Short answer: we counted 2,024 business listings in Burnaby and Richmond across 16 kinds of site. Industrial sites had a median of just 8–11 Google reviews. Clinics had 74–124, gyms 92–122, and Richmond's car dealerships 390.5. Reviews track customers who leave feedback, not the people who spend all day on site. For a vending machine, the second group matters more, so judging a site by its Google profile gets warehouses and apartment buildings badly wrong.
This is for owners and managers in Burnaby and Richmond, British Columbia, wondering whether their business is busy enough for a machine, and for anyone who has been told their site is "too quiet" because of its online footprint. It's a VendFynd analysis of 2,024 businesses found in Burnaby and Richmond in January 2026.
What we counted
In January 2026, an earlier version of VendFynd's Lead Finder searched Google Places within 5 km of Burnaby and of Richmond for 16 kinds of site where vending machines are common. We kept listings with an address in the city and a Google type that matches the category (for example, removing shops from "industrial"). That left 1,027 Burnaby listings and 997 Richmond listings. For each category, we took the median number of Google reviews and the share with 100 or more.
The numbers
| Kind of site | Burnaby listings | Burnaby median reviews | Richmond listings | Richmond median reviews | Share with 100+ reviews (Burnaby / Richmond) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Car dealerships | – | – | 52 | 390.5 | – / 75% |
| Entertainment venues | 11 | 366 | 28 | 238 | 64% / 68% |
| Personal services (salons, barbers) | 172 | 143 | 161 | 88 | 60% / 45% |
| Clinics | 173 | 124 | 169 | 74 | 57% / 44% |
| Gyms | 42 | 122 | 52 | 92 | 55% / 50% |
| Auto service | 133 | 115 | 99 | 79 | 56% / 38% |
| Laundromats | 15 | 89 | 11 | 102 | 47% / 55% |
| Rec centres | 58 | 63 | 42 | 106.5 | 43% / 52% |
| Self storage | 19 | 35 | 27 | 67 | 16% / 41% |
| Warehouse and office mix | 19 | 33 | 12 | 13 | 21% / 0% |
| Boutique fitness studios | 84 | 28.5 | 83 | 17 | 19% / 13% |
| Faith centres | 73 | 19 | 72 | 21 | 16% / 14% |
| Industrial | 69 | 11 | 60 | 8 | 7% / 10% |
| Community organizations | 52 | 8 | 53 | 5 | 6% / 2% |
| Non-market and low-income housing | 63 | 8 | 40 | 8.5 | 3% / 3% |
| Apartment buildings | 44 | 7.5 | 36 | 4 | 0% / 0% |
VendFynd analysis of Google Places listings, January 2026. Car dealerships were only searched in Richmond.
Three things the table shows
1. The best vending sites have the fewest reviews. Industrial sites and apartment buildings sit at the bottom of the review table, with medians under 12. They're also two of the top types for vending: in our site-fit rubric, industrial scores 30 of 30 for location type and apartments 26. Workers on shift and residents at home use a machine every day and never review the building.
2. Salons have lots of reviews and few people on site. Personal services have one of the highest median review counts in Burnaby (143, behind only entertainment venues), but they're small premises with short visits. Our rubric gives them 11 of 30 for type. Reviews measure how many customers took the time to write something, not how many people are in the building at noon.
3. Clinics, gyms and auto shops sit in the middle for a reason. They have both: customers who review and wait, and a steady flow through the door. That's why the waiting room of a busy clinic or the lounge of a tire shop can support a machine even with a small staff. Richmond's dealerships top the table, and our car dealership waiting room guide looks at how a machine sits beside the free coffee in a service lounge.
What to use instead of reviews
For your own site, three numbers matter far more than your Google profile:
- People on site on a normal day, split into staff, residents or members, and customers or visitors.
- Hours, including shifts that aren't on your Google listing. In our look at Burnaby opening hours, 6 industrial sites said on their own websites that they run 24 hours, but only 1 posted 24/7 hours on Google.
- A spot and an outlet, ideally in a break room, lobby or waiting area.
Operators typically look for about 30–40 people on site a day, or 150+ units in a residential building. Staff counts can be checked against public data in some cities: our analysis of Vancouver licences found 1,521 vending-relevant workplaces there reporting 40 or more employees.
If your site has few reviews but plenty of people
That's a common profile for a strong vending site. It's $0 to you: the operator covers the machine, install, stocking, service and removal, and you provide the spot and the outlet (a drink machine uses about $16–17 a month in power). Burnaby and Richmond specifics are in our guide to vending service in Burnaby and Richmond.
About this data
- Source: VendFynd Lead Finder, earlier command-line version, one run each for Burnaby and Richmond in January 2026, Google Places listings within 5 km, 16 categories (car dealerships in Richmond only).
- Filtering: listings kept only with an address in the city and a Google primary type that belongs to the category. 1,027 Burnaby and 997 Richmond listings kept.
- Measure: the number of Google reviews on each listing at the time of the run; median per category, and the share with 100 or more.
- Limits: a 5 km radius doesn't cover all of either city; categories are search-based, so one business can appear in only one category; reviews change over time. A median of a small category (for example, 11 entertainment venues in Burnaby) moves easily. No business names, addresses or review text are published, in line with Google's terms.
Sources
- VendFynd Lead Finder CLI runs, Burnaby and Richmond, January 2026 (first-party data)
- City of Vancouver, Business licences (open data): https://opendata.vancouver.ca/explore/dataset/business-licences/, extract 2026-09-26