Short answer: the best places to put a vending machine are sites where the same 20 or more people spend long hours with no food nearby: hospitals and care homes, warehouses and plants, car dealerships, hotels, schools and large apartment buildings. In our analysis of the official business counts, only about 13% of Canadian business locations and 14% of US establishments have 20 or more employees, so most addresses aren't one of them.
This guide is for two readers: operators deciding where to look, and business owners wondering whether their own site is worth a machine. Both use the same test.
The three things that make a place good
After years of placing machines, the pattern is simple. A site is strong when it has:
- People who stay. Twenty or more staff, residents or regular visitors on a normal day. Passing foot traffic sells less than people who are there for a shift.
- Long hours. Night shifts, weekends and evenings, when the café down the street is closed.
- Distance from food. If a cafeteria or a convenience store is a two-minute walk away, the machine competes with it.
Everything below is a way of finding those three things at scale.
Which site types usually clear 20 people
We added up the official counts of workplaces by size band, for Canada and for the US, to see which industries most often have 20 or more employees at one location.
| Site type | Canada: share with 20+ employees | US: share with 20+ employees |
|---|---|---|
| Hospitals | 86.5% | 86.0% |
| Nursing care facilities | 71.6% | 77.2% |
| Car dealerships | not split out | 35.8% |
| Warehousing and storage | 29.5% | 35.0% |
| Manufacturing | 28.9% | 31.3% |
| Hotels and traveller accommodation | 29.0% | 28.1% |
| Schools and colleges (educational services) | 24.3% | 20.8% |
| Gyms and fitness centres | 23.2% | suppressed by Census |
| Health care overall (incl. small clinics) | 13.6% | 16.8% |
| Construction | 8.9% | 9.0% |
| Auto repair shops | 3.7% | 4.2% |
| All industries | 13.0% (179,111 locations) | 14.2% (1,178,642 establishments) |
Read it as odds, not a verdict. A warehouse is more than twice as likely as the average business to have 20 or more employees. A small auto repair shop rarely does, though a busy one with a customer waiting room can still work, because its customers wait.
Two cautions. These are employees on payroll, not people on site at one time, so a three-shift plant with 60 employees may have 20 people in the building at once. And the counts leave out residents, students, patients and guests, which is why apartment buildings, campuses and hotels do better than their staff numbers suggest.
Ranked: where to look first
Combining the size data with the hours and food-distance tests:
- Hospitals and care homes. Large, open around the clock, with staff and visitors who can't easily leave. Larger ones often tender vending as a contract.
- Warehouses, distribution centres and plants. Shift work, industrial parks with little food nearby, and break rooms built for it. Our warehouse shift-work guide shows the setup, with BC as the example.
- Car dealerships and service centres. Customers wait an hour or more for service, and staff work long days.
- Hotels. Guests at night, and night staff with nothing open.
- Schools, colleges and student housing. Large populations, but expect rules on what can be sold and a formal contract.
- Apartment and condo buildings. Residents count, even when there are no employees. Larger buildings with a lobby or laundry room work best.
- Gyms. About a quarter clear 20 staff, but the members are the real traffic, and drinks sell.
- Large offices. Fine when there are 20 or more people actually in the office; hybrid work makes this the one to check carefully. Use the people-on-site estimator before assuming.
Places that look good but often aren't
- Small offices and clinics under 20 people. Usually below what an operator needs, even if everyone says they'd use it.
- Sites with a cafeteria or a convenience store next door. The machine fights for the same purchase.
- Places open 9 to 5 on weekdays only. About 40 hours a week of selling, against 168 for a 24-hour site.
- Retail storefronts with walk-in traffic but short visits. People don't come in to buy a snack.
Government and public buildings: a different door
Public property is usually a contract, not a conversation with the manager.
- US federal buildings: the Randolph-Sheppard Act gives blind vendors licensed by state agencies priority to operate vending facilities on federal property. Ask the state's licensing agency before approaching a federal site.
- Canada, provinces, states and cities: hospitals, transit systems, colleges and municipalities usually tender vending. Recent Canadian examples on CanadaBuys include a transit system, a hospital and a college asking for proposals.
Inside the building: where the machine goes
The best address still fails with the wrong spot. Put the machine:
- On the path people already walk, in or next to the break room, lobby, laundry room or waiting area.
- Within reach of a standard outlet, with room for the door to open. The space and power checklist has dimensions and amp ratings.
- Within reach for everyone. In the US, the ADA Standards put operable parts of things like vending machines within a 15 to 48 inch reach range, on a clear floor space at least 30 by 48 inches. The products inside aren't covered.
- Where it can be seen. A machine hidden in a back corridor sells to the people who already know it's there.
How VendFynd uses this
We use the same three tests when we check a site: people who stay, long hours and distance from food. If you run a site anywhere in Canada or the US, the 5-minute site check gives you a fit band. If you run machines, our operator page explains how we bring you sites that have already passed it. For a deeper self-check, the fit checklist goes question by question. Thinking of buying sites instead? Here is what Canadian vending routes ask, and what to check before you pay.
About this data
We built the table from two official datasets. For Canada, Statistics Canada's Canadian Business Counts with employees (Table 33-10-1014-01, December 2025 release) counts 1,375,351 business locations by employment size range; we added the 20-49, 50-99, 100-199, 200-499 and 500+ bands for each industry. For the US, the Census Bureau's County Business Patterns 2022 national file counts 8,298,562 establishments by employment size class, measured at the March payroll period; we added the 20-49 and larger classes. Industries are matched by NAICS code (for example 493 warehousing, 622 hospitals, 623110 and 6231 nursing care). Census suppresses some cells to protect confidentiality, shown as "suppressed". Headcount means employees on payroll at that location, not people present at one time, and does not include residents, students or visitors.
Sources
- Statistics Canada, Table 33-10-1014-01, Canadian Business Counts, with employees, December 2025: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3310101401, accessed 2026-10-16
- US Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2022, national file: https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/datasets/2022/cbp22us.zip, accessed 2026-10-16
- US Access Board, Guide to the ADA Standards, Chapter 3 (reach ranges and operable parts): https://www.access-board.gov/ada/guides/chapter-3-operable-parts/, accessed 2026-10-16
- 20 U.S.C. 107, Randolph-Sheppard Act: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2011-title20/html/USCODE-2011-title20-chap6A-sec107.htm, accessed 2026-10-16
- Government of Canada, CanadaBuys tender opportunities (search "vending"): https://canadabuys.canada.ca/en/tender-opportunities, accessed 2026-10-16
Last updated: November 7, 2026. This is general information, not legal advice.