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.
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):
What’s the wait time for the pizza to bake?
Oh that’s rad! Wonder if the amount of public areas in cities could relate to have more vending machines. The closest city to me doesn’t have a lot of public spaces.
I would imagine the requirement would be high foot traffic. Food has an incredibly short shelf life compared to other vending machine contents. That pizza vending machine likely has to be serviced/refilled/cycled every 2 or 3 days. The cupcake ATM would be slightly longer. Most of the cupcake ATMs are attached to the cupcake bakeries, but allow customers to buy from the ATM outside of business hours or when the line of customer is really long inside.
The pizza vending machine is in a hotel a block away from a larger physical location by for the same company. So similar arrangement. Probably easy for them to maintain
This is at the Hyatt, ain’t it?
In France they have this:
We have this:
and this:
I’ve been way for too long ! I only knew of Baguette and pizza vending machines. Things are evolving so fast. Today it’s potato and mushrooms, tomorrow it will be seeds to grow in your own garden !
Americans would just crush themselves to death on them
¥380 for yaki onigiri. That better not just be for one
US $2.54
Sometimes those vending machines are very unsanitary and would not pass health regulations here in the US.
That one is actually pretty hot.
Food without a human guarded? Free meal?
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.
Respect for others property might follow respect for others but that’s not a popular concept in America
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.
Respect for your fellow Japanese man. They have a long way to go in the xenophobia angle.
Americans often don’t respect other Americans, NOR other countries. We also know xenophobia/racism well.
When I visited california, there was a mall with multiple vending machines like the one in the OP for various foods and icecreams.
Bet it was inside the mall, with a camera watching it. Japanese vending machines like the one mentioned can be just outside nbd.
They were in the hallways, not out on the street. I didn’t look for any cameras, but there wasn’t any security nearby that would’ve seen anyone vandalize them. If there were cameras, I can’t imagine it mean much to people wearing a mask.
I’m not saying vandalism isn’t more common in the US, I’m sure it is in compared to hyper-respectful Japan, but I don’t think it’s absolutely impossible to have these.
Growing up in the south eastern US vending machines were a common sight in a number of public spaces, and they were completely fine. No idea what third-world parts of the country the rest of these people grew up in.
It’s a shame too because automats used to be a great way for urban poor to get low cost food. I know a vending machine isn’t the same as an automat but they are similar and would be treated similarly.
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.
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.
Vending machines in the USA are common, but they are typically attached to an existing business. For instance, a Walmart or gas station will commonly host several machines in its entrance area.
We have cool ones here, too!
I spy digipet
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.
I thought you were going to say that their culture is more insular and less sociable, because that would be a better explanation than the popularity of vending machines.
I will say while I deeply agree that we don’t have a cool vendung machine American identity…
My mall has vending machines for cotton candy that will make shapes, a vending machine for hijabs and other covers, a vending machine for medication and beauty products, a vending machine for umbrellas and a vending machine for weed.
I’d rather just have curry and hot chocolate but hey… Its something.
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
Needs to be cleaned every day.
By human or machine?
Having worked at a movie theater, I can tell you that the answer is “by a human”
If you can make a machine that cleans a popcorn popper well enough to pass a health inspection, you’ll be a very rich person. Especially a small vending-machine-sized popper-and-dispenser all-in-one jobby.
I don’t understand the question.
You have a vending machine in a train station cooking greasy popcorn all day. Is there a machine that can clean that ?
Baked on greasy-buttery-ness is very difficult to clean.
Pretty sure a machine that can be built to make popcorn can also.be engineered to self clean. Human maintenance one per week to swap out parts and re-top corn.
I’m sure it’s possible but I suspect it’s simply not cost effective.
Removing grease requires hot water, harsh solvents, and scrubbing. If you’ve ever cleaned an oven or bbq or whatever I’m sure you’d agree that it would be very difficult to automate.
I saw an orange juice machine but it had a stupid fancy touchscreen and was out of order.
I feel like there’s potential in this if you avoid the temptation to go with a complicated touchscreen and instead just keep everything as mechanical as possible
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.
