Commentary

The brave new world of fresh food vending

Commercial smart fridges, micro markets, an improved food supply chain and other innovations have made it a much easier and more common experience to purchase fresh food in the workplace.

Image: Coolgreens

November 13, 2023 by Sam Roberts — Digital Marketing Manager, Connect Vending

Whether it's breakfast, lunch or dinner, there is always demand in the workplace for fresh food. From sandwiches to ready meals, salad bowls to sausage rolls, we all get hungry and want something filling and delicious during the day.

So, as we steam towards 2024, we thought it would be worth looking at what exactly is on offer from the fresh food vending machine manufacturers, and what product lines are available for customer organizations to offer their employees to keep the hunger at bay.

Smart technology

Though you can still buy the traditional carousel machines to offer fresh food in the workplace, it's safe to say that the industry has moved forward in leaps and bounds since this technology was first introduced.

Commercial smart fridges, micro markets and other innovations have made it a much more natural experience to purchase fresh food in the workplace.

Cutting edge technology including internal camera systems, weighted shelves and RFID tagging are all making their impact on the vending world, each with their own strengths and weaknesses as emerging technologies.

One thing is sure, regardless of the technology being employed — they all aim at reducing the barriers to purchase and deliver a seamless experience for consumers.

Fresh food machines are also now capable of self-monitoring, providing rich data insights back to a centralized system that can be accessed by clients, vending operators and management. This technology helps vending operators better manage inventory of fresh food machines and gives them earlier and more insightful data on food which is due to expire or that is selling poorly.

This offers significant benefits for all parties and helps to minimize food wastage and make operations more efficient, so there's less visits to site needed and fewer miles spent in travel. It's a great demonstration of how smarter use of technology is helping businesses and the wider vending industry improve their sustainability.

But the biggest benefits of smarter use of technology in fresh food machines is to the consumer, the hungry employee who wants high quality food at a reasonable price with a convenient and straightforward transaction process.

Through smart fridges and micro markets, the consumer is better catered for than ever before, through the use of some fantastic self-serve technology and account-based purchasing that incentivizes regular use with rewards.

Having barcode scanning means that vending machines are becoming more and more aligned with the retail experience you'd have at most other food retailers, and now even at clothing and other types of retailers. The future is unmanned retail, and thanks to technology, this is now possible in workplaces.

Micro markets go a step further for customer experience, with open shelves and fridge units enabling a "grab and go" approach like in supermarkets.

Food quality improves

It's fair to say that fresh food machines used to get a bad rap, and for good reason — low quality, long shelf-life food would often be stocked in food machines so that the human interaction was minimal and food waste would be low. In today's world though, the focus has shifted to high quality, nutritious and delicious food, and the way to achieve this is simple.

Rather than stocking long shelf-life products which compromise on taste, texture and general appearance to the consumer, the industry is heading in the opposite direction, taking fresh items that are already full of nutrients and are great quality, and finding ways to make them work in workplace environments.

This has shifted the needle in supply chains and now means that fresh food providers are able to provide fresh food with normal shelf lives on smaller deliveries to sites where they are in high demand, and will be consumed very soon after being made available.

This overcomes a major downside that fresh food vending experienced in past times, where the quality was not high enough to justify the investment in refrigerated vending equipment, forming a cycle that was hard to break.

Now the cycle has been broken, demand is high from employees for fantastic quality sushi, curries, ready meals, sandwiches, paninis and much more. Supply chains are making it easier to have this food available at a price that consumers are happy to pay, and so bringing fresh food into the workplace is a great, affordable option in today's world.

These ranges have also had to adapt to changing consumer requirements, with the introduction of gluten-free, vegan and vegetarian options for staff to enjoy. From a business perspective, staff are much more likely to feel valued and satisfied if their specific requirements have been catered for, and makes their life much more convenient and less stressful.

Flexible payment now the norm

If you've used a fresh food vending machine in the last couple of decades, you've probably had to use a coin mech or note reader to pay for your product. Cash was king for a long time, and fresh food machines were just like any other machine, needing cash and coins to be operated.

Not in 2023 — the vast majority of transactions that now take place in the vending world are done using cashless methods, such as contactless card or through a digital payment wallet.

There's also now the possibility to add funds to online accounts which can be logged into with a fingerprint or other biometric, removing the need to carry a card or payment wallet with you at all.

Ultimately, the power is now in the consumer's hands. If the workplace is one where people are reluctant to use card payments, aren't allowed access to personal phones during the day or has particularly bad access to internet or 4G, there is still the possibility of using cash payments.

One caveat to this would be a micro market/smart fridge setup, where the payment system has no internal coin or note storage and can only accept cashless payment.

But if you're looking to buy a fresh food vending machine in today's world, you'll have access to cashless payments and potentially account-based purchases, thanks to advances in technology.

Whatever your customers' fresh food requirements are, there's sure to be a solution.