We all like to get our snack on from time to time, and vending machines allow us the opportunity to do wherever we may be. It may not be the best option when it comes to eating, but modern vending business are not shy of catering to the needs of the healthy conscious eaters just like they did for decades for the careless peckish types. It wasn’t until the 1880′s that automated vendors made their first appearance stateside, when the Thomas Adams Company manufactured the Tutti-Frutti gum dispensers and placed them in a bunch of New York trains stations, to great success.
There may be a single big reason why coin dispensers play a big part in our lives. Why go to the horrendous effort of preparing a sandwich for work when we can just nip down to the cafeteria and snag something out of the machine?
No matter how hard you try, it’s impossible to go anywhere without running into some sort of automated vendor. Not long ago, the Japanese have introduced a machine that dispenses fresh eggs, but you have to wonder if you will have to stick to making scrambled after their drop from the dispenser. It seems Americans have been fast at adapting the automats to the needs of the local people – there are now vending machines in California where you can pick up your medical marijuana; just need someone to place a brownie dispenser beside it and watch the cash roll in.
Vendors show only a few major technology improvements over the years – first it was the coin slots which were changed to accommodate paper bills as well, and in countries like Japan, cell phone technology has been incorporated, allowing buyers to access the products using a phone rather than the traditional currency slots.
We may have come a long way since the days of vending machines guarded by poisonous snakes in ancient Rome, but given the advancements made over the years, we can only guess at what they will be selling inside them next.
Veld Drowning is a vending business veteran living in California. His company has been servicing and refurbishing vending machines since 1998 and is the largest distributor of new and used vending equipment in California.
