The Wall Street Journal, fresh off this awesome piece on food waste, continued its hot streak with this article/video on produce vending machines in schools.
Unlike the traditional sweets and chips, fresh foods in vending machine provides new challenges to avoid waste. Namely, temperature and bruising.
It’d be easier if the new machines focused on whole fruits or fresh cut veggies. But since they sell both, with their differing temperature ranges, engineers have had to figure out how to keep the bananas at 57 degrees up top and carrots and celery at 34 degrees.
The solution includes keeping bananas up high, which brings bruising damage as every order requires a four or five-foot drop. Engineers created an angled wall to deflect the fall and placed cushions at the bottom.
Pretty soon, though, fruits displayed toward the top will get a luxurious ride down to the bottom in…an elevator. Hey, if grain gets elevators, why not fruit?
These new vending machines are certainly worthwhile, given the nutritional benefits. And the alternatives are frightening. But hopefully the makers will continue to work out the kinks to avoid waste. As one vending company head estimated:
I think the industry average is less than 10 percent product waste. But specific to fresh, it’s much higher than 10 percent.
Comments
4 responses to “Vending Veggies and Fruits”
Apologies if this sounds cynical, but I can’t imagine many kids actually buying fresh produce from a vending machine, given how few choose it in the cafeteria line. Sounds like a recipe for more waste, at least in the short run until we really curb the junk food habit.
Why don’t they just use old school vending machines with the turn table and little door that opens at each level? There’d be no 5 foot fall and no bruising.
When my partner was in college in the late ’90s, he learned that every week on the day before the “fresh” food (mostly sandwiches) expired, a janitor went around his department’s building and threw out all of the not-quite-expired food, so the merchandiser could refill the next day.
He asked and got permission to scoop some of up just pre-trash – all individually wrapped in plastic – and stocked up the fridge that way every week.
At least the apples and bananas don’t have to be individually wrapped.
Fresh healthy vending locations finding places to install your machines is made easily accomplished via our heavily national database of schools, shopping malls, health clubs, hospitals and office buildings where new Fresh Vending machines can be successfully operated.