Vending machine locations in Nevada: reading California

What California’s seven actually contain

Seven venue types, no two the same, and a wide spread of completeness.

Five of the seven state a share of 40%, Ceres agreed 50%, and Oceanside states none. Three report no visitor count, which is a higher rate of omission than the record as a whole — eighteen of 87 placements nationally, against three of seven here.

Which of them can be converted, and what that leaves

Four. Converting footfall into hours of exposure needs both a reported visitor count and a published average visit length for the venue type, and only five of the 26 venue types in this record have the second: bowling alleys at 2.7 hours, family entertainment centres at 2.5, indoor playgrounds and trampoline parks at 1.5, and filling stations at a few minutes.

So the two premium California venues, the ones reporting the highest traffic in the state, are both in a category with no published visit length — which means the strongest listings next door to Nevada are exactly the ones the dataset cannot rank. The method is set out in our ranking of vending locations.

What survives is two measurable venues, at roughly 450 and 259 visitor-hours a day, both at 40% of net. Nearly a two-to-one spread in exposure, and no movement at all in the share.

What the California set does tell a Nevada reader

One thing clearly and one thing suggestively. Clearly: 40% of net is what California venues agreed, five times out of six that stated a figure, across venue types from a bowling alley to a premium entertainment venue. That matches the national median exactly.

Suggestively: the one California venue above the median is a mall — a pass-through site. That is consistent with the strongest pattern in the whole record. Eleven of the twelve placements at 50% of net are pass-through venues: three shops, two malls, two electronics stores, two filling stations, a deli and a food service site. Only one, a family entertainment centre in Lawrence, Kansas, is a destination venue.

For a state with no listings, that split is more useful than any single number, because it is a rule about venue kind rather than a figure about a place.

Why Nevada is the interesting gap

Because its venue mix is weighted toward the side of that split which commands the higher shares, and none of it has been tested. The record’s busiest placements are not family-leisure venues at all: an ice rink at 1,100 visitors a day, two filling stations at 990 and 960, a deli at 770, a retail site at 700.

Nevada’s two metros hold a high concentration of exactly that kind of high-footfall pass-through location, along with the usual family-leisure categories. A first Nevada placement in a pass-through site would test whether the 50% pattern holds in a tourist economy; one in a bowling alley or trampoline park would test nothing new. What the revenue-share data shows across all 87 placements works through the split in full, and vending machine locations by state shows where every state stands.

What the empty row cannot be read as

Three readings the data does not support. The record is one locator’s signed venues across a single 2026 season, so a blank state records the absence of a signature.

• Not an absence of venues. Las Vegas, Henderson, North Las Vegas, Reno and Sparks hold every category this dataset is built from.
• Not a coverage decision. only Alaska and Hawaii carry a stated reason, being outside the company’s declared coverage; Nevada carries no such statement.
• Not a judgement about terms. Nothing distinguishes a venue that declined from one never approached.