Vending machine locations in California, by the numbers

What is on the record for California?

Seven venues, six types, five months, and a reporting record with holes in it.

Six distinct venue types is the broadest spread of any state in the record, which makes California useful for seeing what signs rather than how much. The signing dates cluster steadily across five months rather than in a single push.

How good is California’s reporting, really?

Poor for a state with this many listings, and that is the finding worth carrying away. Across all 87 placements, 69 report a visitor count — 79%. California reports three of seven, or 43%.

The three leaders by volume therefore differ sharply in what they can support. Wisconsin’s and Ohio’s records can carry a traffic analysis; California’s cannot without filling four gaps with assumptions. For an operator weighing a Californian venue, the practical consequence is that the state’s reputation for scale is not backed by the kind of evidence a smaller state like Kentucky, which reports four of four, happens to provide.

That pattern also warns against reading placement counts as market strength, a caution vending machine locations by state applies to the whole table.

What do the two identical venues tell you?

Palmdale and Valencia are the dataset’s clearest case of a reported figure that is not a count. Both are entertainment venues, both premium tier, both report exactly 100,000 visitors a year, and both signed on September 2, 2026 — two cities about 30 miles apart.

Three readings are available, and the data does not distinguish them: one agreement covering two sites in a group, two sites using a shared corporate planning figure, or a coincidence. The first is much the most likely, and it is the only multi-site signature visible anywhere in the 87 listings.

Either way the 100,000 should be treated as a round planning number rather than a measurement, which is a useful reminder about every unaudited figure in this record. Where two venues report the same round number on the same day, the number is describing the operator’s expectation, not the door.

How large are California’s venues, by type?

Unremarkable, which is the second place California’s size fails to show up. Setting its three reporting venues against their national type medians produces nothing extreme in either direction.

A visitor-hour is one person on the premises for an hour: daily visitors scaled by typical visit length, the measure our ranking of vending locations is built on. Livermore sits almost exactly on its type’s median. Yucca Valley is well below the bowling median at 96 a day — the weakest documented venue in the state — and still agreed the same 40% share as everything else.

Entertainment venue, the category covering Palmdale and Valencia, has no published visit length anywhere, so the state’s two highest-traffic venues cannot be converted into captive time at all.

Does the share move at all in California?

Barely, and the one movement follows venue type rather than anything Californian. Five venues at 40%, one at 50%, one unreported.

The 50% is the Ceres mall — the only pass-through venue among the seven. Across the whole record all eleven pass-through venues were paid 50% of net, and destination venues almost all 40% or 30% — a split that holds in California as it does in Arkansas and Ohio, with one Kansas exception. California’s share data is therefore not telling you anything about California; it is telling you about malls.

What the revenue-share data shows across all 87 placements tests that relationship against traffic, and finds the same thing: the share tracks what kind of building it is, not where the building stands.