Why don't we have cool vending machines in the US?
Why don't we have cool vending machines in the US?
with supply and demand and all... IM DEMANDING CANNED BREAD!! where's the supply 🥺?
It replaces workers with robots so it would probably save money too.
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.
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.
People in the US don’t respect others property. Look at any atm machine or vending machine. There’s no way these things wouldn’t 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
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.
It replaces workers with robots so it would probably save money too.
And now the workers cannot afford bread.
Next move?
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.
I'm with you until the last paragraph. Corner stores are all over the place in Japan. It's fantastic.
That is most likely the right answer.
I’m 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.
TBF I also felt Swiss people are much more trustworthy than most.
I even remember having going out for dinner and the person behind the counter asking what we ordered; seems like a lot of restaurant ordering systems don't keep track of orders because you can trust people being honest when they re-state their order at the counter.
I'm from the Netherlands, also in a very walkable city (Utrecht), and students would vandalise vending machines if they existed!
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):
This is at the Hyatt, ain't it?
Oh that's rad! Wonder if the amount of public areas in cities could relate to have more vending machines. The closest city to me doesn't have a lot of public spaces.
I would imagine the requirement would be high foot traffic. Food has an incredibly short shelf life compared to other vending machine contents. That pizza vending machine likely has to be serviced/refilled/cycled every 2 or 3 days. The cupcake ATM would be slightly longer. Most of the cupcake ATMs are attached to the cupcake bakeries, but allow customers to buy from the ATM outside of business hours or when the line of customer is really long inside.
I just saw a book vending machine in an elementary school this weekend....I thought that was kind of cool.
Yeah we have those outside!
There are a lot of cool vending machines in Japan, but the food ones are usually gross.
Yeah. I prefer the schoolgirl used panties or ass juice ones myself.
Well, I was thinking the coffee or electronics ones. But I'll take your word for it.
That one is actually pretty hot.
Cool it, Tasha.
We have cool ones here, too!
Walmart and Amazon have expensive canned bread.
apparently people like it?
as for cool vending machines... gotta be cool to have cool vending machines.
Oh neat. I go through bread really slowly and often end up throwing a lot of it out whenever I buy some. That could work well for me.
Edit: that seems like expensive bread
apparently it is not shelf stable either, hahaha.
Sometimes those vending machines are very unsanitary and would not pass health regulations here in the US.
We're trying to get away from wrapping everything in plastic film.
That's not a factor, there are a good selection of cellophane-like materials that are biodegradable
Food without a human guarded? Free meal?