How do sales by slot determine a vending refill schedule?

Vending Machine Business Plan · Published 2026-10-20 · U.S. planning scenario

The fastest-selling product sets the service interval unless you give it more slots. A machine can have plenty of total stock while its best-selling selection is empty. Build the schedule from each selection’s usable capacity and daily demand, then check whether the route has time to deliver it.

This 28-day packaged-goods illustration uses one machine with 12 slots, 12 items per slot and 98% saleable yield. Demand is constant, the machine has 100% uptime, stock is full at the beginning of each service cycle, and unavailable products do not substitute for one another. These are chosen assumptions, not sales benchmarks.

For selection A, 4 × 12 × 0.98 = 47.04 saleable items per fill. At 12 requests a day, that is 3.92 days of cover. A seven-day interval leaves unmet demand; a 3.5-day interval fits. The fractional items are expected equivalents used for planning. A physical pick list must use whole packages and case sizes.

Turn the table into a route schedule

For eight evenly spaced fills in this 28-day example, use days 0, 3.5, 7, 10.5, 14, 17.5, 21 and 24.5. Day 0 is the opening load; it is included in both stock capacity and route labor. The final cycle ends on day 28. If access is available only on weekdays, replace these theoretical times with actual appointment windows and recompute the longest gap. Do not assume a weekly average protects a slot across a weekend.

At the next visit, count remaining stock and replenish the difference to the target. Four fills do not mean buying four complete machine inventories when slow sellers remain on hand. Keep sold units, writeoffs, receipts and ending inventory in separate columns.

When more slots beat more visits

Move two slots from C to A: A then has six slots and 70.56 usable items per fill. Its cover rises to 5.88 days, still short of a seven-day interval at 12 requests a day. Seven slots provide 82.32 items, still below seven-day demand of 84. Eight slots provide 94.08, but leave only four for the other selections. Check B and C before reallocating. A higher yield or lower observed demand can reverse the choice.

Record actual paid sales, timestamps, spoilage and the time each selection was unavailable for several service cycles. Sales while empty understate demand. Use the Product and Slot Mix calculator to test explicit allocations; it compares an entered mix and does not optimize slots automatically.

Download the completed refill and inventory example, then replace its demand and service assumptions with your own logs.