When was the last time you walked by a vending machine with a line of eager customers?
You may not even remember the last time you saw anyone use that old vending machine in your office, gym, or lobby. However, you may have seen a new sushi, salad, or protein bowl shop open in town and gain immediate traction.
The rising demand for healthier, fresher food is not only reflected in brick-and-mortar retail but unattended retail as well. A healthy food vending machine sells high-quality fresh food 24/7, with grab-and-go convenience, in places where people need it most: an airport, hospital, or campus. Below, we’ll discuss the rise of healthy food vending machines, outline their benefits for both the operator and consumer, and share fresh food sales trends from FoodSpot operators.
Why the Shift Toward Healthy Food Vending
In a recent McKinsey study, over half of respondents reported that eating healthy food was a top priority. However, consumers crave convenience just as much. Deloitte reported that 83% of consumers mention convenience as a major purchase driver, and two-thirds of them would prioritize convenience, regardless of freshness, on busier days. In a world where people are always on the go and restaurants struggle to stay open, healthy food vending machines have gained popularity as the intersection of health and convenience in dining.
For food operators, a food vending machine provides a 24/7 revenue stream without the need to staff up. This is huge at a time when food and labor costs for restaurants have risen 35% in the last five years (National Restaurant Association).
The concept of healthy food vending may be what operators need, but the technology needs to provide the the right experience for both the operator and consumer.
What Consumers Need: Seeing It to Believe It
In Asia, fresh food vending has been around for decades. In fact, vending machines in Japan are what inspired one of our founders to begin working on our smart fridge in 2015. Fresh food vending inherently works in Asia because people trust the safety and quality of the food. In the U.S., consumers need to see it to believe it. Enter the smart cooler.
Smart coolers allow the consumer to access the food before committing to pay. After swiping a payment method, the door unlocks, allowing the customer to pick up the salad and check for freshness, or look at the nutritional information on the drink. Once they close the door, the fridge takes a real-time inventory and charges them only for what they removed. This inventory-tracking technology empowered U.S. consumers with the confidence to buy fresh food in a cashierless setting.
What Operators Need: Flexibility, Theft-Prevention, Food Safety, & Profitability
When operators are selling healthy food unattended, they need to be able to sell a variety of products, and they need the peace-of-mind that the food is safe and people aren’t stealing it. Depending on the type, a smart fridge can check all these boxes.
Smart fridges are powered by one of three technologies: computer vision (AI), weight sensing, and RFID. For healthy food vending, RFID is the best option.
Computer vision coolers use cameras to detect which items are removed from the cooler, so only items that the AI has been trained to recognize can be sold out of the cooler. The largest computer vision smart cooler companies in the U.S. have around 2000 products programmed, and most are consumer packaged goods, like chips and soda. As you can imagine, the technology struggles with fresh healthy food that comes in millions of different shapes and sizes. Additionally, computer vision coolers cannot track individual expiration dates, which is crucial for food safety.
Weight-sensing coolers run into a similar problem. Inventory is recognized by calibrating shelf scales to sense what was removed from the decrease in weight. The scales limit shelf space and require constant calibration from the operator. Most notably, units of healthy fresh food are not always consistent to the ounce, so the system starts to break down when you move beyond mass-produced packaged goods into restaurant-quality fresh food. Again, weight-sensing coolers do not track individual expiration dates.
RFID coolers track inventory with RFID stickers, so products are not limited by AI programming and weight consistency. This opens up the possibility for all types of fresh food to be sold from the cooler, like a gourmet salad, a sushi roll, or a protein bowl. When selling fresh food unattended, food safety is paramount: you can make good margins on selling fresh food cashier-less, but that doesn’t matter if you get someone sick. With RFID, the operator can see individual item expiration dates right from their dashboard, so they always know if product has been rotated correctly by their staff.
All three smart cooler technologies have their own strengths (Check out our smart cooler guide here!), but for the reasons mentioned above, RFID smart coolers are the best option for true healthy food vending. Besides automatic inventory protection and requiring a certain pre-auth amount to unlock, our fridge is equipped with a security camera for an added level of theft-prevention.
With our technology empowering operators to sell healthy food around the country and beyond, we’ve had a front-row seat to healthy food vending trends.
Healthy Food Vending Trends
Below are healthy food vending trends we see across our operators. It’s important to note that each operator is different, and your healthy food vending machine offering should be based on your community’s preferences and your operational resources (see this blog post about merchandising strategy). Here are a few general trends
- Grab-and-Go – The most popular healthy food options are things that can be taken on the go, like a sandwich or wrap.
- Simple Salads – When Americans are craving fresh, they think of salad first. For this reason, salads do well in our microstores because they can be eaten cold and on the go. Simple salads, like Southwest Chicken or Cesar salads, are most popular.
- Poultry Preferred – Chicken and turkey tend to be the protein of choice for most sandwiches, wraps, and salads sold out of our smart fridges. These are common proteins for these meals in general but are also most often eaten cold, which nods to the convenience factor.
- Students & Sushi – Sushi tends to be very popular on our university campuses most likely because it’s tasty, healthy, and protein-packed.
- Dose of Dairy – Yogurt and dairy-based protein shakes are popular items for today’s protein-seeking consumer who still loves something sweet.
- Warm & Cozy – While smart coolers keep food cold, this does not stop operators from putting microwaveable entrees like curry, lasagna, and soup. It’s very common for operators to place a microwave right next to their FoodSpot smart fridge so students or nurses can enjoy a hot clam chowder after hours. These microwaveable entrees typically drive a large portion of ROI for operators that include them.
Making the Healthy Choice the Convenient Choice
Healthy food vending machines make the healthy choice the convenient choice. RFID smart coolers empower operators to sell truly fresh food with the highest level of food safety. The FoodSpot smart fridge offers best-in-class shelf-space, quality, and support (read about the BA1 here). With a microwave, operators can offer a complete 24/7 healthy food amenity to their customers without an expensive build-out, contract, or staff. If you are interested in launching a healthy food vending machine, feel free to book a free demo with one of our food vending experts by visiting our contact page.
