours to win. Franchises and chains decide at a regional office. Find the office.

Pinpoint's own numbers are a useful benchmark. Of 26,311 venues scouted, 329 signed a host agreement, about 1 in 80, and the majority of the drop-off happens before a pitch: no outlet, no floor space, no local decision-maker. If your list is pre-qualified on those three, your yes rate at the counter will be far better than that ratio suggests. And if you would rather not do the walk-ins at all, that is the job we do: signed venues, exact share shown up front, about 3 months on average when we scout from scratch.

FAQ

What percentage should I offer a business for a vending machine?

Offer a share of sales, not a flat promise. Industry guides put typical commissions at 10 to 15 percent of gross sales, while Pinpoint's signed host agreements run 30 to 40 percent of revenue after expenses because the venues are high-traffic entertainment spaces. Start where the traffic justifies it and show the sales report monthly.

Should I pitch a vending machine location in person or by email?

In person first, then email. A walk-in gets you in front of the decision-maker, lets you check the outlet and floor space, and puts a face to the offer. The email that follows within 48 hours is what the owner forwards to a partner or corporate office, so it must repeat the terms exactly.

Do I need to own the machine before I approach a business?

Not to have the conversation, but you need to know exactly what you would place, its footprint, its power draw and how often you would service it. Venues sign for a specific machine and a specific spot. If you are still deciding, read our post on whether to buy a machine or find a location first.

Can a business let me place a vending machine for free, with no commission?

Yes, and small offices, workshops and break rooms often do, because the machine solves a problem for their staff. Once a venue has real public foot traffic it will expect a share of sales. Our post on where to put a vending machine for free covers which venues take nothing and why.

What should a vending machine location agreement include?

The revenue share and what it is calculated on, when it is paid, the exact machine and spot, who provides power, the service response time, the insurance you carry, the term, and how either side ends it. One page is enough for an independent placement; the point is that both sides signed the same numbers.

Next step

If you want to run the walk-ins yourself, print the one-pager, pick ten venues with an outlet and a local owner, and start Tuesday. If you would rather choose from venues that have already signed, with the revenue share shown on each one before you commit, see Pinpoint's pricing and key terms: a $1,000 refundable deposit, up to 2 qualified locations presented, and a full refund if we have not placed you within 6 months.

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Zach Downey runs Pinpoint Vending, a Sweet Robo company that scouts and signs venues for vending machine operators. The venue-share figures above come from Pinpoint's public listings snapshot of 7 September 2026 and its published key terms. Drafted with AI assistance and reviewed by the author.