CHICAGO -- Twenty years ago, kiosks and vending machines conjured visions of sad office workers staring longingly at a candy bar refusing to drop from its perch.
These days, the devices offer automated goods and services that the sad office worker of yesteryear might have compared to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.
Click through for a look at four out-there kiosks that have popped up in c-stores in the past year …
Sheetz stores in Beckley, Star City and Charleston, W.Va., are rescuing customers from long lines at the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) with the West Virginia DMV Now kiosks.
Customers can access some DMV services from these kiosks, including vehicle registration renewal and driver’s license renewal. The kiosks accept credit or debit cards.
The one downside? The “I just don’t feel like going to the DMV” excuse doesn’t hold up as well as it used to in West Virginia.
Anti-social pizza lovers in Orlando and Lakeland, Fla., were treated with ATM-style pizza dispensers, CSP Daily News reported in September.
Oddly risque-sounding name aside, the Pizza Touch kiosks can pump out three different varieties of hot, 9-inch pizzas in two minutes for $6 apiece. Each pie is premade and frozen until it’s baking time. When that happens, the pizza is sent through a nearly 600-degree oven.
Bitcoin, the digital currency that recently surpassed the price of one ounce of gold, is available to c-store customers in select markets via ATM-style devices, per last year’s report from CSP Daily News.
Several stores on the West Coast and one in Virginia carry the devices, allowing customers to buy or sell up to $1,500 of the cryptocurrency. The ATMs don’t offer anything physical, but the customer’s cellphone can log the bitcoin value.
KeyMe’s Series C kiosks could be a boon for the poor saps who don’t want to admit to a locksmith that they’ve lost their keys.
The key-copier kiosks offer a bevy of options. They can copy keys and deliver them to the customer’s door, offer keys with custom designs, save keys that customers can unlock later with a fingerprint scan or share a digital copy of keys with friends, roommates or renters. The kiosk’s printed keys can also double as bottle openers or other accessories.
It’s even relatively affordable, as the prices of its fob-style smart keys range from $20 to $60.
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