Buyers pay for placed accounts that renew and routes that run without you — not for the machines. See how operators are priced, and what moves your number.
Enter two numbers for an instant Vending & Micro-Markets ballpark. No signup — the real number comes from your books.
We answer each one from your books first — so you fix the story before a diligence team writes the number.
One plant is 35% of revenue and that contract doesn't survive a change of control. Location/account concentration is the dominant deal risk in vending — a single large account can be 20–40%+ of route revenue, and whether its placement agreement is written and ASSIGNABLE on a sale gates the deal. A concentrated, handshake-placed book caps the multiple; diversified, contracted accounts defend it.
Half the fleet is coin-only and 10+ years old, so a buyer budgets card-reader and telemetry retrofits and takes them off the offer. Cashless is now ~70% of vend volume — a coin-legacy fleet is a deferred-capex discount, not a neutral asset. Machines run ~10–15 years; an aged, coin-only book gets priced as a refresh the buyer has to fund.
You drive the routes and hold the location relationships personally — so what is a buyer actually buying? An owner-driver route prices on SDE because the buyer is acquiring a job plus a route. Until a route/ops manager runs the routes and the relationships live in the business, the offer sits at the floor of the band.
Renewals reprice location commissions up, so your go-forward margin is lower than your trailing. A buyer underwrites the commission load the accounts will actually carry after renewal, not the rate you signed years ago — present the trailing number without that adjustment and they'll reprice it for you.
Micro-market shrink and fresh-food spoilage aren't in your add-backs, but a buyer adds them back in. Product COGS is ~50–55% of vend, and micro-markets (open, self-checkout) carry real shrink while fresh food spoils — undocumented, those costs come straight off the normalized margin.
Each lever is sized for a mid-point of the route-dense operator band; illustrative anchor for multiple selection, not a claim about any company — the engine uses the seller's computed ebitda/sde — about $450K EBITDA. Same number whether we frame it as “what a buyer discounts” or “what you keep by fixing it.”
Written agreements that survive a sale — with a change-of-control assignment clause and a multi-year term — not handshakes. This is the durable layer a buyer underwrites: revenue recurs because the machine stays placed and the account renews, and only a contract a buyer can keep makes that recurrence transferable.
adds about 0.1–0.5× to your multiple · usually takes 12–24 months
More machines and markets per drive-mile lowers cost-to-serve — the core of route economics. A dense book in a tight radius earns a premium because the buyer's marginal stop is cheap to service; scattered stops do the opposite.
adds about 0.2–0.5× to your multiple · usually takes 12–24 months
A modern, remotely-monitored fleet (EMV readers + telemetry) with a micro-market/office-coffee-service mix is growth-tilted and removes the deferred-capex discount. Cashless is ~70% of vend volume, and micro-markets are the growth pocket (NAMA: $2.4B→$5.4B, 2019–2023).
adds about 0.1–0.4× to your multiple · usually takes 6–18 months
No single location dominates the route. Spreading revenue across many contracted accounts removes the single-point-of-failure a buyer can't insure against, and lets the book reach the higher-multiple, consolidator-eligible tier.
adds about 0.1–0.3× to your multiple · usually takes 6–18 months
Typical impact ranges blended from lower-middle-market transaction data, sub-$50M M&A databases, and observed consolidator pricing in the $300K–$3M EBITDA band. Directional, not a guarantee — your memo computes your actual numbers from your books.
The metrics buyers grade vending operators on. The diagnostic fills the “your business” column from your actual QuickBooks data.
| Metric | Vending & Micro-Markets benchmark | Your business | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recurring / contracted revenue | ~85% of revenue | Your data | Higher is better — the top multiple lever |
| Gross margin | ~45% | Your data | Pricing and job-costing discipline |
| EBITDA margin | ~12% | Your data | What flows to the bottom line |
| Healthy customer-concentration ceiling | top customer under 30% | Your data | Above it, buyers price the risk |
| Typical industry growth | ~4% / yr | Your data | Beating it can add to your multiple |
| Typical sale multiple | 2.0–5.5× EBITDA | Your data | Where the bidding starts; the levers above move you up |
Benchmarks are blended industry composites, service businesses $1M–$10M revenue, 2026-Q1 — directional, not a precise bar. Your memo measures you against your own books. Connect QuickBooks to fill in your numbers →
The diagnostic arrives as formats you can actually use, plus a private, scoped link to share a curated package with a specific buyer — you decide, card by card, what they see.
A branded slide deck, ready to present — for the buyer meeting, the lender, or the board.
A written diagnostic that holds up with buyers, yours to edit — plain-English summary, how we rebuilt your real earnings, every add-back listed.
Live formulas, not a dead printout — the path from raw profit to your real number, plus the cash-tied-up scenarios a buyer can stress-test.
Vending buyers fall in two tiers — at the top are route consolidators rolling up independents (Canteen/Compass Group, the largest US unattended-retail provider; Five Star Food Service, Freeman Spogli-backed, the largest independent Canteen franchisee with an active acquisition program; Aramark Refreshments) that set the strategic-bid ceiling and pay up for route density + micro-market mix; the deeper, more active tier is other independent operators buying neighboring routes to add density. Most transactions happen there, at DealStats median multiples, not consolidator prices. The question is which tier you can attract: a documented, diversified, cashless, manager-run book reaches the consolidators; an owner-driver handshake route sells to the operator next door.
Read-only, through Intuit. We never write to your books. About 5 minutes.
Just what the books can’t show — agreements, key accounts, who runs the crews.
Buyer-readiness score, normalized EBITDA, value range and top flags — instantly.
The full engine, all three deliverables, the dashboard and the buyer deal room.
Read-only, enforced in our code: every call we make to QuickBooks is a read. Nothing leaves unless you choose to share it.
Disconnect or delete anytime. Read our privacy policy →
Start with the free preview. Pay once — $499 — only when you want the full memo. No subscription, no per-seat pricing.
Most Vending & Micro-Markets businesses in the $1M–$10M revenue range trade at roughly 2.0× to 5.5× normalized EBITDA, with a typical deal near 3.0×. Smaller, owner-dependent shops sit at the low end; larger, manager-run businesses with recurring revenue reach the top. Your actual number depends on your books — that's what the diagnostic computes, blending recent lower-middle-market closings, main-street marketplace sales, and academic M&A survey data.
Locations. The machines are depreciating equipment; the value is in placed accounts that renew and the contracts a buyer can keep. A coin-only, aged fleet actually becomes a capex deduction — the buyer budgets the cashless/telemetry retrofit and takes it off the offer.
Because the buyer is then buying a job, not a business. Owner-driver routes price on SDE (~2.6x); operators who've replaced themselves with a route/ops manager price on EBITDA (~2.98x) and reach the higher ranges.
Sixty seconds. Four numbers. No signup, no email. Just a real answer.