GS805 guides · operator case study · our own machine
Running a GS805 in a gym: what one machine taught us
Real Zero runs one GS805 protein shake machine inside the Orangetheory Fitness Velázquez studio in Madrid. It opened in May 2026 on the maker's software. VendCaptain made its first real drink on it in June, has been installed beside the maker's app since July, and is in its final tests as the seller now, with the switch planned for the end of October 2026. This is what the machine taught us on the maker's software, what one operator's data showed us, and what changes when our software sells. It is one machine, so there are no percentages here: findings, not promises.
Try VendCaptain on your machines What we would tell another operator
The timeline
- April 2026
- A tasting with the studio's coaches. Their feedback chose the two flavours we launched with.
- May 2026
- Soft launch. One machine at the studio's exit, cards only, no cash, for members aged 14 and over. The maker's app on the screen, a Nayax reader, six shakes and a creatine add-on, allergens posted at the machine.
- June 2026
- Our own software commanded its first pour on the real machine on 12 June, with the maker's app still the seller. A peach flavour launched on 14 June for a different crowd, and two flavours were retired the same day.
- July 2026
- A week-long "Season of Strength" promotion with one-euro vouchers. On 31 July our software was installed and calibrated on the machine but left dormant, and the stamp card went through its first full cycle: sign up, stamps, a live card update, the code, a free pour.
- September 2026
- A coach competition with real prizes, ranked from the coach panel. Also the month Spanish ISPs blocked our site on match days; the machine kept selling.
- October 2026
- The software got its public name, VendCaptain, and this site, on 6 October. Final tests of VendCaptain as the seller on the real machine, with real cards, on a test workspace no client sees. The switch to selling for real is planned for the end of the month; the maker's app stays installed, switched off, from then on.
What the machine taught us before our software touched it
On the maker's software since May 2026, with a Nayax reader
- The money is taken at the tap
- We proved it with real transactions in July: the reader captures the charge when it approves the card, before the drink exists. Six sessions in June that were approved and then cancelled all settled at full price, and the operator refunded them by hand in Nayax Core hours later. The only two machine-side reversals in nine months came on 12 June, after a factory update, about 45 seconds after the tap. Three refunds in July were made by a person, between 21 minutes and 16 hours after the charge. The whole subject is on GS805 and Nayax.
- Most payment sessions never become a drink
- In the maker's app's own logs for the first nine days of June, test sessions included, 120 payment screens were opened: 27 ended in a paid drink, 87 were cancelled before any card was tapped, 6 after approval. People choose a drink, reach the tap screen, and walk away. The menu is the easy part; the tap screen is where a machine wins or loses the sale.
- The make takes 85 seconds
- From the tap to the drink in the customer's hand it takes about 85 seconds on our machine, and the median from the moment the screen asks for payment to the card's approval was 11 seconds. Eighty-five seconds of a customer staring at a screen is either dead time or the most attention you will ever get from them.
- Stock is whatever somebody wrote down
- The machine has no sensors, so from June to July the stock lived in a paper binder, typed into the portal later. In it we found 100-gram placeholder entries where the real bags were 500 grams, and one container refilled but never logged, whose estimate sat 47 days stale while it was 85 percent full. The waste bucket has no sensor either; roughly 40 to 50 drinks fill it, and we still owe ourselves an exact count.
- Powder is measured in seconds, so we bought a scale
- The factory doses by auger time, about four grams a second on paper. We weigh a ten-second pour per container on a 0.1-gram scale and write the rate down, and we checked the creatine dose at five grams, give or take one. A recipe in grams is a recipe you can trust after a bag change.
- Ten cards, twelve products
- The maker's menu showed ten product cards. We sell six drinks, and since that software has no idea of an add-on, each drink with creatine had to be its own product: twelve. The last two never appeared and never sold, and nothing told us except their empty sales column. The same limit, as a problem to spot on your own machine: two of your products never sell.
- Promotions by hand
- Coach referral codes were batches of free-drink codes made per coach in the maker's portal; one coach's batch of ten had four used, and the batch could not tell us who or when. A recurring happy hour would have meant one discount activity per day, by hand.
- Who the customers are
- Members, after a workout, in a hurry, several times a week; a few dozen regulars. Nayax's wallet token changed from one payment to the next, so we recognise a returning customer by card brand and last four digits. Coaches report non-members who come in just for the shake, many from Google Maps; we estimate them at well under one in ten buyers, and we have not measured it yet.
- Two things that bit us
- A laptop that died mid-session during a test wedged the card reader, on 15 June. And on Sunday 6 September our site and portal vanished for every customer on a Spanish ISP that blocks shared addresses during football broadcasts; the machine kept selling and queued its sales, no money was taken wrongly, and nobody wrote down the time, which cost us weeks of guessing. Record the time, the error and the network.
What one operator's 25 machines showed, on the first day
While our own machine ran on the maker's software, another operator connected 25 GS805 machines to VendCaptain for a trial. Their data is quoted here without their name, their gyms or their country, by agreement. On the first day it showed:
- 150card payments had taken the money and made no drink: 462 euros in total. Only 8 had been refunded.
- 9 of 25machines were idle, and nobody had noticed, because the maker's portal lists sales and never silence.
- Halfthe cups. That is what a 40 percent price rise had done to sales.
Two more things in the same data shaped the software. Failures were episodic and machine-specific: one machine would fail for a month and then another. "Cup failure" was 79 percent of the failure remarks, and 26 percent of failures came within ten minutes of another on the same machine, which is a machine that keeps charging cards while it is broken. That is why VendCaptain flags a machine after three failures in thirty minutes or two in a row, emails you, and takes its drinks off sale in one click. What VendCaptain watches on every connected machine, every hour, is on GS805 remote monitoring.
What Connect has done on this machine so far
In daily use, with the maker's app still selling
- Every hour, without touching the machine
- Connect has read this machine's sales, shelf and stock from the factory cloud for months, with the maker's app still the seller. It is the same read any operator gets on the first day of a pilot.
- The portal, in daily use
- Complete enough that we plan the week from it: charges with no drink and their refunds, run-out dates, the service log, what each price change did. It has been a while since we hit a bug; when we do, it bites us first.
- The iPhone app, on visits
- The checklist with photos, readings and refills, and the monitoring tabs, on the phone at the machine. It keeps working with no signal and sends everything when the connection is back. It is on our own phones today, with an App Store listing planned.
- Powder estimates that hold
- The machine has no sensors, so the estimate is each drink's recipe subtracted from the last refill or reading. On this machine it has matched what we find in the containers, visit after visit. The one time it drifted was the unlogged refill above: the estimate is only as honest as the log.
What changes when VendCaptain becomes the seller
Planned for the end of October 2026, in final tests on the machine now · and what does not change
- A failed drink fails at once
- The sale is marked failed the moment the machine cannot make the drink, the screen tells the customer to ask staff for a refund rather than try again, so there is no second charge, and we get an email within the hour with the amount. The refund itself is still made in Nayax: VendCaptain lists it, it does not move money, and the reader still takes the money at the tap.
- Stock is counted, not guessed
- A ledger in calibrated grams per container, one cup per drink, the water per recipe, the bucket counted with a stop at 38 drinks. A drink shows sold out before the customer pays. Refills and level checks are logged at the machine behind a PIN, which is the only place they ever get logged.
- Calibration is a button
- Press the container, the machine runs ten seconds and drops a cup, type the weight. Recipes in grams. Creatine offered only once its container is calibrated.
- Every drink on one screen
- Six drinks, creatine as a toggle on the drink with its own price. No second page, no products that never sell. What Run changes on the machine, and what it leaves alone, is on GS805 integrations.
- Eighty-five seconds with something in them
- The stamp card QR during the make, a game with a weekly leaderboard, a one-question survey, tips, and a review QR on the ready screen. All switchable per machine from the portal. All of it is described on GS805 loyalty and promotions.
- The machine behaves
- A leftover cup takes it out of service within 30 seconds and back when removed. It comes back by itself after a power cut. If the app crashed in a loop it would stop selling and say so. The maintenance switch acts within about 20 seconds from anywhere. The maker's app and ours can never both sell.
- What does not change
- The machine's hardware, its lack of sensors, the reader and how it charges, the make time, and the fact that a person still empties the bucket and weighs the powder.
- A bug we caught before the first customer
- A code review during the final tests found the creatine add-on was charged but never poured. It was fixed before any customer could meet it. Test every path with a real card you can refund, including the ones you are sure about.
The numbers
Cups per day on the maker's software are the baseline, measured since May. Cups per day after the switch, failed vends per hundred sales and uptime will be measured from the first day VendCaptain sells on this machine, and go on this page month by month with their dates. They come from one machine, and they will always say so.
What we would tell another operator
- Check your Nayax transactions for charges with no drink before you believe your sales. Refund them the same day.
- Weigh the powder. A scale in the service kit, a ten-second pour per container, the rate written down.
- Log every refill with the real amount, the lot and the expiry, or your stock is fiction.
- Count the bucket. Nothing else will.
- Make one normal drink after any test, before you leave.
- Never let two apps sell, and never cut the power mid-sale.
- Keep one Nayax export language and set the results limit above your row count.
- Measure a price change on one machine before you roll it out. Half the cups is a real number.
- Read your silence: cups per day per machine, every day. An idle machine costs more than a broken one.
- Write down the time, the error and the network the first time something is unreachable.
Every item on this list became a page or an email in VendCaptain because we needed it ourselves. The owner's guide turns them into a routine.
Questions people ask about this machine
Is this a paid case study?
No. It is our own machine. Real Zero S.L. operates it and makes VendCaptain. The studio is named only to say where the machine is; Orangetheory is a registered trademark of Ultimate Fitness Group, LLC.
Why only one machine?
Because that is how many we run. It is enough to learn what a GS805 does and does not do, and not enough to quote percentages, so we do not. The findings from more machines come from one operator's 25-machine trial, quoted without their name.
Can I see the machine?
Its public page, with the menu, allergens and the loyalty terms, is at realzero.es. If you are in Madrid, it is at the studio's exit.
Did VendCaptain make the machine sell more?
Not yet, because it does not sell on it yet. The figures for this machine, cups per day before and after the switch, failed vends per hundred sales and uptime, go on this page month by month with their dates from the first month it does. What changes on day one is listed above: fail honestly, count stock, calibrate by weight, show every product, and give the customer something to do.
Will you publish the numbers?
Yes, on this page, with their dates and the caveat that they come from one machine.
More GS805 guides
- GS805 integrationsConnect, Run, where Nayax fits, and which APIs and SDKs are not offered.
- GS805 and NayaxHow the payment and the drink are connected, and what happens to the money after a failed vend.
- GS805 troubleshootingPaid but no drink, idle machines, run-outs, the waste bucket, a frozen screen: what each is and what to do.
- GS805 remote monitoringFactory telemetry against VendCaptain Connect and Run, and which data exists at all.
- GS805 owner's guideSoftware, payments, setup, calibration and cleaning, with the official manuals linked.
- GS805 loyalty and promotionsDiscount windows and codes in the factory software, and the stamp card and happy hours VendCaptain adds.
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Daniel Escobar escobar@vendcaptain.com +34 623 345 790 Email, WhatsApp or phone