05 Jan Vending Machines in 2017 & Beyond
The Current and Future State of Vending Machines
Vending machines have been around, in various forms, since ancient times. As a convenient way for people to get food, drinks, and other items, they’ve been a vital part of society and contribute greatly to overall diet trends. Recently there have been many improvements and evolutions in the vending industry, and based on these current trends, we can look forward to determine the near future evolution of vending machines. Here are 5 future trends that we can expect in the vending industry.
1. Greater Variety of Healthy Foods
Taking into consideration the obesity epidemic in concurrence with a nationwide shift in focus to organic, whole food options, every part of the food industry has been forced to take notice of the demand for healthier food. While there is already a huge trend toward refrigerated vending machines carrying healthier options, this trend will continue to grow and the variety of healthy options will increase rapidly.
2. Vending Machines That Can Customize and Cook
If you haven’t already seen these around your town, they’re certainly coming. Vending machines that can prepare and customize food already exist, but it’s not a far stretch of the imagination to see this technology becoming more sophisticated. Some current examples include vending machines that can serve your choice of fresh-scooped gelato, prepare and bake an entire pizza, and dispense customized frozen yogurt orders at a rate of 1 serving per minute.
3. Vending Machines That Connect to Your Phone
If you can order Starbucks from your phone, why can’t you order vending machine items from your phone? You’ll be able to, and in some cases, you already can.
4. Interactive Vending Machines
In case you don’t have enough robotic devices talking to you, you can look forward to the same type of personalization that you get from your iPhone in vending machines. What if your work’s lunchroom vending machine could remember your top 5 orders and suggest similar snacks? This future isn’t far away.
5. More Vending Machines with More Options
There are still a lot of places that don’t have vending machines that could benefit from them. The busier and more automated our lives get, the more room there is for a higher vending machine presence. And as vending machines evolve to include different forms and offer different products, they could fit into unexpected places, such as inside your house, in a train, or on an airplane.
Vending machines will also offer more and more products. In many places, vending machines already do this by offering clothes and other necessary items. If you can imagine it, almost anything you buy at the grocery store could hypothetically be sold out of a vending machine, and the more automated things become, the higher the likelihood that this becomes a reality.
The Vending Machine Opportunity
With all of these future trends just around the corner, it’s easy to see that there’s a lot of opportunity in vending machines and everything they can offer. Many companies have already jumped on the trend, buying their own vending machines to sell their specific product. Need a freshly baked cupcake at 2 in the morning? Don’t worry. There’s definitely a vending machine for that.