Here’s a surprise for you, folks–while clearly, the first name we think of when it comes to DVD kiosk product is clearly Redbox, it’s not the only one.  Seems that there are competitors rising up, and they’re doing it on the local level.

Consider if you will the story of Fareway Grocery stores, a local chain in and around Des Moines, Iowa.  Fareway has ninety six stores in and around the Des Moines area, and a couple of entrepreneurs made the Fareway chain an offer.  Specifically, to give them a long-term multi-year contract to build and operate their own line of DVD kiosks at their own grocery stores, giving them a sliver of the take in exchange for a tiny chunk of floor space–not much bigger than those little toy giveaway machines where you plunk down a quarter and get a cheap plastic trinket in return.

Fareway gets what amounts to a tiny money tree in their lobby that they only pay for the electricity to keep on, and the guys who install it take care of it and get the rest of the cash.  The kiosks hold between two hundred and fifty and seven hundred movies each, and cost ninety nine cents per day in rental fees.

So what does this mean?  Simple–it may be that the video kiosk, as opposed to the video store, will be the way people get their DVDs from now on…as long, of course, as there are DVDs to be had in the first place.