Indeed, there's a lot of pent-up vending machine assumptions out there. To help segregate from that baggage, we made the decision to call them 'service locations' instead.
The US market has many challenges, including but not limited to a famously high degree of food-related regulation and limited urban density. I think in the US we would test alternate formats such as drive-thrus, but frankly by the time we get there we'll already have made it in Asia.
After China we will likely test HK, then probably wealthy, dense, nearby markets with high mobile payment penetration, familiarity with automated retail and aging populations such as Japan and Korea.
The US market has many challenges, including but not limited to a famously high degree of food-related regulation and limited urban density. I think in the US we would test alternate formats such as drive-thrus, but frankly by the time we get there we'll already have made it in Asia.
After China we will likely test HK, then probably wealthy, dense, nearby markets with high mobile payment penetration, familiarity with automated retail and aging populations such as Japan and Korea.