For operators
What it actually takes to put a protein machine in your gym
Five questions come up before any others, every single time. Here they are, answered properly.
Most of what operators ask us is not about the drinks. It is about the corner of the floor the machine will stand in, and who is responsible when something goes wrong at 6am on a Friday. Those are the right questions. Here are the honest answers.
1. It takes less floor than you are picturing
Under one square metre. It stands against a wall, it moves on castors, and it does not need clearance on three sides the way a chest freezer does. Most gyms put it near the exit, because that is where people decide they want something on the way out.
The comparison worth making is not machine against empty floor. It is machine against whatever else you would put in that corner. A rack you already have two of. A bench nobody uses at peak. A water cooler.
2. A socket. That is the whole install.
No plumbing. No water line, no drain, no permit, no contractor. The machine carries internal tanks and its own connection, so the install is a delivery, a plug, and a short conversation about where it looks best.
This is the answer that surprises people most, because every other piece of drinks equipment they have dealt with needed a plumber.
3. Nobody on your payroll touches it
We stock it, we clean it, we service it. Your team does not learn a new machine, does not count inventory, and does not get pulled off the floor when something needs refilling.
That matters more than it sounds. The real alternative most gyms weigh up is a staffed counter, and a counter is a salary. Industry write-ups on gym retail put the running cost of a machine at tens of dollars a month against thousands for a person standing behind a bar. Whatever the exact numbers are in your facility, the shape of that comparison does not change.
4. When it breaks, you hear it from us first
The machine reports on itself. Stock levels, faults, temperature. In practice that means we usually know something is wrong before a member has walked to your front desk to tell someone.
And when a member does have a problem with a drink, the number on the machine is ours, not yours. Your staff are not doing our customer service.
5. The hygiene question, answered properly
This is the one that quietly worries facility managers, and they are right to raise it. A traditional shake bar means shared blenders, open tubs of powder, and staff handling food without consistent training. That is a real risk and a real liability.
A Yalla machine has no shared blender and no open powder. Storage, mixing and delivery sit in separate zones, and it cleans itself between drinks. There is also no shelf, which removes an entire category of problem: nothing sits waiting, so nothing expires, and no member ever finds a date on a bottle that passed three months ago.
So what does it cost the gym?
The terms are a conversation rather than a price list, because they depend on your footfall and how the machine is placed. What does not change is which side things sit on. The machine, the stock, the servicing and the repairs are ours. You provide the corner and the socket.
The part that actually matters
Every other machine in your building sells something that has been sitting there. Yalla does not have a shelf. The drink is built from powder and water after somebody presses the screen, and it takes about a minute.
That is the whole idea, and it is why the five questions above have the answers they do.
Want the numbers for your floor?
Tell us the gym and roughly how many members walk through it. We will come back with what it looks like in your space.
Get one in your gym