Trendy art vending machines hit Charlotte breweries. What you can get for $8
In the back of the Divine Barrel Brewing tap room in NoDa, pinball machines and board games surround a vending machine. The machine, with a skyline of Charlotte painted on the side window, isn’t there to drop a KitKat or bag of Bugles for a late-night snack.
It’s there to sell art. The machine is one of 10 installed throughout the Charlotte region by Loot Drop Art Club, a creative vending venture by longtime friends Bunny Eaton and Ben Loomis.
The two met while studying at Appalachian State University in Boone. Eaton, a painter originally from Charlotte, now calls Hickory home. Loomis is an author and is studying to be an electrician. He grew up in a military family, living all over until he landed in Boone, where he’s been for 12 years.
In 2019, the two came up with the idea for a vending machine to dispense art while in Portland, Oregon, where Loomis was living at the time.
“I went out to visit (Loomis), and we found an art vending machine in the back of a bar,” said Eaton. “As an artist, I was making art. He is an author and writes books. We thought we could bring this back to our college town, and we could sell our work, and our friends’ work, through a vending machine, like a miniature art gallery.”
The next year, Loomis moved back to North Carolina and the two got started, opening their first machine at Black Cat Burrito in Boone.
They purchased their first machines online, on platforms like Facebook Marketplace, but they now buy them in batches from a wholesale supplier. “They’re your typical snack machine that you’d see anywhere,” Loomis said, “but then we make them into works of art.”
Items range from family-friendly craft kits to tarot cards and other tchotchkes, small sculptures and shrunk down works of art.
“We have a whole shop floor with no labor costs, in three square feet,” Loomis said. Prices for the art range from $8 to $20. “Most people don’t want to gamble more than $20 on a machine,” said Eaton.
Vending machines as a ‘total work of art’
Eaton’s favorite machine — designed like a cocktail, with an orange slice and a straw sticking out the top — is inside FizzEd, a bar and restaurant in Boone. “That’s a fan favorite,” she said. “People love that machine.”
In Charlotte, Loomis highlights the machine at Monday Night Brewing in South End.
“It has a design built into it that’s inspired by the area around it,” he said. “Usually we get a bunch of pictures from the venue and then try to bring in the same colors, the elements they’re using already to make it look like part of the surrounding environment, but also elevate it in some way.”
In April, they installed a machine at Activation Studios for the Charlotte SHOUT! festival lounge. They also can be found in all three Resident Culture Brewing locations, Monarch Market and elsewhere around the city. There also are vending machines in Mount Holly and Hickory.
“We see our vending machines as a total work of art, and that the machines themselves are painted to match the environment that they’re in,” she said. “Not only that … it goes one step further, where we’ve developed this network of artists. So it’s not just a gallery, it’s a collective of sorts.”
Eaton and Divine Barrel program director Jake Bock were connected by a mutual friend, artist Matt Alvis, known as Stencil Spray. “I was pretty much sold on the idea immediately,” Bock said. He had once bought origami paper out of one of the vending machines at Resident Culture.
“It’s such an important thing that they’re doing…” Bock said, “finding a new way to get people to interact with art and creativity, with something physical, something real.”
Vending machine art around the nation
The effort is part of a national trend, from Portland to Philadelphia and New York, where inexpensive original vending machine art has become a hot novelty.
Maine-based Anastasia Inciardi’s hand-carved and printed linocut works became a trend in a miniature vending machine in New York’s Grand Central Station. Inspired by temporary tattoo machines growing up in Brooklyn, Inciardi’s work can now be found in over 30 vending machines across the country.
“From an artist’s perspective, there’s an element of disillusionment, because all of these traditional ways that artists are supposed to make a living or establish themselves don’t really work anymore,” Eaton said.
“It’s hard to get into a gallery, all these art markets cost a lot of money … and it’s extremely competitive,” she said. “We’re not replacing the gallery or replacing the museum. We’re adding to an art landscape, and we’re giving an alternative to artists, another option. It’s not going to replace your monthly income, but it will supplement it.”
Painters can shrink their works into a postcard format and include information about where to find them to learn more about or purchase their works.
“Do you make key chains?,” said Eaton. “Let’s put an RFID tag in that (to transmit data) and turn it into a scavenger hunt where you scan the key chain and it sets you off on a new path. We take what people are doing and we just give them a different way to merchandise it.”
One Charlotte artist, KC Marie, is known for large-scale works of slugs and snails.
“They’re these big, beautiful paintings, so one of the items she’s worked with us on is called Slug Pal, which is a polymer clay slug,” Eaton said. “In her case, we’ve quite literally shrunk it down into something that’s vendable. We retail it all day in the machines.”
Saiga Saturn is another artist in Charlotte who works in dot-matrix graphic design. “He has packaged his prints with 3D glasses, so if you put the glasses on, the art print will pop out at you,” said Eaton.
Bock points to a few reasons why people have gotten behind the machine at Divine Barrel.
“It’s exciting. It’s a novelty. It adds something to the experience of hanging out with people, and it hits every cross-section of people that come through,” he said.
Younger friend groups flock to fortune cards or mystery bags. Families with kids can opt for a dinosaur-building kit or a small crafting kit. “It’s really interesting how everybody will eventually interact with it in some way and find something unique to them,” Bock said.
“The mystery bag is by far the number one thing that I see people grab,” he said. “But the harmonica necklaces or switchblade combs, those old-school, Cracker Jack toys also get a lot of attention.”
Eaton and Loomis estimate that they’ve worked with as many as 20 Charlotte artists. Since 2020, they’ve installed 19 machines across Boone, Hickory, Asheville, and Charlotte — and they’re not stopping there.
Next up, the duo is expanding their efforts to Raleigh, partnering with Munjo Munjo to launch five new vending machines in early May.
“Later this summer, I’m hoping that we can do a collaboration with some game design and start creating games that can be vended,” Eaton said. “It’s all about finding the inventory, and that’s when the artists come in and game designers or anybody else who could shrink their work down and turn it into a fun game or activity gift that can be retailed.”
Interested artists can submit an application through the Loot Drop website: lootdropart.club/local-artist-info.
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This story was originally published May 7, 2025 at 6:05 AM.
