Frank Parisi rests on the gumball machine rack he bought as a teen to start his company, Parisi Vending. His wife Diane and daughter Faye stand beside a machine Roger Folz, once the top bulk vendor in America, gifted to Parisi’s parents when he was born. Arturo leans on his father’s sports card dispenser that Steiner Machine Company gave to Parisi on his thirteenth birthday. Photo: Macadoodle Inc.
Frank Parisi’s office showcases machines that speak to his life in the bulk vending industry of gumballs, toy charms and plush toys.
Behind his desk stands a coin-operated gumball machine that Roger Folz, once the top bulk vendor in America, gifted to his parents when he was born in 1976. On a table sits Parisi’s first machine in which he sold sports cards as a seventh-grader. His company, Parisi Vending, recently developed a credit card-receiving machine to adapt to our increasingly cashless world.
As the broader vending industry moves toward machines with tap screens and smartphone functions, Parisi’s newest machine still has an old-fashioned handle that children turn, often to make their first purchases to acquire a gumball or capsuled toy. This feature and others reflect his appetite for romanticizing bulk vending’s past that he believes is at the heart of the industry.
“As much as our business model is changing, it’s remaining the same,” said Parisi, seated at his wood desk that Folz once owned and used to run Folz Vending. “We’re going into what’s called battery-electronic vending, but we’ll use the same old bulk vending machines, where the kids can still turn the handle. So what I love about this business is as much as things change, it all stays the same.”
Parisi Vending’s new gumball and toy charm racks feature a central payment machine with credit card, cash and coin payment options like this unit at a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. Photo: Parisi Vending.
Established in 1994, when at 18 he installed his first bulk vending machines at mom-and-pop shops in his native New Rochelle, New York, Parisi Vending has gumball-capsule and crane machines in several brand stores and restaurants, including Denny’s, King Kullen, Fudruckers and Perkins, from Maine to Alabama, and major rest stops on turnpikes in several of those states.
Among his company’s latest accounts are the Staten Island Ferry Hawks, an independent minor league baseball team whose stadium displays his novelty crane machines filled with plush toys. These range from expandable balls to rubber pigs that snort to calculator-analog watches with a $10 retail value, some licensed to feature Batman, Spiderman and Paw Patrol characters. The Hong Kong-based Parisi Industrial, his second business started in 2019, partners with a plastics company and sources for companies looking to import goods from Asia. He has integrated his two companies to pave new entrepreneurial roads.
Today, the broader vending machine market — encompassing everything from gumballs to snacks and beverages to tobacco to luxury handbags — is forecasted to grow globally in value from $18.2 billion in 2019 to $25.2 billion by 2027. The projected global growth of the “intelligent” vending machine market, featuring smartphone interaction, is from $7.1 billion in 2019 to $11.1 billion by 2025. Meanwhile, vending kiosks are expected to account for 42 percent of the total interactive kiosks market share by 2031.
“What I love about this business is as much as things change, it all stays the same.”
Within the broader vending ecosystem, bulk vending remains a relative niche market. Parisi distinguishes his company by the wisdom he culled directly from Folz and other modern American pioneers in the industry. His commitment is also noteworthy.
Robert Reilly, Parisi’s longtime friend who manages Parisi Vending, said his experience, passion and drive for the business is its greatest asset.
“All Frank ever wanted since he was a kid was to be in the business, and he’s probably one of the few who grew up in the industry who wanted to build his own business,” Reilly said.
The Bulk Vending Bug Bites
Plush toy crane machines are popular worldwide and most visible at retail establishments. Parisi’s Fun City crane machine also accepts cash and credit. Photo: Macadoodle Inc.
In 1973, Parisi’s father, Peter, purchased Eppy Charms, whose founders, Sam, George and Sidney Eppy pioneered the manufacture of toy charms for bulk vending machines. While Parisi’s dad was a major supplier to Folz, Parisi credits Eppy with teaching his family the basics of the toy industry.
“I remember Sidney used to give me little novelties and stickers to sell at school for 10 cents in first grade,” he recalled about his entrepreneurial roots.
Parisi got bit by the industry bug after attending his first National Bulk Vending Association (NBVA) trade show with his father and Eppy in San Diego in 1984. That year, his dad was the center of attention as the distributor of the hottest selling item: a Michael Jackson sticker.
“Every year after that, different suppliers would always send me charms or gum and machines,” Parisi remembered.
A few years later, at the NBVA trade show in Disney World, Steiner Sticker Machine Company gave him a sports card dispenser and Leaf Gum supplied the baseball cards that he sold for a quarter. That gift was a turning point for Parisi, as were his trips with his dad to Folz Vending headquarters in Oceanside, Long Island. He found the manufacturing and operations there fascinating and was inspired to become “the Mickey Mantle” of vending, as he called Folz, his idol whose success had peaked by 1990 with 205,000 machines nationwide.
“One night, when I was in the sixth grade, I was out at a family dinner and was asked what I wanted to be, and I said ‘I want to be the biggest bulk vending operator in the world,’” Parisi remembered fondly. “That experience always stuck.”
“All Frank ever wanted since he was a kid was to be in the business, and he’s probably one of the few who grew up in the industry who wanted to build his own business.”
At 18, Parisi bought his first gumball machines from his dad and placed them in a hair salon in his hometown. After his company was born in 1994, he purchased a route from Danny Gonzalez, another of his mentors who once worked as a supervisor for Folz. While attending Iona College, Parisi used his mother's garage to store his supplies and drove her Lincoln Continental to fill and service his machines.
“The low cost of machines made bulk vending an appealing option for creative entrepreneurs interested in entering the vending market,” said Alicia Levay, former owner, president and publisher of Vending Times, a publication that has covered the vending industry since 1961. “I knew many operators like Frank who started with one machine in their garage and later expanded into amusement equipment, full-line vending and even micro markets.”
When Folz in 2003 sold most of his company, he had 150,000 machines generating $55 million annually. Five years later, Parisi bought Folz’s last routes, acquired his computer systems and hired his employees to run them. Later, Parisi moved into his Oceanside office.
“The nice thing about it was that Roger became like a grandfather-mentor to me and I was getting a lot of his knowledge,” he said. “He took me from everything I thought I knew to everything I realized I didn’t know.”
Among the lessons he learned were the value of quality service and merchandise, the importance of backroom programs and procedures, and the need to innovate.
So in 2010, Parisi partnered with his brother, James, to manufacture the All-American Chicken, a bill-receiving machine dispensing an egg-shaped capsule with a toy. This unit freed Parisi Vending from coin-only machines to reach the dollar price point. The sibling duo also customized the machine for larger retailers, including the Golden Chick, a fast-food restaurant chain. The All-American Chicken sold as far as Pakistan and China.
The Future is the Past
During the past decade, Parisi’s data network systems led him to the relatively new and more efficient world of real-time reports of sales and inventory for each machine. In post-Covid pandemic America, where coins are scarcer and cashless systems are spreading, his new credit card-accepting machine allows for unlimited price points ($2, currently) while he maintains quality merchandise. Its old-style handle allows kids to put some muscle into getting a yo-yo, whistle, bouncing balls, sticky toys, eye-poppers, licensed figurines and the like, and it taps parents’ memories of their childhood interactions with gumball-capsule machines.
“No matter how much the technology changes, it still goes back to that there’s a handle to turn to get the gumball,” Parisi said.
In 2019, Parisi created Parisi Industrial in part to expand his vending business. Its partner, GoodMark Industrial, a plastics molding injection company, produces materials for diverse markets, including power tools, pharmaceuticals and vending. The partnership will enable Parisi Vending to eventually manufacture virtually all of its needs, everything from its machines and charms to plush toys and brand decals. The company’s longer-term plan is to manufacture for the bulk vending industry and sell its products to worldwide distributors.
Parisi Vending’s newly developed credit-card receiving gumball machine also has a cash option to buy a chewy piece of Americana. Photo: Macadoodle Inc.
“The biggest goal for us now is we want to be almost 100 percent integrated and we don’t want to have to depend on anybody for capsules or toys or gum and machines,” Parisi said.
Meanwhile, Parisi is working to reestablish original bulk industry standards that prioritize quality merchandise and regular machine maintenance and service. His old-school philosophy meshes with the fact that customer demographics have stayed essentially the same for decades. While kids roughly 4 to 12 years old typically take to gumball-capsule machines, teens and adults gravitate to crane machines for their games of skill. Likewise, many toys have remained steady sellers, such as the mini-plastic NFL helmets, while others prove periodically popular, including Ninja figures, which are recycled every few years.
These are among the reasons why Parisi believes bulk vending remains intimately tied to nostalgia despite the changing times and new technologies.
“It’s part of Americana,” he said. “We’re still catering to children, even children up to 99 years old. Everybody loves a gum ball. It’s like McDonald’s. You grew up as a child eating McDonald’s and now you’re taking your children or your grandchildren.”