"Can we get a vending machine for free?" is one of the most common questions I get. The honest answer is: often, yes — but it helps to understand why, because "free" means something specific here, and knowing how it works tells you whether your location is likely to qualify.

What "free" actually means

With free placement, you don't buy the machine, you don't pay to have it installed, and you don't pay to have it stocked. We own the equipment, we deliver it, we fill it, and we keep it running. Your team buys what they want out of it, and those sales are what cover the machine, the product, and the route.

So nobody's doing anyone a favour. It's a model that works when the machine sells enough to pay for itself. That's the whole thing — and it's also why the question "is it free?" really turns into "will a machine sell enough in your space?"

Who owns and maintains the machine

We do. That matters more than it sounds. When the machine is ours, a jammed coil, a card reader that stops taking tap, or a compressor that's not keeping drinks cold is our problem to fix, not yours. You're not stuck with a piece of hardware you bought and now have to figure out how to repair. (If you're weighing buying one outright instead, I wrote about that in should your office buy its own vending machine.)

What makes a location qualify

It comes down to foot traffic — how many of your people walk past the machine on a normal day — more than any hard headcount number. The things I look at on a site visit:

How many people are on site, and across how many shifts. A warehouse running days and nights gets a lot more out of one machine than a same-size office that empties at 5.
Where the machine can go. A spot people pass every day beats a quiet corner every time.
What else is nearby. A convenience store across the parking lot competes with the machine. A site with nothing around it is where vending shines.
What the team actually buys. A machine stocked to the crew sells. A generic mix doesn't. More on that in what actually sells in a workplace machine.

I got into rough headcount rules of thumb in how many employees does your office need for a vending machine.

When free placement isn't the right fit

If the traffic isn't there, I'll tell you. Forcing a full machine into a space that can't support it doesn't help anyone — it ends up half-empty and your team stops using it. In a smaller office, the better answer might be a smaller setup, a coffee service as the anchor, or a subsidized option where the company covers part of it as a perk. There's a breakdown of those models in free vs subsidized vs paid vending.

The service agreement

Because we're putting equipment in at no upfront cost, accounts run on a straightforward service agreement. We walk you through the terms before you sign anything, and we earn the renewal by actually showing up and keeping the machine full.

The fastest way to find out

The simplest way to know if your location qualifies is to have someone look at it. We're family-owned, based in Maple, and we place vending machines across Vaughan, Brampton, Mississauga, and the wider GTA. Book a 15-minute consult or request a quote — Sam answers the phone, and you'll get a straight answer either way.