There are too many coffee machines. Is it profitable now to engage in vending in Belarus? Over the past year, several new types of vending services have appeared in Minsk - for example, selling flowers, printing photos from Instagram. We looked at what is happening in this type of business today, and then listened to the expert’s opinion.

A year and a half ago, a glass of coffee in a vending machine cost 5,000-7,000 Belarusian rubles. Today the price of a cup of coffee has risen to 10-15 thousand. Over the past year, according to our observations, there have been more vending machines both in number and in the types of goods and services they sell. For example, vending machines appeared: selling flowers, with services for printing photos from Instagram.

In Minsk there are also (in addition to machines selling coffee, drinks, sweets, toys, breathalyzers and optical lenses) children's attractions, massage chairs, machines for photocopies and instant photos, and automatic car washes. We looked at what is happening in the vending business today, and is it profitable to engage in it?

Cost and payback

To find out the cost of a coffee machine, we used a calculator posted on the website of the Proximavest company (distributor of vending machines and ingredients). Here is the input:

Here is the data on the cost of a glass of drink, in Belarusian rubles, with the number of glasses sold being 30 per day.

Total:

Average cost - 2,439 rubles ($0.12)
Average selling price: 12,500 rubles ($0.65)
Payback period: about 8 months
Revenue: 9.1 million per machine ($473)

We also looked at the calculations made by a vending company that sells and services Pictagram devices in Minsk. With their help, you can instantly print photos from Instagram:

Payback period: 3-6 months
Maintenance cost: 5% of turnover per month
The cost of the device: $6,500
Average rental rate in a shopping center: $100

According to the data posted by vending companies, it is clear that the payback period for the devices is short. But how does the vending business work in practice?

Is it profitable to do vending in Belarus today?

Dmitry Fitzner is an expert in the vending business. Here's an expert's opinion:

– This business can be conditionally classified as a “second echelon”. This will give you the opportunity to feel what your own business is and how it works. But still, the cost of the equipment is quite significant. Let me give you an example of the cost of machines that sell sparkling water. 2 years ago I started this vending business in Minsk from scratch:

Price of used equipment – ​​from $1,000, depending on the degree of wear and tear
The price of a new one is $2,500-$5,000 and above. Depending on the manufacturer and country of production

1. Difficulties. The worst move: first bring the equipment, and then start looking for places for it. First you need to test how “interesting” your service is to consumers. Will there be good feedback on demand from shopping centers and other sites. I have already come across cases where the shopping center seems to be well-known, the location is not bad, and everything is well chosen. But doesn't work.

And you have to, gritting your teeth, look for a new place. Maybe in the same shopping center. There have been cases where it was necessary to move equipment from place to place 4 times in order to find optimal traffic in a shopping center. And the space itself in the shopping center is limited. The landlord says: “you can only place the device here and nowhere else.” And you either agree or you don’t.

2. Cost formation. The most difficult variable in both the coffee and soda business: the rental rate. The notorious square meter, which must be negotiated with the landlord. Large areas of hundreds of meters sell for €10-20 per square. The small format, which includes vending, is “given away” in commercial facilities for $100 or €100 per meter per month. Prepaid.

There was hope that due to the crisis, landlords would make concessions. But I’ll tell you for sure – in small formats they don’t reduce rent. I talked to the largest and most famous shopping centers and found no response. There is only one answer to all the arguments: we don’t plan. This variable affects, in principle, work and the price level. A glass of drink today costs 10,000 rubles - I have never seen less.

It is also important to take into account the depreciation period. In a soda fountain it is 3-5 years. You distribute the cost of the device in proportion to these 5 years and determine how much it takes specifically in each glass of drink sold. In addition, the cost in my example includes:

Water
Syrups for making drinks
Carbon dioxide
disposable cup

It is clear that all costs are included in the cost of the product.

3. Sales volumes. Our business focuses on sales of 30 glasses per day. This is the volume that deserves attention and allows the business to exist. If below: I recommend looking for a new interesting place for the device.

4. Market volume. With soda fountains, saturation is very, very far away. There are about 40 of them in Minsk. I know for sure, because... was related to their supplies. Now the equipment has begun to be resold, and a secondary market has emerged. About 10 more devices are on the periphery. But for coffee machines, the market is already close to saturation – the number is in the hundreds. The coffee vending business has grown the best today.

5. Maintenance costs. In this business segment, the owners are mainly involved in servicing the devices themselves. You can hire staff when the business grows to 15-20 points, especially if they are concentrated not only in one city.

6. prospects. Nowadays, finding a place that will sell more than 30 glasses of the drink per day is quite problematic. A lot of places have appeared in the format of coffee points - coffee shops where you can linger for a while, sit down and drink a cup or two of coffee. The segment operates on the verge of profitability. Both high rental rates and falling demand are having an impact.

To expand the retail network, you need to buy equipment - attract financing, or each time divert funds from current income. In terms of scalability, this is not a very attractive business. This is not IT.

At the same time, in the process of communicating with vendors, I see that they are looking at different directions: vending machines for tights, “Instamats” through which you can go to Instagram and post photos. New directions appear in waves. People test a niche and it either pays off or it doesn’t.

Belarus experience

How a vending business automated the delivery of data to the tax office

- . .

Operating principle

Business Benefits

Security issue

Timur Bogdanovich,

Cons - in price

Tigran Simonyan,

Expert comment

Tigran Simonyan, manager of BLR-Trade LLC, one of the largest vending operators in Belarus, shared his opinion on what he would like to change in the automated control system of tax authorities: I would change two things in the system and in the approach to its operation. First, you should add integration of SKNO with telemetry in the software of the vending machines themselves. Some vending operators already pay for telemetry software. Telemetry, albeit in a reduced form, is also part of the SKNO. Through the terminal you can see whether the device is turned on, whether it is being serviced (working in test mode), and how much money has been received into it. It would be nice to see a number of other parameters in the SKNO itself or as a result of integration with the telemetry of device manufacturers - error messages in a specific unit of the device (a bill is stuck, sticks for stirring drinks are not dispensed, the dispenser is not working correctly, the brewing unit is not working correctly, etc.) , the number of ingredients in the machine, the number of servings of each drink sold during the reporting period. The second thing to change is the price. Today it is indeed very high, even for a company like ours, which operates a fairly large number of devices. SKNO collects data on the movement of money and goods. This is the whole benefit and benefit of the state from its implementation. Transparency costs much more than the entire subscription fee collected from entrepreneurs.

Olga Krykova, especially for

The vending business is being taken under control

Today in Russia the possibility of switching to online is being actively discussed. - control of cash transactions in stores . In this regard, the site tells readers about a rather interesting experience in implementing an automated revenue control system in the vending business in the Republic of Belarus .

Three years ago, in 2012, the Ministry of Taxes and Duties (Ministry of Taxes) in Belarus introduced a system for monitoring the revenue of vending machines. Simply put, as soon as the buyer puts a bill into the machine, paying for a product or service, information about the money received is sent to the tax service.

As for buyers, they did not feel any changes, but owners of vending machines, for obvious reasons, were against such innovations - for many, the declared income was several times different from the real one. Despite the fact that entrepreneurs had a choice: either work with a cash register (which makes the very principle of the vending business meaningless - trading without a cashier), or install a SKNO module (tax authority control tool) in the machine, with which the machine connects to the tax control system and transmits revenue data, entrepreneurs chose the second option as more profitable.

However, Belarusian entrepreneurs quickly realized that the control system not only has disadvantages, but can also bring real benefits. But more on that later.

Operating principle

The IT solution, which was developed by the Belarusian company Novacom, commissioned by the Ministry of Taxation, allows you to collect data on the revenue of machines accurate to the banknote in real time. The system is based on a special device that is installed in the vending machine and transmits data to the processing center.

The device connects to the information bus of the bill acceptor, recognizes signals about accepting money and transmits data about accepted bills using a GSM module to the data processing center of the Ministry of Taxation.

If we compare it with the system that is going to be implemented in stores in Russia, they are similar in many ways. The only difference is that the system in a store transmits data from the cash register - from the receipt tape, while in vending it is based on information about accepted cash.

Business Benefits

There are different levels of user access within the system. Data on a vending machine can be received not only by regulatory authorities, but also by owners of vending machines, who now have the opportunity to remotely monitor revenue for individual machines and the network as a whole at any time.

Theft among vending machine staff has almost completely disappeared. According to the entrepreneurs themselves, many of them, after the first weeks of working with the new system, were very surprised to see that the revenue, according to the system, was significantly higher than the actual amount of money in the device. After, at the request of some owners, seals were placed on the machine for some time and the staff did not have access to cash, the amount of money according to the data from the system and that in the machine coincided.

By monitoring the machine’s performance online, entrepreneurs can quickly respond to breakdowns and notice equipment downtime.

A business owner can upload data to an analytical system to analyze a number of parameters, such as analysis of product flow taking into account the time of day, seasonality, location of the vending machine, forecasting consumption and replenishment of ingredients, etc. Thus, the operator can timely plan equipment maintenance logistics, control product balances, plan product purchases, etc.

Security issue

As a result of testing the system for controlling cash transactions in Russian stores, a flaw was found in the security of data transmission. As for the security of information transfer in the vending business, the volumes of the vending business itself are smaller in comparison with the number of stores and cash desks in them. And the problem, accordingly, is also less global.

Timur Bogdanovich, SKTA project manager at Novacom, said: “There are not so many intermediate links in the system. Data transmission is carried out in a dedicated secure network of a mobile operator. Further, through GSM channels, the information reaches the resources of the system owner. There is also a security group at the entrance that checks the incoming data. Access to the system is provided only when the user is identified and authenticated using his public and private key certificate and taking into account the differentiation of rights.

In the event of a communication failure, the data is accumulated in the internal memory of the SKNO. This is a separate module with a resource reserve of a month or more. In our time, such long interruptions in communication do not actually happen, even in force majeure or difficult weather conditions. When the link is restored, the device starts transmitting data immediately.”

Cons - in price

The cost of equipment, a subscription fee or a service associated with it, is the most common "minus" of almost all innovations. Tigran Simonyan, The manager of BLR-Trade LLC, one of the largest vending operators in Belarus, identified two main disadvantages of the control system, and both of them relate to implementation and maintenance costs:

“First, to connect to the system, you need to pay a deposit for the transmitting unit. The security deposit is the equivalent of $80. If the entrepreneur decides to return the block, say, after a year of operation, he will receive the same amount that he paid at the time of connection. In Belarus, inflation is high, so at the time of the return it will be much less money than at the time of connection.

The second minus is the cost of subscription service for each block. It is the equivalent of $16.5 per month, which is expensive. This immediately calls into question the profitability of devices in places with low traffic - the monthly fee will simply eat up the entire margin. You have to look for other places to install. For our company, which has a lot of devices, this is a common thing. And for individual entrepreneurs with 2-3 cars, this can be a problem.”

Over 2,300 vending machines were connected during the first six months of the system's operation, and now more than 3,000 are operating. As for vending machines located in Minsk, vending machines for coffee, snacks and bottled drinking water are in the lead. Other types of machines are also connected to the system, for example, photo machines in which you can take an urgent picture for documents, manual car washes of the Karcher type at gas stations.

vending business due to its many advantages, it is gaining more and more popularity. The concept of “vending” refers to the sale of food, drinks, stationery, toys and other small goods using self-service machines. Thanks to great demand, quick payback, low cost of renting a place, mobility and independence from the work of hired personnel, this type of business quickly becomes profitable and begins to bring a stable profit.

Features of choosing a place for the machine

The location where the vending machine will be installed must meet the following criteria.

Sufficient flow of potential customers

Shopping centers, equipped transport stops, bus stations, educational institutions, etc. meet this requirement.

Important: the goods in the machine must correspond to the target audience. For example, in educational institutions selling office supplies is as profitable as selling candy bars and coffee, while in shopping centers and other public places it is worth giving preference to food and beverages.

Safety

You can place a machine gun on the street only if you are fully confident that the residents of the area are law-abiding. If there is a risk of damage to the device by vandals, it is better to choose a protected location (shop, supermarket, etc.) or at least a point with video surveillance.

No direct competitors

If there are already vending machines with similar products nearby, you should find another place for yours. The best option for a vending business is an area on the outskirts of the city, where there are few shops and, especially, vending machines.

The formal side of the issue: how to register a business

In order for a vending business to be legal from the point of view of the law, it is necessary to register as a private entrepreneur or as a legal entity, and also choose the optimal taxation option. In addition, permission is required for the placement of the machine, for its activities (from the fire service and SES) and for the product that will be sold. After these stages, a rental agreement for the place is concluded, and the contact details of the entrepreneur are indicated on the machine.

Ready-made business offers

Coffee outlets with machines

I will sell 3 points with a coffee machine in checkout areas and service stations with a shopping center traffic of 4,000,000 visitors per year. The place is located near the currency exchange office and the Belgosstrakh island. The remaining 2 points are at the service station. Device: 18-button, grain, Sagoma Luce Es, manufacturer Rheavendors, Italy, such...

Here you can buy the best vending equipment from Unicum. We are the first official suppliers of this manufacturer's products in the Republic of Belarus. In addition, vending and combination machines are available in stock.

From us you can order ingredients for vending equipment: coffee for vending, tea, hot chocolate, and cappuccino. We also supply tableware for vending. In addition, you can purchase milk and cream for your machine.

Vending equipment in Minsk

By purchasing a product from us, you receive not just your order, but a full package of services. If we have equipment in the warehouse, we will deliver it as soon as possible, since our warehouse is located in Minsk, we will install and connect it. And in the event of a breakdown, we provide repair services.

When ordering coffee, tea and other drinks, we will help you choose the optimal blend and quantity of product for you. We supply only high-quality Arabica and Robusta coffee from Italy in different price segments. By placing an order with us you will receive a full range of services for servicing vending equipment.

Do the benefits of SCTA outweigh its drawbacks?

From July 1 of this year, the Ministry of Taxes and Duties introduced a new system for monitoring the revenue of vending machines in Belarus.

Simply put, explains Respublika, the buyer put the bill into the machine while buying a glass of coffee, and the tax service is already aware of this. Buyers did not notice the innovations, but business representatives do not stop sounding the alarm about the established “total” control over their activities. However, along with those who continue to be categorically against the introduction of such technologies, there are also those who have managed to understand how to benefit from technical innovations.

Profit without concealment

All over the world, the vending business is considered to be very profitable. In Japan, the USA, Europe, the number of vending machines is in the millions. There are currently about 50-55 thousand machines operating in Russia, but experts predict significant business growth in the coming years, because its profitability averages about 20%. For comparison: the profitability of ordinary retail trade in our country, according to statistics, barely reaches 5%. In Belarus, according to rough estimates, about 2-3 thousand devices are currently operating, but vending entities also call their industry one of the promising areas for the development of small and medium-sized businesses. At the same time, where there is profit, prerequisites appear for going into “shadow” schemes. According to the head of the Main Directorate for Control of Excise Goods, Gambling Business and Electronic Systems for Control of Sales of Goods of the Ministry of Taxes and Duties, Vladimir Mukvich, the results of recent monitoring conducted by the tax service show that today there are many cases where the actual revenue volumes of vending machines exceed those that vending companies "declare". “In some cases, the data differs by a factor of 12 or more,” says the specialist. At the same time, he contritely states: “There are other violations. In general, retail trade using vending machines has long remained one of the most difficult areas both in terms of monitoring revenue volumes and in terms of overseeing the safety of life and health of citizens. It is still not subject to, for example, the requirements of mandatory state hygienic registration, assessment and confirmation of compliance.”

It is clear that profitability plays an important role in the survival and development of a business, writes Respublika. Hidden here are reserves for investment activity, new jobs, a qualitatively new level of service, and the well-being of the businessmen themselves, in the end. But one can hardly look for potential for business development only in the fact that the revenue of a vending machine, unlike any other retail outlet, is difficult to control. Reduced revenue, reduced the amount of taxes - so additional money appeared. But for a long time, it was not possible for its managers and the tax service to find common approaches to determining the profitability of a business. As a result, a joint resolution of the Council of Ministers and the National Bank of 06.07. 2011 No. 924/16, according to which, from July 1, 2012, all owners of vending machines must, when consumers pay for goods, works and services sold in them, accept cash using built-in cash register equipment that registers and accounts for accepted money, as well as printing check. For more than a month now, vending machine control systems (VMCs) in almost one and a half thousand machines have been performing their direct functions.

Vladimir Mukvich explains: “In addition to the control exercised by the tax service, the system implements the ability to provide the owner of vending machines with various statistical reports on revenue. Firstly, he remotely receives prompt, reliable information about revenue for each vending machine at any time of the day. Secondly, it can minimize the cost of servicing them by quickly obtaining information about malfunctions in their operation, quickly eliminating problems that arise and restoring the operation of the machine.”

Business Bonuses

Alla Kukharchik, deputy director of Mirny Sport LLC, which owns two vending machines, at first could not understand the reason for the significant discrepancies between the information that the newly connected control system “insisted” on and the cash that the operators brought. The company’s employees are used to being trusted, because they have never given reasons for mistrust before. I decided that the system was “failure.” Specialists - developers of SKTA, after the owner’s complaint and complete collection of the vending machine, sealed it for several days and then checked the proceeds again. The amount of cash down to the penny coincided with the readings of the system. And it is not at all surprising that after such a check, cases of discrepancies between cash proceeds and information about it in SKTA “suddenly” stopped.

Many vending machine owners face a similar problem. Among them is Vasily Torlin, director of Mister Vending LLC; his company’s network of vending machines in Minsk and other cities of the country covers almost 150 devices.

“The need for better business organization was obvious. The operator sooner or later begins to “interfere” with the monetary proceeds. There are, of course, exceptions. But, perhaps, not a single manager trusts his operators 100% - whether they hand over all the revenue or not. It is possible to control the operation of machines without SKTA - the effectiveness of such work depends on the organization itself. But seeing on your personal computer how more than a hundred machines work at once is convenient. We can say that large vending enterprises have been waiting for such a system for a long time,” says the specialist.

SKTA even had advantages that initially no one, including the system developers, expected. It turned out that the general connection of vending machines to the control system can level out competition among the entrepreneurs themselves and bring to light those of them who, before July 1, could, in a way unknown to other entrepreneurs, set extremely low prices for goods sold through vending machines. Let's take coffee machines, for example. Just imagine: there are two machines standing not far from each other, outwardly similar. But the price of a cup of coffee in one is significantly lower than in the second. The owner of the second machine is surprised: it is impossible to operate profitably at such a price. “Perhaps,” the owner of the first machine smiles slyly and regularly imports coffee and other ingredients into the country without paying customs duties. Now that SKTA tracks the number of sales made by the machine, it has become possible to estimate the consumption of ingredients and understand how legally its owner operates.

Now a lot is available: to find out whether the bill is jammed in the bill acceptor, whether the machine is working normally... With the help of operational information from SKTA, owners of vending machines, for example, can give a reasoned refusal to those who previously demanded the return of bills that were allegedly “swallowed” by the vending machine without selling the product. Before the advent of SKTA, calls to entrepreneurs with such claims were quite common.

“Nothing like this has ever been done before”

The listed capabilities of SKTA appeared thanks to the efforts of developers - specialists from the Republican Unitary Enterprise “Information and Publishing Center for Taxes and Duties.” As they proudly note, “the system is progressive, and nothing like this has ever been done in such a short time in the country before.” The system was developed and implemented in virtually a year, but the tight deadlines did not affect the quality of the product. According to Tatyana Zhiznevskaya, head of the informatization department of the RUE IIC, both the control system as a whole and the electronic device (module) built into the vending machine and transmitting revenue data to the data processing center meet all requirements for information protection.

“The module itself is small in size and does not create any problems when operating the machine, and if necessary, the owner of the device can easily remove and reinstall it. The module is compatible with almost all types of vending machines operating on the Belarusian market,” she explains.

The developers tried to minimize the costs that connection to SKTA would require from owners of vending machines. Work involving third parties was carried out on a competitive basis. The optimal tariff was selected from one of the mobile operators. As a result, the deposit for the electronic device (which is charged when installing the module) turned out to be lower than the cost of the cheapest cash register equipment used in Belarus. But for this money, vending machine owners receive a device that has the properties of data transmission, interaction with a data processing center and providing secure access to information. The cost of its monthly maintenance is comparable in value to the cost of maintenance, for example, of cash register equipment, which is widely used in the retail network. Connecting equipment is the smallest cost for an entrepreneur and has not yet caused any complaints from anyone. “I like the system; no inconveniences from its operation have yet been identified,” explains Alla Kukharchik. — If we talk about cost, the device itself costs the most, but this is a deposit, the amount of which will be returned to us if we want to turn off the equipment. The monthly payment could be less, but, on the other hand, the cash register, which we work with in retail, and the adding machine are serviced for comparable money. And the organization of control helped increase revenue.”

Vasily Torlin, director of Mister Vending LLC, argues from the position of the head of a large business: “At our request, we were given an installment plan for connecting to the control system for six months. Connecting everything at once (more than a hundred machines) is not cheap. But for large vending companies, the system is a big plus in terms of accounting and control over the operation of the network of machines. I would like the tax service to take into account the individual characteristics of business entities - large and small, provide for greater flexibility in pricing, provide discounts, etc. I think this approach will become possible, because thanks to SKTA, the tax service will know the real income of companies and see the dynamics of their change.”

The tax service sincerely hopes that the useful properties of SKTA will greatly outweigh its possible disadvantages. One of the main features of the system, according to Vladimir Mukvich, is that it is aimed at preventing violations of current legislation. “The emergence of SKTA will not become a measure that will make tax administration more difficult,” he sums up.