Most property managers decide they want in-building convenience long before they understand what saying yes actually costs them. The first question — should we have one? — gets answered by residents. The second question is the one that stalls the file for six months: what does the building have to give up to get it?
This is the honest answer. Three things you provide. Four things you should never be asked for. And three questions that separate a real operator from someone who will hand you a problem in eighteen months.
What Your Building Provides
The requirement list for a managed micro market is genuinely short. If it isn't, something is wrong with the model being pitched to you.
1. Floor space — less than a bike rack
A standard two-unit TapStore™ installation occupies a combined footprint of roughly 5 feet wide by 3.2 feet deep. That fits in the dead corner of an amenity room, a mail room alcove, or the underused stretch of wall beside the elevator bank. It does not require a build-out, a demising wall, plumbing, or a floor drain. It does not require you to reprogram a room.
2. Two standard outlets
Two ordinary 120V receptacles on an existing circuit. No dedicated panel work, no electrician, no capital request to the board. If you already run a water cooler and a parcel locker off the same wall, you have what is needed.
3. Connectivity
The units run on a cellular SIM supplied by the operator, so building Wi-Fi is a convenience rather than a condition. Where a lobby or amenity room has weak cellular reception — common in below-grade or heavily shielded spaces — guest Wi-Fi access as a failover keeps payment and inventory monitoring reliable. Worth checking during the site walk, not worth losing sleep over.
What Your Building Should Never Be Asked For
This is where models diverge sharply, and where a property manager's leverage actually sits.
- Capital. No equipment purchase, no lease, no installation invoice. If the fixtures appear as an asset on your books, you have bought a liability with a depreciation schedule.
- Labour. No staff restocking, no cash handling, no concierge managing product complaints. Restocking, merchandising, and resident support sit entirely with the operator.
- Inventory risk. Expired product, slow sellers, seasonal misses — those are the operator's losses, not a line item you explain to a board.
- A revenue commitment. You are not guaranteeing volume, underwriting a minimum, or exposed if sales come in below projection.
A property manager's real cost in a well-structured placement is a site walk, a document review, and roughly an hour of board or ownership time. That is the whole obligation.
"If a proposal asks your building for capital, labour, or a revenue guarantee, you aren't being offered an amenity. You're being offered a business to run."
Three Questions to Ask Before You Sign
The requirements list is the easy part. These three answers are what you will care about in year two.
Insurance and liability
Ask for a certificate of insurance showing commercial general liability coverage, and require the condominium corporation or ownership entity to be named as additional insured. Confirm in writing that the equipment remains the operator's property and the operator's responsibility. This is standard, it is cheap to verify, and its absence is disqualifying.
Service response, in writing
The failure mode property managers actually experience is not a broken unit — it is a broken unit nobody fixes, with residents calling your office about it. Ask two things: what is the committed response window, and is the equipment remotely monitored so faults are detected before a resident reports one? A defined service-level commitment in the agreement is the difference between an amenity and a complaint generator.
The exit
Ask what happens if it doesn't work. The correct answer is that the operator removes the equipment, restores the space, and charges the building nothing. Any answer involving a termination fee or a restoration invoice tells you the risk has quietly moved onto your side of the table.
Why the Answer Matters More in 2026
The requirement list is short — but the reason to work through it now is a market one. CMHC's 2026 Mid-Year Rental Market Update reports that vacancy and turnover rose across most rent quartiles in Toronto, and that rental operators are seeing greater competition from new developments and tenants more willing to move for incentives. When residents are more mobile, the amenities they touch several times a week carry more weight than the ones they tour once.
Resident demand for this specific amenity is not speculative. In a national Canadian study of 1,500 renters and owners published by RENX, an on-site convenience store ranked near the top of all amenity preferences — 84 per cent wanted the ability to pick up a missing ingredient or a quick snack without going far, and 60 per cent specifically wanted a cashier-less format.
What Residents Have to Do
Nothing. No app, no account, no membership, no fob. Residents tap to pay with Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay or Google Pay, take what they came for, and leave. The absence of a sign-up step is the reason a micro market gets used several times a week instead of once out of curiosity.
Assortment is everyday: snacks, cold drinks, and the essentials people run out of. It is curated for the building it sits in — a downtown rental tower and a family-oriented Etobicoke mid-rise do not get the same shelf.
Built by a Retailer. Not a Vending Company.
The Merchant Group™ brings 30 years of retail experience — Walmart, Staples, and Starbucks — to every building we serve. That background is why the requirement list above is short: assortment, pricing, and replenishment are our problem to solve, not something we push onto your staff.
Two units. Two outlets. Zero cost to the property. Everything else is ours.