Modern vending machines can serve more than just candy bars and bags of chips. These days, you can find vending machines that offer hot drinks, sandwiches, pastries, healthy items and more. You may have even gotten lunch from a vending machine in your office today!
Now, retail giant Walmart has introduced a creative new way for people to buy their groceries from a freestanding self-service vending machine. The vending machine consists of a 20-by-80-foot kiosk erected in a Walmart parking lot in Warr Acres, Oklahoma. It includes a refrigerator and freezer for perishable items, and it’s reportedly open 24 hours a day.
Using a smartphone app, customers can browse more than 30,000 grocery items and place orders that can be picked up later at their convenience. The only restriction is a $30 minimum order on items in the vending machine. Once customers are ready to pick up their groceries, an automated system puts all the items together and delivers them to a drive-up access point on the vending machine’s exterior.
Walmart is currently testing just one of its huge vending machines, but if the experiment is successful we may start to see them crop up in other locations as well. The company’s executives are optimistic that customers will be happy with the added speed and convenience that the vending machine offers. After all, who doesn’t want to expedite their weekly trip to the grocery store?
Interested in outfitting your workplace with a new vending machine? At Orsino Vending, we offer a variety of state-of-the-art machines that serve everything from sodas to sandwiches. Give us a call today or contact us online to learn more.