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with supply and demand and all... IM DEMANDING CANNED BREAD!! where's the supply π₯Ί?
It replaces workers with robots so it would probably save money too.
Where I am in Canada we have personal pizza machines, coin-op skate sharpening and once I saw a french fries/onion rings one. Coffee vending machines used to be a thing but I think K Cups kind of took that over
Vending machines work better when there's more foot traffic and more density.
Vending machines with specialty goods (as pictured) need to be restocked every day and they require even more foot traffic. I think this is the biggest factor why OP's vending machine is not viable in a lot of places in the US.
Americans would just crush themselves to death on them
I saw an orange juice machine but it had a stupid fancy touchscreen and was out of order.
I feel like there's potential in this if you avoid the temptation to go with a complicated touchscreen and instead just keep everything as mechanical as possible
Food without a human guarded? Free meal?
People in the US donβt respect others property. Look at any atm machine or vending machine. Thereβs no way these things wouldnβt be vandalized immediately.
This is the answer. Japan has a lot of respect for others (well, for other japanese at least), so these types of machines will last a lot longer; making the payoff more palatable.
Place a vending machine outside in America, and it'll be vandalized in a week max.
Even in highly walkable cities, you don't see vending machines. It has nothing to do with cars, it has to do with the culture of the US being one of disrespect most of the time.
Vandalize? .... the entire machine would be stolen. Either by thieves wanting to steal the merchandise or money or both. Or a bunch of teens that would tie a chain to it and drag it to the end of town for fun.
Completely this. Americans don't like letting other people have nice things. A vending machine would be vandalized, filled with glue as a TikTok prank, attempted to be stolen, and stop working within a few days.
Americans don't really give a shit about other people. We're more individualistic. You got yours? Good. Fuck everyone else. If we have to have protests and fundraising efforts to TRY to convince people to help others -- we got a long way to go.
Japan is built on respect for your fellow man. You can leave your wallet out somewhere and someone would return it immediately.
Respect for others property might follow respect for others but that's not a popular concept in America
Too much reliance on cars for transportation and commerce built around that. Compared to Japan; we don't have the opportunity for vending machines except when we are contained to a location without the ability to go to a store that isn't that "far". We have a larger scale of living; a half hour drive is normal to us, but a half hour drive for other countries is at the tipping point of finding a place to stay for the night and a vending machine selling a common foodstuff makes sense.
If you were forced to walk everywhere and "corner stores" were infrequent, vending machines would be far more common and worthwhile for owners of those machines.
That is most likely the right answer.
Iβm in Switzerland and we have vending machines (not as cool as the Japanese ones tho) because we walk past them everyday.
They are generally on the pavement near post offices, at train stations and other large public transportation places. For a time there was cigarettes vending machines near bars but I think those are now forbidden.
I'm with you until the last paragraph. Corner stores are all over the place in Japan. It's fantastic.
Bro, do you even vend?
Pizza vending machine in Seattle:
Cupcake ATM in Beverly Hills (and 3 other cities I've been in including Orlando FL and Las Vegas):
In the USA they lack the population density pressure to make it the most optimal solution of serving food, and the startup costs don't justify changing from human labor to fully automated food sales. Also I bet the quality isn't as good as you think it is from some preserved fried food wrapped in plastic.
Japan loves wrapping everything in plastic. They and the US were the only ones not to sign a promise reduce plastic usage. For all the appearances of Japan being eco conscious, they have this one big issue.
Japan can have more vending machines, because their culture raises people in a way that they have less vandalism and the companies take more responsibility for problems with vending.
I thought you were going to say that their culture is more insular and less sociable, because that would be a better explanation than the popularity of vending machines.
I'm in France. There is a gas station near me with three vending machines : drinks, pizzas, and CBD.
The pizza one is mostly fine. The grid protecting the screen was torn apart. Tbf it was annoying. The drinks one is damaged, and is now protected by a metal cage. The CBD machine is completely destroyed.
All publicly available objects in France end up like this.
Factories I've worked at had vending machines filled with microwavable food (burritos, burgers, sandwiches, etc). All of it was pretty disgusting.
In the Netherlands Food Automats are still very popular
Wow. Those words are so wild that my mind just defaulted to thinking the image was AI generated.
I sure can't wait to get my hands on a speciaaltje kassouffle.
My boss once said that you can abuse human workers, you can underpay them, you can worsen their conditions (and if you do it slowly) they might not notice, or they going to work even harder to survive. Worst case scenario they quit, and you just find another one "new" and repeat the cycle.
But you can't underpay robots. You can't abuse them. Why? Because they just break. You skip on maintenance, on working conditions, on anything around robots - and you are looking on fat sum of money that just going to get burnt on a new robot and its installation.
So no, robots are not going to save money, especially in this scenario, because abuse would be massive.
We used to. They were called Vendo-mats. They had sandwiches and cakes and all kinds of things. They weren't exactly vending machines in the sense that things would fall down. The food was behind a little door you'd open after paying. I'm too young to remember what the stuff tasted like, but it seemed pretty good because the food would always have to be put in the machines fresh every day.
The Horn and Hardart automat was an interesting bit of early 20th century Americana.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Horn_%26_Hardart_automat.JPG
Japan has a lot of drink vending machines, but relatively few food or candy vending machines. This is actually an area where the United States performs strongly. That being said, Japan has a real number of strange vending machines.
Somehow related. There is a Japanese anime where the protagonist is a human that reborns as a vending machine.
Been watching it. It's fucking wacky
Iβm seeing a lot of advanced retail in US vending machines - inside airports. Food, electronics, cosmetics, all kinds of stuff.
This hints at the problem. Airports have improved security and you have to spend money on a plane ticket to enter so they donβt suffer the same dystopia as public spaces in the US which are trashed and destroyed by any asshole coming through who doesnβt give a shit, including the extremely impoverished and homeless which as a category includes many drugged up people, congenital criminals, and mentally ill. There are some over generalizations here about Americans all having no respect for others and this isnβt fair. Most are wonderful people. But enough Americans suck that it spoils the party for everyone, and broken window syndrome is a thing.
Sidenote: Homelessness_in_Japan is really low because they made some serious efforts to tray and reduce it.
My company has a vending machine for computer accessories. For example, if you need a replacement mouse, just go over to the machine, wave your badge in front of the sensor, select the mouse, and wait for it to drop
I just saw a book vending machine in an elementary school this weekend....I thought that was kind of cool.
We used to have cigarette vending machines here, but nooo, all the people worried about not dying of preventable diseases had to go and ruin the fun.
