Vending Machine Types For Your Business

A vending machine
is a machine that provides various snacks, beverages and other products to consumers. The idea is to vend products without a cashier. Items sold via vending machine vary by country and region.

In many countries, vending machines generally serve the purpose of selling snacks and beverages, but are also common in busy locations to sell other items such as newspapers.
Some countries sell alcoholic beverages such as beer through vending machines, while other countries do not allow this (usually because of dram shop laws).

A number vending machine is also used at many outlets, where a customer has to press a button on the machine and a number is printed on a slip of paper and the customer has to wait until his number is called by the service provider.

Cigarettes were commonly sold in the U.S. through these machines, but this practice is increasingly rare due to concerns about underaged buyers. Sometimes a pass has to be inserted in the machine to prove one's age. In some European countries, by contrast, cigarette machines are still common. Oddly, vending machines were used at airports from the 1950s well into the 1970s to sell life insurance policies covering death in the event that the buyer's flight crashed. Such policies were quite profitable, because the risk of any given flight crashing was (and remains) very low, but this practice gradually disappeared due to the tendency of American courts to strictly construe such policies against their sellers, such as Mutual of Omaha.

History
The first vending machine is believed to have been invented by Hero of Alexandria, a first-century inventor. His machine accepted a coin and then dispensed a fixed amount of holy water. When the coin was deposited, it fell upon a pan attached to a lever. The lever opened up a valve which let some water flow out. The pan continued to tilt with the weight of the coin until it fell off, at which point a counter-weight would snap the lever back up and turn off the valve.
Despite this early precedent, vending machines had to wait for the Industrial Age before they came to prominence. The first modern coin-operated vending machines were introduced in London, England in the early 1880s, dispensing post cards. The first vending machine in the U.S. was built in 1888 by the Thomas Adams Gum Company, selling gum on train platforms. The idea of adding simple games to these machines as a further incentive to buy came in 1897 when the Pulver Manufacturing Company added small figures which would move around whenever somebody bought some gum from their machines. This simple idea spawned a whole new type of mechanical device known as the "trade stimulators". The birth of slot machines and pinball is ultimately rooted in these early devices.

Mechanism

Newspaper vending machine in Düsseldorf

After paying, a product may become available by:

♦the machine releasing it, so that it falls in an open compartment at the bottom, or into a cup, either released first, or put in by the customer

♦the unlocking of a door, drawer, turning of a knob, etc.

Sometimes the product is not just released, but prepared; this may be the case e.g. in the case of coffee, french fries, or a ticket that is printed after paying.

The main example of a vending machine giving access to all merchandise after paying for one item is a newspaper vending machine (also called vending box). It contains a pile of identical newspapers. After a sale the door automatically returns to a locked position. A customer could open the box and take all of the newspapers or, for the benefit of other customers, leave all of the newspapers outside of the box, slowly return the door to an unlatched position, or block the door from fully closing, each of which are frequently discouraged, sometimes by a security clamp. The success of such machines is predicated on the assumption that the customer will be honest (hence the nickname "honor box"), which is helped by the fact that having more than one newspaper is not often useful.

Compare a coin-operated pay toilet

You can find a vending machine supplier for just about any product under the sun that you want to sell through your vending machines. When you are getting started in this business it is best to try to find a unique product that you know customers want to buy. Cold food is one of the hottest items on the market today because people like to get something quick from a vending machine when they don’t have time for a sit down lunch. Cookies are another option that you can keep in mind when looking for a vending machine supplier.

Vending has gone through significant changes over the decades. Many machines are still evolving to take credit cards and monitor machines from afar.

John Greenwick of the Greenway company is a former Mars Electronics employee and former product manager of the first ever Bill Acceptor. According to him, the industry saw a need for the ability to standardize the acceptance of coins and currency on a Global Basis. As such, a standard known as MDB (Multi-Drop Bus) was invented. This allows for machines around the world to utilize the same Bill Acceptor and Coin Changer devices with an International Specification. Thus, legacy machines may require conversion kits in order to avoid extinction.
Doug M. Sanford of Vending Times notes that "many vendors today do not remember the urgency with which industry leaders called on their peers to install coin mechanisms that held the patron's money in escrow until the vend was made; to post a telephone number that a customer could call to report a failure and request a refund; to make sure their drivers were cleaning the machines adequately and replacing burnt-out lamps; and so on and on". More recent innovations include improved coin and bill validation and the rapid adoption of sense-and-feedback systems to verify that the vend was made.

One of the newest vending innovations is telemetry. According to Michael Kasavana, National Automatic Merchandising Association Endowed Professor at The School for Hospitality Business, Michigan State University, the advent of reliable, affordable wireless technology has made telemetry practical and provided the medium through which cashless payments can be authenticated. This is important because research shows that 50% of consumers will not make a purchase from a vending machine if its "use exact change only" light is on. Machines equipped with telemetry can transmit sales and inventory data to a route truck in the parking lot so that the driver knows exactly what products to bring in for restocking. Or the data can be transmitted to a remote headquarters for use in scheduling a route stop, detecting component failure or verifying collection information. Telemetry could be one of the most significant developments in vending technology since the invention of the bill changer.

With consumers wanting quick and convenient access to competitively priced products, the vending industry has seen a great deal of growth over the last ten years. Vending offers new entrepreneurs a way to start businesses which can grow quickly. Snack, beverage, candy and food vending machines continue to be the most lucrative and stable in the market place. New innovations in service vending machines include internet kiosks and DVD vending. Cashless vending now allows consumers to use debit cards for added convenience. Vending is a multi-billion dollar industry, and growing.

In order to prevent injuries or death from tipping or striking the machine, most modern snack vending machines equipped with spirals to hold products contain lasers near the access door at the bottom. If a purchased item does not break the laser beam when falling, the spirals will automatically turn, usually three times to ensure that a product will fall. If this still does not occur, the customer will be asked to make another selection or will be refunded their money.

In the U.S.,
most vending machines are operated by vending companies that offer a wide variety of services. However, bottlers, such as The Coca-Cola Corporation and Pepsi Bottling, also own, stock, and service a great number of soda machines. There are also large amounts of vending machines that are owned by store owners, or by individuals who buy or rent several machines. Proportionately, much more of the profits come from the larger companies because they have the resources that facilitate the generation of such profits off low priced goods. Other machines, such as U.S. Postal Service machines, are maintained by governmental or quasi-governmental entities.



Bulk candy and gumball vending
Bulk candy machines are entirely mechanical machines that vend a handful of candy, a bouncy ball, or perhaps a capsule with a small toy or jewelry, for one or two coins. The items may be unsorted; in that case what the customer exactly gets is subject to chance.
The gross margins in the bulk candy business can be quite high — gumballs, for instance, can be purchased in bulk for 2 cents apiece and sold for 25 cents. In addition, the machines are typically inexpensive compared to soft drink or snack machines. Many operators donate a percentage of the profits to charity so that locations will allow them to place the machines for free.
Bulk vending may be a more practical choice than soft drink/snack vending for an individual who also works a full-time job, since the restaurants, retail stores, and other locations suitable for bulk vending may be more likely to be open during the evening and on weekends than venues such as offices that host soft drink and snack machines.




Full line vending