Count the cost to serve
Revenue by location is easy to report. Margin after the trucks, the labor, and the miles is what decides whether a location is worth it.
Dashboard · Kiosk profitability
Keep or close?
A rebuild of the kiosk profitability dashboard from my time at Redbox: which machines still earn their keep once you count what it costs to stock and service them. Every kiosk and number here is fictional example data.
The story · Redbox
Busy isn't the same as profitable.
Toward the end of my time at Redbox, my team was asked to work out which kiosks were still profitable.
Rentals were only half of it. We looked at DVD rentals against the cost of merchandising (restocking) and servicing (tech repairs) each machine. A kiosk can rent a lot of DVDs and still not be worth it if it's so isolated that the cost of stocking or servicing it eats the money.
Market zones. Redbox used market zones for the area a merchandiser and a tech covered. Dense areas had many more kiosks and more staff. Places like mid-to-west Texas needed massive amounts of driving.
More than one window. We reviewed performance over 30, 60, 90, and 180 days, so a single slow month didn't close a good kiosk and a single good one didn't save a bad one. One of the more interesting pieces was what each kiosk rented: new-release movies or games versus older stock.
Road miles, not a straight line. This is where my routing work came back in. The cost to reach a kiosk depends on the road and the drive time, not the distance on a map.
What it changed. The kiosk profitability dashboard assessed cost and sales across locations, and it informed delivery route optimization, staffing, and the closure of underperforming sites.
The dashboard below is not the Redbox dashboard and uses no Redbox data. The zones, depots, kiosks, rentals, and costs are fictional examples. Kiosk pins sit near real Texas town centers for flavor, not at real store addresses. Road distances and drive times are real, from OSRM on OpenStreetMap.
Interactive · Example data
Every kiosk, costed.
Pick a zone and a review window. Each kiosk's margin is its rental revenue minus content costs and the cost to serve it. Tap a kiosk on the map or in the table for details.
Kiosks in
Example assumptions
How it works: revenue = rentals × an example price per rental (new-release movie $2.00, new game $3.50, older catalog $1.25). Content costs take an example share of that revenue (55%, 50%, and 20%), which is why older stock earns more per dollar. Each merchandising or tech visit is charged the road leg to the kiosk's nearest stop on a route (another kiosk or the depot) and back, at the drive time × labor rate plus miles × cost per mile, plus 20 minutes on site for a restock or 60 for a tech repair. Tech visits per month are set per kiosk. Restocking less than twice a week loses some new-release and game rentals to empty slots (15% at once a week, 35% at every other week). Verdicts use margin per 30 days. The "absorbs" estimate assumes the nearest kiosk keeps 40% of the closed kiosk's rentals, minus one point per road mile between them. Road miles and drive times are real OSRM routes on OpenStreetMap; every kiosk, rental, and cost is a fictional example.
Beyond kiosks
Why this matters for organizations.
Any business with a footprint, from stores and branches to machines and routes, has locations that look busy and quietly lose money.
Geography is a cost line
The same machine costs very different amounts to run in a metro and in open country. Road miles and drive time belong in the model.
Look across windows
30, 60, 90, and 180 days together separate a slow month from a real decline, so one bad stretch doesn't close a good location.
Mix matters
Two locations with the same volume can earn very different margins depending on what they sell.
Watch before close
A middle verdict gives operations room to try fewer visits or a different mix before anyone pulls a location.
Decisions ripple
Closing a location moves demand, routes, and staffing. The same view can inform where trucks go and how a zone is staffed.
Example data only: the zones, depots, kiosks, rentals, and costs are fictional and editable. Road distances and drive times: OSRM on OpenStreetMap data, © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL). Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Built by me with AI. Updated Oct 2026.
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