Built by people who got burned buying locations.
Operators kept hitting the same wall after buying a machine: where do I put it? The locator industry’s answer was to take money up front and deliver a list of places that hadn’t agreed to anything.
So we built the scouting operation ourselves. Real people calling real venues, qualifying foot traffic, checking power and access, and getting a host agreement signed before a venue goes on our list. That operation runs continuously, with 10,000+ venues in the pipeline at any time, and it has found 500+ locations for operators.
Pinpoint is that inventory, opened up. We sign with the venue, hold the agreement, and license the space to you — which means we have skin in the game when a location doesn’t work, and the ability to fix it.
Receipts
Figures from our operations system.
How we decide a venue is worth your machine
Foot traffic, verified
We ask for the number and we sanity-check it against the venue type and its public footprint. If it can't be supported, it's not listed.
Power and access, confirmed
An outlet where the machine goes and a path to get it there. Sounds obvious; it's the most common reason a placement fails.
A decision maker, signed
Not a manager who 'thinks it's fine'. The person who can sign a 12-month host agreement, has.
What we won't say
We won’t tell you what your machine will sell. Any figure we show about a venue is its historical foot traffic, not a sales forecast — and we make that distinction on every page because it’s true and because you deserve to know. The advertising figures on our ads pages are network averages and ranges from screens already running, not a forecast for yours. What we will tell you is exactly what a placement costs, what we guarantee, and what happens if it goes wrong. Before you pay.
Ask us anything before you pay. We reply within one business day.
Who writes these guides
Zach Downey runs Pinpoint Vending, which scouts and negotiates venues for vending machine operators. He and the scouting team qualify venues and negotiate host agreements across the country, and that first-hand work is the basis for the guides in our operator library. Those articles draw on that first-hand work and on cited third-party sources; Pinpoint makes no representation about the income any operator will earn.