Vending that earns its square meter.
CONTEN puts unattended retail where demand is already proven. Every machine is sited by data, stocked with what is scarce nearby, and backed by the essentials people need in the next sixty seconds. Buy at the door, or order it to your desk.
Cashless · Telemetry · Dual channel
Unattended retail did not fail. It was placed badly and stocked lazily.
A vending machine is the cheapest storefront in commercial real estate. It also has the worst track record, because the industry has spent forty years guessing at three decisions. CONTEN makes all three with data.
Placed on a hunch
Operators put machines where a landlord offered space, not where people stop. A corridor with heavy traffic and zero dwell time sells nothing.
Stocked with commodities
The same chips and cola sold at a premium two hundred metres from a convenience store. No reason to buy, so the machine competes on desperation alone.
One channel, one crowd
A machine only ever sells to whoever walks past it. Its inventory is invisible to the thousands of people a few blocks away.
Four decisions, made once, then measured forever.
Site, assortment, channel and replenishment. Each one runs off the same data loop, and each one is re-cut as the unit reports back.
Site intelligence
We score candidate locations before committing a unit. Foot traffic and, more importantly, dwell time. Tenant mix and what it says about the crowd. Catchment income. Distance to the nearest convenience store, pharmacy and electronics counter. A site only clears when the model says the machine will pay for its own space.
Scarcity-led assortment
No two planograms are the same. A tower full of engineers does not buy what a family mall buys at four in the afternoon. We stock imports, limited runs and products that simply are not sold within walking distance, so the machine is a destination rather than a last resort.
Fast-solving essentials
The rest of the shelf answers an urgent problem. A dead phone before a meeting. A headache at eleven at night. A stain on a shirt twenty minutes before a pitch. These are inelastic purchases made by people who will not shop around, and they carry the unit through the quiet hours.
Two ways to buy
Tap a card or a wallet at the machine and take it. Or find the same stock on the delivery app you already use, and a courier picks it up and brings it to you. One inventory, two demand pools, and a unit that keeps trading when the building empties out.
Half the shelf is want. Half the shelf is need.
Scarcity brings people to the machine and earns the margin. Urgency keeps it selling at three in the morning. Neither half works alone.
Things you cannot get here
Products chosen because the nearest alternative is a car ride away, a customs form, or sold out. People pay for access, not for calories.
- A1Imported snacks & confectionJapan · Korea · US
- A2Functional & energy drinksCold
- A3Limited drops & collectiblesRotating
- A4Korean skincare & beautyTravel size
- A5Specialty coffee, cold brewLocal roasters
- A6Craft and small-batch goodsLocal makers
Things you need in sixty seconds
Bought under pressure, at any hour, by someone who will not walk another block to compare prices. Low drama, high repeat, and the reason the unit never goes quiet.
- B1Chargers, cables, power banksUSB-C · Lightning
- B2Pain relief & pharmacy basicsOTC
- B3Deodorant, grooming, oral careTravel size
- B4Umbrellas & ponchosWeather-triggered
- B5Stain pens, lint rollers, sewing kitsRescue
- B6Masks, plasters, hand sanitiserHygiene
Three kinds of floor, three different machines.
The hardware is standard. The siting logic, the planogram and the pricing are not.
Where people already stopped walking
Malls sell dwell time. We take the queue outside the cinema, the bench by the food court, the corridor to the parking deck. The crowd is mixed and in a spending frame of mind, so the scarcity column carries the unit: imports, limited drops, the thing a teenager saw online and cannot buy anywhere in the city.
Long hours, thin retail, no competition
Strip malls run late and empty out of staffed retail early. That gap is the opportunity. A unit sited beside a gym, a laundromat or a late pharmacy covers the hours when nothing else is open, and it doubles as the pickup point couriers can reach without parking.
A captive, repeating, high-income crowd
Office towers give us the same several hundred people every weekday, which makes demand legible fast and restocking precise. Lobby and amenity floors carry premium coffee and functional drinks. The essentials column earns its keep on the day someone forgets a charger before a board meeting.
One inventory. Two ways it leaves the machine.
Most vending units serve a corridor. Ours serve a corridor and a delivery radius, off the same shelf and the same stock file.
Direct at the machine
Contactless card, mobile wallet or a QR checkout. No cash, no coin jams, no app to download before you can buy a charger.
- 01Customer taps a card, a phone or scans the code on the door.
- 02Payment authorises in seconds and the item drops.
- 03Sale, SKU and timestamp post to the platform immediately.
- 04Stock level updates and, if it crosses the threshold, a restock is queued.
Delivery apps
Each unit is listed as a storefront on the delivery platforms people already have open. The machine becomes a micro dark store with no rent beyond its footprint and nobody to roster.
- 01Order arrives from the app and the SKU is reserved against live stock.
- 02The courier is issued a one-time code for the door.
- 03Pickup takes under a minute, with no counter and no queue.
- 04Delivery completes and the same telemetry loop closes.
Every unit reports. The network learns.
A machine that cannot tell you what it sold at 2:40am is a box with snacks in it. Ours stream every event, and the next planogram is written from that record rather than from an opinion.
09:12:04 STOCK B1 → 4 units left
09:41:37 SALE A5-COLDBREW $79
10:03:11 ALERT A3 below threshold
10:03:12 ROUTE restock queued · Tue 14:00
11:27:55 ORDER app · A1-IMPORT-MIX
11:29:02 PICKUP courier code 4471 · ok
13:50:19 SALE B2-ANALGESIC $95
14:16:40 PRICE A4 −8% · slow mover
16:02:00 MODEL next planogram · ready
- 01
Live stock and stockout alerts
Every column reports its count in real time. A unit that runs dry on its best seller is a failure we can see coming, not one we discover on the next visit.
- 02
Velocity per SKU, per site, per hour
We know which products earn their slot in which building and at what time of day. Slots that underperform get reassigned rather than defended.
- 03
Restock routing
Replenishment runs are built from actual depletion, so drivers visit the units that need them and skip the ones that do not.
- 04
Dynamic pricing
Prices respond to demand, hour and shelf life. Slow movers clear before they expire and scarce items are priced for what access is worth.
- 05
Planogram rotation
Assortment is re-cut on a fixed cycle from the sales record. New products get a measured trial slot instead of a permanent one.
- 06
Landlord reporting
Property owners see traffic, sales and revenue share for their site. No spreadsheets by email, no waiting until quarter end.
A metre and a half of floor, turned into a revenue line.
You provide the space and a power outlet. We handle hardware, stock, payments, servicing, insurance and reporting.
1.5 m², nothing else
A single machine footprint beside a standard outlet. No plumbing, no build-out, no permanent alteration to your space.
Revenue share
You earn a share of what the unit sells, reported monthly against live data. No fixed rent to chase and no dead kiosk if the site underperforms.
Insured and serviced
Liability cover, scheduled cleaning, and a technician dispatched on fault alerts. Your facilities team is never in the loop.
An amenity that pays
Tenants get a service that used to require staffing a counter. You get an amenity line that produces income instead of consuming it.
Tell us about the floor you have.
Whether you manage a mall, a strip centre or a tower, we will run your site through the model and come back with what a unit would realistically do there.