Innovative retail design – new wave vending machines
Earlier this week we reported on the top 5 retail design trends for 2014 that are going to humanise the customer experience – and now we’re looking at another form of less personable innovative retail design, with 5 new wave vending machines from around the globe!
Farmer’s Fridge
Filling the niche for healthy yet convenient food – Chicago-based farmer’s Fridge offers super-fresh salads contained in recyclable plastic jars. Each machine is re-stocked with fresh produce every day. The new salads are prepared daily at 5am and the vending machines are all cleaned and restocked with fresh salad by 10am – any leftover salads are donated to a local pantry (rather than locked in skips like leftover food in the UK). The salads cost between $6 and $8 each and the jars can be returned to the kiosk to be re-use. Every day from 6PM a $1 discount is automatically added to each salad just as the lettuce begins to curl…
The Burrito Box
The Burrito Box operates a similar business strategy in Los Angeles, where it’s replacing the traditional ‘garage food’ at one gas station with a freshly prepared hot burrito with 100% natural ingredients for just $3.The Mexican burrito is a diet staple in LA where even McDonalds sell a breakfast burrito for a couple of bucks – although we suspect the Burrito Box ones might taste better with their natural, ethically produced ingredients…I wonder if Ginsters would take off in the US?
Kagome’s Tomato-based fuel and Chef’s Farm salads
Over in Tokyo – the spiritual home of strange vending.. (wigs for dogs, anyone?) the snacks are no less strange and one Japanese food company have installed a vending machine which sells just fresh tomatoes and tomato-based products aimed at runners. Of course this isn’t the freshest thing to come out of a Tokyo vending machine – back in2010, the Chef’s Farm company launched a machine that actually had fresh salads growing inside it, which were then harvested and dispensed once the coin was placed in the slot…
Fresh Crab or Caviar?
…And if you want something fresh to go with your salad why not hop over to China for some fresh crab. So fresh, they’re still alive…Over in LA a luxury version of this can be found in a Beverly Hills shopping mall where a machine operated by Beverly Hills Caviar contains $50,000 worth of fresh stock including caviar, truffles and escargot with mother of pearl spoons. Let’s hope those snails don’t get into the salad vending machine or all hell will break loose!
