There has definitely been no shortage of vending machines as of late, especially of the strange variety. There was the vending machine that dished out dishes, the one that served up random reads, and the one that let you bypass unpleasant postal workers.
Now check out this vending machine that serves you gourmet food, a la carte!
These vending machines were installed by gourmet food supplier Beverly Hills Caviar in various malls in Los Angeles. Now shoppers who suddenly feel like getting a serving of caviar or escargot can just walk over to the machine and dine away.
When fully stocked, the vending machines carry about $50,000 worth of food products. You can expect to find over 24 varieties of caviar plus exotic food ingredients and dishes like black truffles, white truffle oil, blinis, and bottarga.
It wouldn’t seem appropriate to chow down on caviar using plastic spoons and forks from the food court, so the machine is also stocked with spoons and dishes crafted from mother of pearl.
[via Gizmag]
“Wait a minute,” you might say. “That doesn’t make the Pochtomat much different from the post office.” Well, that’s where you’re wrong, because the packages are left off in the Pochtomat at a railway station near you.
The good news? It only costs two bucks a pop. The bad news? The Biblio-Mat is only for bookworms who live in Toronto. So if you happen to live close to the Monkey’s Paw, then it’s good news for you all the way.
We all know that Japan is one country that is unbelievably clean, and the folks there do have a very high regard for the environment. Well, Coca-Cola Japan is doing its part by unveiling a spanking new range of innovative energy-saving vending machines that is known as Peak shift vending machines. These vending machines will be able to shift the use of power for cooling from the general daytime peak demand period to nighttime, where relatively speaking, there is a whole lot less amount of strain which is placed on power supply.
Vending machines that serve food do not do too well when it comes to hot food, such as porridge. After all, cold sandwiches are easy to store, but EatWave Vending of San Diego, California, has come up with the EatWave – a patent pending, fully automated and refrigerated vending machine that boasts of an internal microwave cooking unit. In a nutshell, EatWave is able to heat up your pre-packaged hot food items in under a minute, as well as deliver a range of snack, cold food and cold drink items, all from a single machine. This is definitely unprecedented, as machines in the past were specialized in the kind of food or drink that they served, perhaps with the exception of drinks machines that deliver both hot and cold drinks.
When it comes to getting fresh milk, you can purchase yours off the shelf from the local store, or milk the cow in your barn, it cannot get any fresher than that. However, some of us who prefer to live out the organic lifestyle are able to check out this particular vending machine in the small British town of Kingham, where it actually dishes out organic, non-homogenized milk from Guernsey cows.