Linda Shore saddled up to one of the three Burning Barrel machines in the back of Bud’s Tavern, a bar advertising “good food, good times, good people” in a Jeffersontown strip mall that also includes a karate studio and a Mexican restaurant called The Yellow Cactus.
Setting her koozie-encased beer bottle in the cup holder, Shore put $40 in the Burning Barrel terminal — which resembles a slot machine — and started tapping the “play button.”
Made by a Georgia company called Pace-O-Matic, thousands of Burning Barrel and similar machines have proliferated across Kentucky at bars, restaurants, truck stops, convenience stores and veterans halls.
