with supply and demand and all... IM DEMANDING CANNED BREAD!! where's the supply 🥺?
It replaces workers with robots so it would probably save money too.
I recall reading that part of why Japan has more vending machines and more variety is the ownership model. In the US vending machines are typically run by companies that service them and collect the revenue. But in Japan, they're typically owned by the shops. So shops are more likely to put a variety of products from their store in the vending machines.
I also suspect a higher incidence of social anxiety increases the demand for them in Japan.
That's just self checkout with fewer steps.
I guess that's what any vending machine is though.
My company has a vending machine for computer accessories. For example, if you need a replacement mouse, just go over to the machine, wave your badge in front of the sensor, select the mouse, and wait for it to drop
We used to. They were called Vendo-mats. They had sandwiches and cakes and all kinds of things. They weren't exactly vending machines in the sense that things would fall down. The food was behind a little door you'd open after paying. I'm too young to remember what the stuff tasted like, but it seemed pretty good because the food would always have to be put in the machines fresh every day.
The Horn and Hardart automat was an interesting bit of early 20th century Americana.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Horn_%26_Hardart_automat.JPG
as an elder millennial, I can say they were not that great. I enjoyed the novelty though.
Oh, we had something like this in college. The vendor would load up the... well, actually, it was more like a big version of those little coolers you see in the checkout line in grocery stores—the ones with the sodas and stuff in them. Anyway, the vendor would load them up every couple days. It'd have sandwiches, salads, puddings (which were actually really popular), sodas, Gatorade, water, and a bunch of other stuff. If we wanted something, we would just get it out, scan the barcode on the scanner attached to the handle, tap our phones or cards to pay, and be on our way.
I’m seeing a lot of advanced retail in US vending machines - inside airports. Food, electronics, cosmetics, all kinds of stuff.
This hints at the problem. Airports have improved security and you have to spend money on a plane ticket to enter so they don’t suffer the same dystopia as public spaces in the US which are trashed and destroyed by any asshole coming through who doesn’t give a shit, including the extremely impoverished and homeless which as a category includes many drugged up people, congenital criminals, and mentally ill. There are some over generalizations here about Americans all having no respect for others and this isn’t fair. Most are wonderful people. But enough Americans suck that it spoils the party for everyone, and broken window syndrome is a thing.
Sidenote: Homelessness_in_Japan is really low because they made some serious efforts to tray and reduce it.
Homelessness in Japan is illegal, so people turn Internet cafe pods into “homes”.
I wonder if they're including those that are living in internet cafes and such. I remember that being a pretty prevalent problem a bit back. Wikipedia says they counted it on 2007, but no notes of whether they continue to include them or not as homeless.
Not discounting their achievement though, they have their shit together, at least way more than the US
People in the US don’t respect others property. Look at any atm machine or vending machine. There’s no way these things wouldn’t be vandalized immediately.
This is the answer. Japan has a lot of respect for others (well, for other japanese at least), so these types of machines will last a lot longer; making the payoff more palatable.
Place a vending machine outside in America, and it'll be vandalized in a week max.
Even in highly walkable cities, you don't see vending machines. It has nothing to do with cars, it has to do with the culture of the US being one of disrespect most of the time.
Vandalize? .... the entire machine would be stolen. Either by thieves wanting to steal the merchandise or money or both. Or a bunch of teens that would tie a chain to it and drag it to the end of town for fun.
Completely this. Americans don't like letting other people have nice things. A vending machine would be vandalized, filled with glue as a TikTok prank, attempted to be stolen, and stop working within a few days.
Americans don't really give a shit about other people. We're more individualistic. You got yours? Good. Fuck everyone else. If we have to have protests and fundraising efforts to TRY to convince people to help others -- we got a long way to go.
Japan is built on respect for your fellow man. You can leave your wallet out somewhere and someone would return it immediately.
In the USA they lack the population density pressure to make it the most optimal solution of serving food, and the startup costs don't justify changing from human labor to fully automated food sales. Also I bet the quality isn't as good as you think it is from some preserved fried food wrapped in plastic.
Japan loves wrapping everything in plastic. They and the US were the only ones not to sign a promise reduce plastic usage. For all the appearances of Japan being eco conscious, they have this one big issue.
Your first sentence hit the nail on the head. Most Americans travel nearly exclusively in their car. Why would they get out of their car to use a vending machine when McDonald's has a drive-thru? Or if they are willing to get out, why wouldn't they just pick up fresher food from a restaurant? Moreover, mobile ordering has solved the issue of having to talk to people.
The US does have some vending machines like this, but pretty much exclusively in areas with very high foot traffic, like airports, train stations in major cities, etc.
¥380 for yaki onigiri. That better not just be for one
We used to have cigarette vending machines here, but nooo, all the people worried about not dying of preventable diseases had to go and ruin the fun.
Think about it realistically. Considering just food machines, what foods popular with Americans can realistically be sold out of a vending machine?
Popcorn is a clear winner. It can be made in advance, stored for a while, and then easily dispensed. Its profit margin is high. You can charge two dollars for a bag of popcorn that only cost you twenty cents in ingredients.
Packaged food like potato crisps is also a good idea for the same reason. You don't even need to keep the vending machine heated. Similarly, cold drinks and ice cream can also be easily dispensed out of a cooled vending machine, although I don't consider those different from "packaged food".
But what other American classics are there to consider? Hamburgers are out immediately. They're too complex to prepare fresh and most people wouldn't buy a reheated frozen burger.
Hot dogs might be viable, but a machine that sells hot dogs can only see hot dogs due to the mechanical complexity. I think many people would also question the freshness of a vending machine hot dog unless you cooked it right in front of them and let them see it via a glass window. Additionally, a hot dog has a much lower profit margin. If you charge four dollars for a hot dog, it might cost nearly a dollar in ingredients along with the mechanical complexity of the machine. Most people would expect the machine to also dispense condiments like ketchup, mustard, and relish.
Pizza is also complex and would take several minutes to bake from fresh or reheat from frozen. I don't think people would stand around for several minutes waiting for a machine to heat up pizza. Unless you can get the cooking time under sixty seconds, forget it. Pizza also traditionally baked at 700 degrees Fahrenheit, or 370 degrees Celsius. It's not an easy to safely install a component that gets that hot in a machine. Pizza that is pre-cooked and kept warm tends to not taste very good.
Fried chicken tenders will lose their crispness over time, even when kept warm. There is no temperature you can keep fried chicken at where it will remain crisp for hours but also not overcook. Hot oil in a machine is a recipe for disaster. French fries are a possible inclusion (the machine in the post sells French fries), but Americans don't really eat French fries on their own; they are usually served as a side dish along with something else.
Ideally, a machine should be loaded with frozen or pre-cooked food, which it merely keeps warm and dispenses to a buyer when purchased.
Think about Japanese food. Curry, in particular, can be served just barely hot and still delicious. Rice balls can be served refrigerated, as can cold Lawson sandwiches. Instant ramen is also popular, but that's just packaged food that requires a hot water spigot. I argue that Japanese food in general is just more suitable to be served out of a vending machine.
When I was stationed at Camp Pendleton around 2003-ish, one of the barracks I was at had a pizza vending machine. It made cheese pizzas (maybe pepperoni too, but I am not sure) that were a little smaller than a frisbee and cost around $5 (at a time when the priciest McDonald's value meal was almost $5). I never had any myself, but it did take a couple minutes to make and (if I remember correctly) the crust was mostly pre-made. Being able to watch the process (a crust drops onto the conveyor, a robot puts the sauce on, another robot puts the cheese on, another robot puts the toppings on (if any), the pizza is conveyored through the oven) would help occupy the customer's time. If the crust is pre-made, you're really just broiling the cheese and toppings to get them melty and hot.
I don't think the pizza was too tasty or popular, but it was a convenient option if you were drunk.
It's a lot more complex than an ordinary vending machine though. That increases costs. A curry machine is nothing more than a normal vending machine with a heater. A ramen machine is nothing more than a normal vending machine with a tap for hot water. Adjusted for inflation, the pizza machine would cost $8 for a small pizza. You can buy one from Little Caesar's for the same price and it's bigger and probably tastes better as well, since, as cheap at it is, the crust is at least fresh.
Japan has a lot of drink vending machines, but relatively few food or candy vending machines. This is actually an area where the United States performs strongly. That being said, Japan has a real number of strange vending machines.
Too much reliance on cars for transportation and commerce built around that. Compared to Japan; we don't have the opportunity for vending machines except when we are contained to a location without the ability to go to a store that isn't that "far". We have a larger scale of living; a half hour drive is normal to us, but a half hour drive for other countries is at the tipping point of finding a place to stay for the night and a vending machine selling a common foodstuff makes sense.
If you were forced to walk everywhere and "corner stores" were infrequent, vending machines would be far more common and worthwhile for owners of those machines.
Factories I've worked at had vending machines filled with microwavable food (burritos, burgers, sandwiches, etc). All of it was pretty disgusting.
Japan can have more vending machines, because their culture raises people in a way that they have less vandalism and the companies take more responsibility for problems with vending.
I'm in France. There is a gas station near me with three vending machines : drinks, pizzas, and CBD.
The pizza one is mostly fine. The grid protecting the screen was torn apart. Tbf it was annoying. The drinks one is damaged, and is now protected by a metal cage. The CBD machine is completely destroyed.
All publicly available objects in France end up like this.
Bro, do you even vend?
Pizza vending machine in Seattle:
Cupcake ATM in Beverly Hills (and 3 other cities I've been in including Orlando FL and Las Vegas):
Where I am in Canada we have personal pizza machines, coin-op skate sharpening and once I saw a french fries/onion rings one. Coffee vending machines used to be a thing but I think K Cups kind of took that over
My boss once said that you can abuse human workers, you can underpay them, you can worsen their conditions (and if you do it slowly) they might not notice, or they going to work even harder to survive. Worst case scenario they quit, and you just find another one "new" and repeat the cycle.
But you can't underpay robots. You can't abuse them. Why? Because they just break. You skip on maintenance, on working conditions, on anything around robots - and you are looking on fat sum of money that just going to get burnt on a new robot and its installation.
So no, robots are not going to save money, especially in this scenario, because abuse would be massive.
Vending machines work better when there's more foot traffic and more density.
Vending machines with specialty goods (as pictured) need to be restocked every day and they require even more foot traffic. I think this is the biggest factor why OP's vending machine is not viable in a lot of places in the US.
Popcorn seems like the simplest to me. Saw one in a subway in Buenos Aires once. Its so cheap and once it pops, the smell sells itself
Somehow related. There is a Japanese anime where the protagonist is a human that reborns as a vending machine.
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