UNITED STATES Vending machines going high-tech

Professors sees vending machines someday making made-to-order sandwiches and perhaps eyeglasses.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
In 2015, you won't need cash to score a Snickers. Just swipe a credit card, or a debit card that works only in vending machines. Better yet, dial up the coffee machine from your cell phone and confirm that you'll be having your usual today: a double latte, skim milk, two packs of the blue stuff. It'll be ready moments before you arrive, the $3.50 charged to your phone bill.
Cashless vending. Digital machines. Made-to-order sandwiches. Pasta with red sauce or white?
Vending machines are getting very smart.
It's a little scary.
At the vending industry's annual convention last month, the buzzword was interactivity: machines that can chat with cell phones, e-mail the home office when they run out of Fritos, flash the latest CNN headlines. All of it is happening now, albeit on a limited basis.
"I would say that the great transition that's taking place, and has been awhile in coming, is the idea that vending machines, not all but most of them, will be nodes in a network," says Tim Sanford, editor of Vending Times. "In other words, they'll be truly interactive."
Right now, vending machines that take credit cards -- like Kodak's disposable-camera machines -- are a big deal. The ones that sell unusual stuff -- like the refrigerated live-bait vending machine, offering night crawlers and minnows -- get a lot of attention.
New designs
But those are nothing compared with the Jetsons-like technology coming down the pipeline.
Michael Kasavana holds the National Automatic Merchandising Association (NAMA) Professor in Hospitality Business chair at Michigan State University. Kasavana was at the Atlanta convention last month. He particularly enjoyed the vending machine that traded a traditional clear glass face for a hologram. As you approach, the image on the machine's facade changes, from a 7-Up bottle to a Dr Pepper bottle, etc.
"It's like a commercial that's taking place," Kasavana reports. "It was pretty neat."
There were circular machines, too, so that more than one person could vend at a time.
But Kasavana envisions a day when the global positioning system in your car can direct you to the nearest vendable snack; when robotic vending machines can whip up a ham-and-cheese sandwich with mayo and pickles, and then remember your order the next time; when -- and this is Kasavana's idea, so don't steal it -- a modest vending machine can measure your eyeglass prescription and grind out a lens while you wait.
The professionals he's queried about such a machine are all saying it's doable, he says.
Very popular machines
Americans derive a lot of their nourishment from vending machines. Well, maybe not nourishment.
In 2001, NAMA reports, we bought more than 21 billion cans of soda from vending machines, 10 billion candy bars and 4 billion hot drinks. All told, it came to nearly $41 billion worth of products. (In 1960, the figure was $2.5 billion. In 1990, it was $22 billion.)
Even so, the stigma attached to vending machine "food" (i.e., anything more substantial than a powdered doughnut) has somewhat hampered its market share. Who knows how long that jumbo sliced brisket sandwich has been sitting there?
Kasavana thinks that mind-set is changing as vendors now offer name-brand noshes, like Nathan's hot dogs and Blimpie subs. And fancier fare, too, like fresh pasta and eggplant-and-ricotta sandwiches.
It might also be that Americans are slightly more antisocial than they used to be.
"I think that there are a whole flock of people who would rather go up to a machine and buy a wholesome sandwich," says G.R. Schreiber, president emeritus of NAMA. "Number one, it's going to be clean -- it's not coming off a dirty grill somewhere. It's wrapped and kept cold until you're ready to eat it.
"And number two," he adds, "they don't have to put up with clerks."