Foodservice

Automated dining takes flight at Southwest Florida International Airport

For kiosk and vending machine vendors, the trend toward vending-operated food service represents potential for significant expansion. For foodservice brands, it offers a new distribution channel.

Photo: The Evolve eats hot food vending concept at Southwest Florida International Airport. Courtesy of Evolve Eats.

February 27, 2026 by Richard Slawsky

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Anyone who has endured a late-night airport layover knows the scenario. Most of the shops and restaurants are closed, so if we're looking for a late evening meal, it's likely to consist of a pack of peanuts for an entree and a candy bar for dessert.

Airport concessions face growing pressure to provide round-the-clock service while managing high labor and build-out costs. For travelers, that often means limited late-night dining options. Hot food vending aim to address both challenges by providing travelers with a restaurant-quality dining experience at any hour of the day or night.

At Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers, the Evolve Eats concept is part of a trend redefining airport concessions through unattended foodservice. The deployment, powered by automated dining operator Evolvending and food automation platform Just Baked, illustrates how modern vending devices are delivering restaurant-grade experiences.

"I've spent more than 20 years working with airports and became deeply familiar with the structural challenges in food and beverage: high capex, long timelines to open, limited operating hours and a lack of flexibility to adapt to changing food trends," Valentina Ellison, CEO of Evolvending, said in an email interview.

"These shortcomings become especially visible during flight delays and overnight hours, when travelers and airport employees are often left with few or no quality food options," Ellison said. "While automated kiosks have existed for years, no one was delivering fresh, premium hot and cold food at scale, around the clock, with brands people already know and trust. With the support of friends and mentors, I recognized this gap and founded Evolvending to meet a long-standing, unmet demand."

A vending-driven dining model

Located in RSW's Concourse C, Evolve Eats uses vending machines to deliver hot, ready-to-eat meals within minutes. The concept combines touchscreen ordering, temperature-controlled storage and automated heating systems to produce restaurant-branded menu items on demand.

Menu items include White Castle Original Sliders and Cheese Sliders, Asian street food and breakfast selections along with packaged snacks and beverages.

Food is dispensed hot and ready with minimal wait time. The system enables restaurant brands to deploy locations without traditional kitchens, labor requirements or full retail footprints.

"We operate as franchisees of our restaurant brand partners and manage each kiosk end-to-end," Ellison said.

"Unlike traditional vending machines — typically stocked infrequently with generic, shelf-stable products — our kiosks offer fresh food that is prepared on demand at the time of purchase to ensure optimal quality," she said. "With a broad portfolio of well-known brands — including The Cheesecake Factory, California Pizza Kitchen, White Castle, and Wow Bao—we deliver premium hot and cold meals 24/7 vs the traditional cold items in current grab-and-go outlets."

Brand extension through automation

For food brands, vending devices represent a new distribution channel, particularly in environments where conventional foodservice is constrained by hours, labor or footprint.

"Airports are all about speed, convenience and reliability," Sarah Paulson, director of retail marketing, innovation and licensing at White Castle, stated in a company release reported by Kiosk Marketplace. "This automated kiosk at RSW lets us deliver the White Castle experience in a world-class facility in a way that fits how people travel today."

The approach aligns with a growing trend toward hybrid concession models that combine automated retail, brand licensing and unattended operation.

"We apply a disciplined framework when selecting restaurant partners, focusing on the highest-demand airport categories — sandwiches, burgers, pizza, Mexican, healthy options, snacks and breakfast—while prioritizing brands that consumers know, love and trust," Ellison said. "To protect brand integrity and deliver a best-in-class customer experience, we work closely with brand partners, their culinary teams and our machine manufacturers to ensure consistent, high-quality product and execution that reflects positively on both the brand and Evolvending."

Monitoring and controls support food safety

For consumers, receiving a hot meal via a vending machine is a novel concept. Unlike prepackaged snacks, with hot food there are multiple variables that need to be managed.

Remote monitoring of the machines helps ensure food safety. Each food item is assigned a unique QR code to track shelf life, and expired items are automatically prevented from being sold. Machine temperatures are displayed on-screen and continuously logged in Evolvending's software system.

As an added safeguard, every unit includes an independent Bluetooth temperature sensor that continuously monitors conditions. If temperatures move outside approved ranges, vending automatically locks. All food is sourced from approved suppliers and stored, transported, handled and dispensed under strict food safety and sanitation standards.

"On the regulatory side, every city and county has its own rules around permitting, health inspections, and how an unattended hot food kiosk is classified, so we've had to build a kiosk and food solution that meets the criteria of regulatory bodies across the country," said Troy Hutchinson, director of marketing operations for Sarasota, Fla.-based Just Baked.

"On the operations side, getting food distribution right at a national scale is non‑trivial: you're dealing with cold‑chain logistics, product shelf life, and coordinating distributors and logistics so our operators have safe, high‑quality product," Hutchinson said. "We've now done the lion's share of the work to get those challenges behind us, creating processes that are repeatable as we add more locations and more branded food concepts."

Expansion potential beyond airports

The RSW deployment is not an isolated pilot. Evolvending and its partners are expanding automated food solutions across a variety of settings.

"We've deployed Just Baked kiosks across a wide range of high-traffic environments in the U.S., especially where traditional foodservice is limited or closed overnight," Hutchinson said.

Just Baked's network currently includes more than 800 active kiosks, with hundreds more planned through large-scale partnerships with companies including Sodexo, Aramark and Compass in healthcare, education and corporate locations, as well as with Coca-Cola, Ford, Boeing, Amazon, Tesla, SpaceX and Caesars.

"You'll find them in hospitals and medical centers, on university campuses and in student housing, in corporate offices and industrial workplaces, as well as in airports, transportation hubs, hotels, casinos, and other hospitality and entertainment venues," Hutchinson said.

These environments share similar requirements: high traffic, limited staffing and demand for round-the-clock service.

"Our team brings deep experience operating in airports and transit hubs," Ellison said. "We're seeing strong demand and rapidly expanding locations nationwide. At the same time, we remain focused on the significant runway within the travel sector and are intentionally prioritizing disciplined growth in this category."

The Evolve Eats deployment comes as unattended retail expands, supported by cashless payments and remote monitoring. One research firm projects hot food vending will grow9.3% annual clip through at least 2033 .

For kiosk and vending machine vendors, the trend toward vending-operated food service represents the potential for significant expansion. For foodservice brands, it offers a new distribution channel. For airport operators and other venues, it provides operational efficiency and revenue growth. As consumers grow more comfortable with unattended transactions, automated dining will quickly move from novelty to mainstream infrastructure.

About Richard Slawsky

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