Short answer: a vending machine for college students works when enough people are in the building at once, and in Vancouver that's a minority of schools. The City's 2026 business licences list 237 private schools, colleges and vocational trainers inside the city. The median reports just 7 staff, and 35 report 40 or more. Most are career and language schools on a floor or two of a downtown office building, not campuses. The ones that qualify are usually the larger colleges, where hundreds of students are on site through long class days.
This report is for operations and facility managers at private colleges, career and trade schools and language schools in Vancouver, British Columbia, and for anyone sizing that market from public data.
Vancouver's private schools and colleges by size
| Reported employees | Private School or College | Business - Vocational Instruction | All |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 10 | 24 | 108 | 132 |
| 10–19 | 12 | 32 | 44 |
| 20–39 | 16 | 10 | 26 |
| 40–99 | 9 | 9 | 18 |
| 100 or more | 14 | 3 | 17 |
| Licences | 75 | 162 | 237 |
| Median staff | 20 | 4 | 7 |
Issued 2026 licences for premises inside the City of Vancouver. Source: City of Vancouver business licences, extract 2026-10-11. VendFynd analysis.
The two licence types are different businesses. "Business - Vocational Instruction" is mostly small trainers: a median of 4 staff and only 12 of 162 at 40 or more. "Private School or College" runs larger: a median of 20, with 23 of 75 at 40 or more and 14 at 100 or more.
Not every large "private school" is a college. Of those 23 large licences, 13 are K-12 independent schools and 10 are post-secondary, career or language colleges (our classification, by name). K-12 schools are a separate vending question with their own food guidance, so the rest of this report is about the colleges and trainers.
Public institutions aren't here. Public colleges and universities don't appear as school licences in the City's data; the one public college we found in it holds only food-service and retail licences.
Where they are
| Local area | Licences | 20+ staff | 40+ staff |
|---|---|---|---|
| Downtown | 75 | 20 | 11 |
| Fairview | 27 | 4 | 1 |
| Kitsilano | 18 | 7 | 3 |
| Kerrisdale | 14 | 1 | 1 |
| West End | 13 | 6 | 4 |
| Kensington-Cedar Cottage | 13 | 3 | 1 |
| Strathcona | 12 | 5 | 3 |
| Renfrew-Collingwood | 8 | 5 | 3 |
| Shaughnessy | 5 | 3 | 3 |
| Other 13 areas | 52 | 7 | 5 |
Downtown has a third of all licences and the most large ones. Fairview's 27 are almost all small. The large schools outside downtown are spread out, and several of them in Shaughnessy, Kerrisdale and Kitsilano are the K-12 schools noted above.
Three years, and a jump in closures
| Folder year | Issued licences | 40+ staff | Marked "Gone Out of Business" |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 234 | 40 | 13 |
| 2025 | 232 | 36 | 11 |
| 2026 (to Oct 11) | 237 | 35 | 29 |
The count of issued licences held steady, but closures more than doubled in 2026, almost all of them (25 of 29) vocational instruction businesses, and schools reporting 40+ staff slipped from 40 to 35. The data doesn't give reasons. For context, the federal government capped new study permits for 2024 at about 360,000, "a decrease of 35% from 2023", and ended post-graduation work permit eligibility for curriculum licensing programs at private colleges from September 1, 2024 (IRCC, January 2024). Schools whose enrolment depends on international students are the ones to watch.
Separately, BC's Private Training Act requires an institution to hold a certificate before offering career-related programs above set tuition and hour thresholds (s.2), and the registrar must keep an online directory of certified and former certified institutions (s.17). It's the place to check a school's status, and it covers programs, not buildings, so it doesn't tell you headcount.
When a college qualifies for a machine
Colleges score 24 of 30 for location type in our site-fit scorer: long days, a captive crowd between classes, and often no cafeteria. What decides it is people on site at the busiest time. For a school, count students in class at peak plus staff, not total enrolment; our people-on-site estimator does the arithmetic for offices and works the same way for timetables.
- A student lounge or break room with an outlet is where the machine goes.
- In an office tower, the landlord usually signs off on the spot and power, the same approval route as an office (Downtown tower guide).
- Menu: students ask for energy drinks; Canada has no age limit on them but does cap and label caffeine (what applies).
- Payment: card and phone first; a coin slot is optional (card-only data).
Placement is $0 to the school: the operator covers the machine, install, stocking, service and removal, and you provide the spot and an outlet (about $15–20 a month in power for a drink machine). Your people choose the menu, it's month to month with 30 days' notice, and most schools receive a commission, set in writing under our host terms. Our Vancouver headcount report compares schools with other workplaces. See if your school qualifies.
About this data
- Dataset: City of Vancouver "Business licences" open data, folder years 2024–2026, extract 2026-10-11, business types "Private School or College" and "Business - Vocational Instruction", premises inside the city. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Vancouver.
- Method: issued licences counted by reported employees and local area; closures are licences with status "Gone Out of Business" in each folder year. The K-12 versus college split applies only to the 23 large Private School or College licences and was done by name; no business is named here.
- Limits: employee counts are self-reported and count staff, not students. A school with several addresses holds several licences. The 2026 folder is partial.
Sources
- City of Vancouver, Business licences (open data), extract 2026-10-11: https://opendata.vancouver.ca/explore/dataset/business-licences/
- Open Government Licence – Vancouver: https://opendata.vancouver.ca/pages/licence/
- Private Training Act, SBC 2015, c.5: https://www.bclaws.gov.bc.ca/civix/document/id/complete/statreg/15005
- IRCC news release, 2024-01-22: https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/news/2024/01/canada-to-stabilize-growth-and-decrease-number-of-new-international-student-permits-issued-to-approximately-360000-for-2024.html