Who is saying it matters
Most testimonials in this industry come from people nobody has heard of. This one does not.
Bill Douglass founded the W. Douglass Distributing Company in 1981 and built it into a fuel distributor and the operator of the Lone Star Food Stores chain across north Texas and southern Oklahoma. He chaired the National Association of Convenience Stores in 2004 and 2005, was inducted into the Convenience Store News Hall of Fame in 2008, and received a Congressional Patriot Award in 2024. He sold the Lone Star stores to Casey's General Stores in November 2023.
In other words, he spent four decades deciding what does and does not belong on a convenience store floor, and he did it at a scale where the decision carried weight across the industry.
Since we put Lone Star Skill games in, our sales have gone higher than ever.
Bill Douglass, founder of Douglass Distributing and former NACS chairman. Quoted on Pace-O-Matic's site.
Read the sentence carefully
He does not say the machines earned well. He says sales went up.
That distinction is the one most operators miss. A skill game produces its own revenue, and that revenue arrives without equipment cost, labour or risk. But the second effect is the one an experienced operator notices: a player who comes in to use a terminal is standing in your store, and people standing in your store buy things. Dwell time converts.
It is the same reason a c-store sells coffee at the back wall. The product is not only the product; it is the reason somebody walks past everything else.
What the numbers behind it look like
Across the manufacturer's own data, a location running roughly two and a half terminals and one redemption terminal averages $35,405 a year in net profit to the location. New markets average $18,250. High-performing ones average $64,970. Those figures are net to the location, not gross takings.
None of that includes whatever happens at the register while somebody is in the building. That part does not show up in a machine report, which is probably why Douglass phrased it the way he did.
The part that is genuinely free
Republic buys the equipment, installs it, services it and carries the licensing. There is no purchase and no lease. Collections happen weekly with a full audit trail, and payment reaches you by ACH. If a machine stops earning, we change it out.
The floor space is the only thing you contribute, and you are already paying for it.