Here's a question that almost never comes up until it's too late: if your office already has a coffee setup, what should go in the vending machine next to it? Most people don't think coffee and vending have anything to do with each other. On the same floor, they do — and the clearest example is coffee drinks themselves.

The ready-to-drink coffee trap

Ready-to-drink coffee — the bottled and canned lattes and espresso drinks — is the one category where "we already have coffee" really matters. And whether it sells comes down to one thing: can people reach free coffee from where the machine is?

If the vending machine sits right next to a coffee machine the company already provides for free, the ready-to-drink coffee won't move. Nobody's paying for a canned latte when there's free coffee two steps away. I've seen those rows sit untouched.

But put that same machine in a separate area — a different floor, a section of the building where people don't have a free coffee machine within reach — and the ready-to-drink sells just fine. Now it's the convenient option, not the paid version of something free right beside it.

So it isn't "ready-to-drink coffee doesn't sell in offices with coffee." It's about access and proximity: free coffee within reach kills it; no free coffee in that spot and it earns its slot. Same product, opposite result, depending on where the machine lands.

It's really the same rule as everything else

This is one case of the rule that runs through every machine I place: you stock it to the specific spot and the people standing in front of it, not to a generic template. Coffee access is just one more variable in that, alongside headcount, foot traffic, and who's actually on that floor. I got into the wider version of this in what actually sells in a workplace machine.

A bigger site can even land on both answers at once — a machine near the free coffee where ready-to-drink makes no sense, and another in a far corner where it sells all day.

Why this usually gets missed

The reason offices trip over this is that coffee and vending almost always come from two different vendors who never talk to each other. So nobody plans the interaction — the office just discovers it three months in, staring at a row of unsold cans.

Because we run both the coffee and the vending, we plan it from the start. The machine's mix gets built around what's already in your breakroom, not in spite of it — right down to where each machine goes.

If you've already got coffee and you're adding vending, or the mix you've got isn't moving, that's a quick conversation. We're family-owned and based in Maple, and we'll plan it around your actual space. Book a 15-minute consult or request a quote — Sam answers the phone.