Like the waste lines of its customers, McDonald’s DVD rental service is expanding
The test run of McDonald’s corp. Red Box DVD vending machines are doing well apparently, because the operation is expanding. They’ve rented over 2.5 million DVDs that way, according to Boston.com, and have about 550 Red Box machines in operation, mostly in Houston and Minneapolis.
So what’s the big news? The test is expanding to Connecticut, and to Stop and Shop, the biggest grocer in New England. (Red Box machines in New England? Possible tie in with the Boston Red Sox perhaps?)
While most of the Red Sox, er, i mean Box machines are located in McDonald’s restaurants, the cylindrical machines will be making appearances in a number of other locations.
By year’s end, Redbox aims to deploy about 1,200 machines nationwide. Massachusetts won’t participate in the current test-marketing of the machines, but Waring said Redbox plans to install machines in the Bay State ”as soon as we can.”
Redbox is also scaling up the size of its vending machines, to offer consumers a better variety of movies. The current generation of Redbox machines, in use at the Glastonbury story, holds 100 DVDs. But Redbox just signed a deal with the California electronics equipment maker Solectron Corp. to build jumbo versions that will contain 500 disks apiece.â€Â
Fast food, meet fast DVDs.