Vending machine locations in Indiana: the 2026 record

How complete is the ring around Indiana?

Total, and dense. Every bordering state carries signed venues, and the combined count is larger than any single state’s in the dataset.

Sixteen in the immediate ring, with a further ten across those states’ wider records. Ohio alone, directly to the east, ties California and Wisconsin for the deepest state record in the dataset.

Only one other state in the record is ringed this way, and the comparison is instructive rather than reassuring. Delaware is also surrounded by active neighbours, but it has three counties and a population smaller than several nearby metros, so a thin venue pool is a sufficient explanation. Indiana is among the more populous states here, with indoor recreation in Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Evansville, South Bend and the Chicago-adjacent northwest.

What explanations survive?

Fewer than usual, which is what makes Indiana interesting rather than merely empty.

The last row is all that is left, and the record cannot confirm it. What can be said is that the three structural explanations that account for most empty states — coverage, distance and scale — do not apply here, which narrows the field to activity.

That distinction matters when reading any state table as a market signal: an empty row produced by a route that never arrived is a different thing from one produced by a market that would not sign, and vending machine locations by state marks where each state falls.

What would an Indiana venue be worth, on national figures?

An estimate, and one better supported than most empty states’ because the neighbours are documented.

Treating the $1.80 cost of goods in the agreements as the operator’s whole cost per sale, before card fees.

Indiana is unusual among blank states in that regional comparisons are genuinely available. Ohio’s seven venues report shares between 40% and 50% and traffic from 55 to 990 visitors a day; Kentucky’s four all sit at 40%. An Indiana venue an hour from either border has closer comparators than the national median provides.

Which venue types would Indiana supply?

The four that carry the record, distributed across several markets rather than concentrated in one.

Those last two columns convert footfall into hours of exposure, the measure a machine actually sells into, following the method in our ranking of vending locations.

Indiana’s distribution is a practical advantage the record cannot show, though how much foot traffic a vending machine needs sets the bar each venue would have to clear. Several mid-sized markets at moderate distances make a multi-venue route feasible, where a state with one dominant metro and a long tail does not. Nothing in this dataset tests that, but it is the kind of structural feature that usually precedes a cluster of placements rather than an absence.

What would change Indiana’s position?

A single signed venue, and in Indiana’s case one would be unusually informative. Because the structural explanations do not apply, a first placement here would confirm that the previous absence was about attention rather than market — and a sustained absence after approaches would suggest something the record currently gives no evidence for.

Until then, Indiana is the clearest example in this dataset of why a zero should be read as missing data rather than as a finding.