Beyond snacks and drinks

Collectible and trading card vending machines

Not every vending machine is about food. Over the past few years, a separate category has grown up around collectibles — Pokémon trading card packs, Funko Pop figures, and other blind-box items sold through a vending machine instead of a store shelf. We're exploring adding this alongside our standard food and beverage machines for the right venues.

Two different kinds of Pokémon vending machines

Worth being upfront about this distinction: there's an official network of Pokémon card vending machines run directly by The Pokémon Company International, mostly placed inside grocery chains. That's not us, and we don't claim any affiliation with Pokémon, Nintendo, or Funko.

What we're talking about is the independent side of this — operators who source genuine trading card packs and collectible figures through legitimate wholesale channels and place their own machines in venues the official network doesn't reach. That's the model we'd be working from.

Where this tends to work well

• Movie theaters and lobbies, where people already have a few minutes to spend before a show
• Family entertainment centers and arcades
• Malls and shopping centers with steady foot traffic
• Game stores and hobby shops as a complement to in-store inventory

What's typically stocked

Sealed trading card packs (Pokémon TCG being the most requested), Funko Pop figures, and other blind-box collectibles are the core of this category. The appeal is the same reason people line up for these in stores — you don't know exactly what you're getting, and that's the point.

Where this stands right now

This is a category we're actively looking into, not something with a finished pricing model yet. If you run a venue where this kind of foot traffic exists — a theater, an FEC, a mall, a game store — reach out and we'll talk through whether it's a fit and what terms would look like.