Vending machines go beyond snacks
Vancouver firm hopes to satisfy apartment-dwellers’ grocery needs right in the lobby
Jason Moyal is trying to anticipate your every need, or at least your need for the things you run out of between trips to the store.
Moyal’s Vancouver-based firm Happy Vending is installing a new breed of vending machine in two local apartment building lobbies where — in addition to the usual bottled water and a few crispy snacks — you will find such kitchen staples as milk, eggs and bacon. And depending on your particular emergency, the automated convenience store will also offer your choice of diapers, tampons, Band-Aids or Advil.
“Usually vending machines are full of junk food and sometimes that’s what people want,” Moyal said. “I plan to give them the things they need.”
Vending machines have long been able to deliver goods of all shapes and sizes, but until now the technology didn’t really exist to track the condition of perishable grocery items easily, let alone remotely from a smartphone.
In fact, Happy Vending is also developing an app for apartment residents that will tell them what is in the machines downstairs. Welcome to the future.
The machines are built in Europe, where vending machine culture is well established and people are already used to buying grocery items as well as hamburgers, pizza and other hot foods. For now, Moyal is focused on the grocery business.
The machines are designed to carry 50 to 70 items, some of which will be selected by surveying the needs of residents, especially for specialty foods, based on the ethnic mix in the building.
Candidate buildings need to have upwards of 250 residents to make the machines viable financially, but Moyal is prepared to install in smaller buildings for a monthly fee.
“I see this as being an amenity that building owners will want,” Moyal said, “like a gym or swimming pool.”