VendFynd

Vancouver Workplaces by Headcount: 2026 Licence Data

Which Vancouver workplaces have 40+ staff? Our count of 54,090 business licences issued in 2026, by type and neighbourhood, and what it means for vending.

By Mahdi Dialden6 min readFiled under Hosts, Data, Vancouver, Offices

Short answer: of the 54,090 business licences the City of Vancouver issued in 2026 to premises in the city, 2,260 report 40 or more employees, the rough size where a break-room vending machine starts to make sense. Leave out restaurants, shops, contractors and other types that sell food or work off-site, and 1,521 remain. Two in three of them are Downtown.

This report is for office managers, facility managers and owners in Vancouver, British Columbia who want to know how their workplace compares, and for anyone who wants the numbers behind "is my office big enough?". Every figure comes from the City's open business-licence data, which anyone can check.

What we counted

The City of Vancouver publishes every business licence it issues, updated daily. Each licence covers one business at one address and includes the number of employees the business reported. We took the 2026 licences with status "Issued" as of September 26, 2026 (58,465), removed 4,374 marked "Out of Town" (businesses based elsewhere that are licensed to work in Vancouver), and grouped the rest into the kinds of sites that usually host vending.

Two warnings before the numbers. Employee counts are what each business reported on its licence, and some businesses report their whole company rather than the one location. And a licence isn't a building: a tower with twenty tenants shows up as twenty licences.

Larger workplaces by type

Type of workplace2026 licences20+ employees40+ employees100+ employeesWhere most 40+ sites are
Offices (legal, finance, tech, engineering, consulting, real estate, insurance and similar)10,5821,8611,181689Downtown (929), Fairview (45), West End (44)
Manufacturing, wholesale and logistics1,86328312837Strathcona (32), Grandview-Woodland (19), Sunset (17)
Health care (clinics, facilities, labs)6,2181655524Fairview (11), Mount Pleasant (8), Strathcona (6)
Hotels and motels101564522Downtown (37), West End (6)
Film and production studios370694325Mount Pleasant (13), Renfrew-Collingwood (11), Downtown (7)
Private schools, colleges and training520874118Downtown (15), West End (4), Kitsilano (3)
Auto repair, detailing and washing35842194Strathcona (5), Fairview (3), Marpole (3)
Fitness centres and instruction4643694Downtown (4), Strathcona (2)
All of the above20,4761,521823Downtown (1,009 of 1,521)

Source: City of Vancouver business licences, 2026, extract 2026-09-26. VendFynd analysis.

What the numbers say

Most licensed businesses are tiny. Across all 54,090 in-city licences, the typical one reports fewer than 10 employees, and 21,368 of all 58,465 report zero (sole owners, holding companies, home offices). A vending operator looking at Vancouver sees a lot of storefronts and far fewer workplaces with a lunchroom's worth of people.

Offices are where the headcount is. 1,181 office-type licences report 40 or more employees, more than every other segment in the table put together, and 79% of them are Downtown. For a downtown office, the question is usually less "are we big enough?" and more "who in the building decides?", since the space is often the landlord's.

Clinics are numerous but small. There are 6,218 health-care licences, but only 55 report 40 or more staff. Most clinics reach vending size, if at all, through patients and visitors in the waiting room, not staff.

Gyms are the opposite case. Only 9 fitness licences report 40 or more employees, yet gyms are among the best fits for a drink machine, because of members. Staff count alone undersells them, which is why our site-fit scorer counts gym members separately.

Industrial sites cluster east of Main. Manufacturing, wholesale and logistics licences with 40+ staff are concentrated in Strathcona, Grandview-Woodland and Sunset, the city's remaining industrial land. These are shift workplaces with break rooms, the top-scoring type in our rubric.

Headcount isn't the same as people on site

A licence reports employees, not who is in on a Tuesday. Statistics Canada's Labour Force Survey found that in May 2026, 78.8% of employed Canadians worked only outside the home, 9.8% had a hybrid arrangement and 11.4% worked only from home. The hybrid share has "varied little" since 2023. The national survey doesn't break this out for Vancouver; the 2021 Census, taken during the pandemic, put BC's work-at-home share at 22.6%, below Canada's 24.3%.

Office jobs are more likely to be hybrid than the average job, so for an office the on-site number can be well below payroll. A simple way to check: count desks in use on your busiest and quietest days and take the middle. That number is what goes into the site-fit scorer, and it's what an operator will ask about.

If your workplace is on this list

A workplace with 40 or more people on site on a normal day, a break room or common area, and a standard outlet near the spot is a good candidate for a machine at $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 $15–20 a month in power). For offices in shared buildings, check our guide for Vancouver offices on building approvals, and the questions to ask before you sign.

Work at one of these but don't make the call? Our ask-at-work page draws on the same City of Vancouver licence data: pick your workplace, then send your manager a ready-made note or add your vote.

About this data

  • Dataset: City of Vancouver, "Business licences" open data, folder year 2026, status "Issued". Extract date 2026-09-26. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Vancouver.
  • Method: 58,465 issued licences; 4,374 "Out of Town" and 1 without a local area removed, leaving 54,090. Business types were grouped into the segments shown (for example, "Offices" combines Legal, Financial, Business Support, Information Communication Technology, Architectural and Engineering, Consulting and Management, Real Estate, Insurance, Brokerage, Mining Services, Financial Institution, Digital Entertainment, Marketing, Design, Publishing and Association or Society). Restaurants, retail, liquor, contractors and parking were excluded because they sell food, work off-site or report company-wide staff. Counts use the employee number reported on each licence.
  • Limits: self-reported employee counts; one licence per business per address; no information on shifts or hybrid schedules. No business is named in this report.

Sources

Frequently asked questions

How many Vancouver businesses have more than 40 employees?

Of the 54,090 business licences the City of Vancouver issued in 2026 to premises inside the city (as of September 26), 2,260 report 40 or more employees. Leaving out restaurants, shops, contractors and other types that don't suit a vending machine, 1,521 do.

Where are Vancouver's larger offices?

Downtown, by a long way. Of the 1,181 office-type licences reporting 40 or more employees in 2026, 929 are in the Downtown local area. Fairview and the West End follow with 45 and 44.

Do hybrid schedules change whether an office qualifies for vending?

They can. Statistics Canada found 9.8% of Canadian workers were hybrid and 11.4% worked only from home in May 2026. An office with 45 people on payroll but 25 in on a typical day is a smaller site than its headcount suggests.