Your machine and route
Count every slot you can fill with product, such as 36.
How often you really refill this machine.
Fuel, vehicle wear and your time or a driver's. Used to find the best gap between visits.
Of the customers who find their pick empty, the share who buy another item. 0 is cautious; 30 is typical for snacks.
Products (up to 12)
"Sells a week" is units sold in a normal week when it never runs out (if it often sells out, use a bit more than you see). "Units per coil" is how many fit in one coil. Perishable items that are not sold by the next visit are thrown out. "Min coils" keeps a product in the machine (a staple, a contract item); "Max coils" caps it. Put today's layout in "Coils now" to see the gain; leave it blank to compare with an even split.
| # | Product | Price ($) | Unit cost ($) | Sells a week | Units per coil | Perishable? | Min coils | Max coils | Coils now |
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| 12 |
The same figures always give the same answer.
Result
Questions vending operators ask
How many coils should each vending machine product get?
Give coils where an extra coil earns the most. Each product's profit rises with its coils but with diminishing returns: the first coil catches most of the demand, later ones only cover busy weeks. The tool computes the exact best split of your coils from each product's price, cost, weekly sales and units per coil, so a fast mover gets more coils and a slow, high-margin item gets just enough.
Why do vending machines sell out of the best sellers first?
Coils are usually split evenly by habit, but demand is not. A product selling 70 a week on 4 coils of 10 sells out in four days, while a product selling 6 a week sits for months. Moving coils from the slow item to the fast one turns missed sales into profit with no extra visits.
How often should I restock a vending machine?
Enter what a restocking visit costs you (drive time, fuel, labour). The tool re-optimises the coils for restock gaps from 2 to 14 days and shows weekly profit after visit costs for each, so you can see whether visiting less often loses more in sell-outs than it saves in trips.
What about customers who switch when their pick is sold out?
Set the substitution share, the portion of a sold-out product's unmet demand that buys something else in stock. The recommended layout is re-measured against your current one on thousands of identical simulated restock intervals with that switching included, and the gain is shown with its standard error.
Is my data uploaded?
No. It runs in your browser; nothing you type leaves your device.
Not decided
Which products fit which coil sizes or spiral types, shelf-life rules, health and food-safety requirements, location agreements and commissions, card-reader fees, price changes, and seasonal or day-of-week swings. Weekly sales are treated as an average with random (Poisson) variation, independent between products; a product that is hidden or badly placed sells less than its number says. The optimiser ignores sell-out substitution (so it can only understate), and the gain over today is then measured with substitution included. Prices and costs are placeholders, not any business's.
Related tools: the vending machine route margin calculator, the service van stock optimizer and the small batch run size optimizer.