Vending machine locations in Georgia, by the numbers

What is on the record for Georgia?

Four venues of four types, signed across ten weeks.

Geographically the four split two ways: Fairburn and Hiram sit in metro Atlanta, Toccoa and Clarkesville in the northeast hills about 90 miles away. That is a two-cluster route rather than a statewide one.

How good is the Hiram venue?

Exceptional, and it is worth putting precisely. At 410 reported visitors a day it is the busiest trampoline park anywhere in the 87 listings, against a type median of 274.

The final column converts footfall into hours of exposure, the quantity a machine actually sells into, as our ranking of vending locations sets out. At about 615, Hiram clears the top-ranked venue type — family entertainment centres at 445 — by nearly 40%, which makes it one of the strongest individual venues in the dataset on this measure.

It also agreed the median 40% share, which is the pattern seen everywhere: traffic does not buy a venue a better percentage.

Why is Georgia’s record entirely specialty?

The data cannot say, and it is worth flagging as a genuine curiosity rather than explaining away. Across the 87 listings, 80 are cotton candy machines, six are flexible and one is drink and snack — so a specialty-heavy record is normal. A record with no flexible or drink-and-snack machine at all is not: California, Ohio, Arkansas, Florida and Texas all mix them.

Four listings is a small enough sample that this could be chance. With 80 of 87 placements being cotton candy, four draws coming up all cotton candy is unremarkable arithmetic. The honest reading is that Georgia’s record is consistent with the national mix rather than distinct from it.

What it does mean practically is that every Georgia comparison available to an operator is a specialty comparison, which is more useful than it sounds in a dataset where mixed records make like-for-like harder.

Does the share follow traffic in Georgia?

No, and Georgia shows the usual inversion. The quietest venue with a reported count took the highest share.

Clarkesville, at a quarter of Hiram’s traffic, takes ten points more of each sale. The explanation is category rather than scale: it is the state’s only pass-through venue, and every pass-through venue in this record was paid 50%. What the revenue-share data shows across all 87 placements tests the relationship across the full dataset.

Fairburn’s 30% is the one that looks anomalous against its own type. Family entertainment centres are paid a median 40% nationally across 11 listings, so Georgia contains both an above-median venue on traffic and a below-median one on terms.

What is missing from Georgia’s record?

Bowling. It is the largest category in the dataset with 18 placements and Georgia has none, despite obvious supply in Atlanta, Savannah, Augusta, Columbus and Macon.

A state holding one of each of three categories and none of the largest looks like a sales effort that took what it found rather than one working a list. That caution applies across this table, and vending machine locations by state sets out where every state stands.