Vending Machine Product Trends

CANDY, SNACKS, AND CONFECTIONS

In recent years, candy, snack and confection vending machines sales have made a great recovery. The gain in sales can be attributed to price increase in vending machine candy bars, which are the largest revenue generator for this vending machine product category. Major chocolate companies introduced large –size versions of their top selling products. As a result of this Antares vending machine operators saw a difference in their sales. Profits from candy, snack and confession vending machines went up.

FROZEN FOOD

Frozen food vending machines also made a gain at the expense of refrigerated vending machines. In 2004, the proportion of frozen sold in relation to all food products was the biggest one year increase ever. Frozen food has long shelf life and because of its popularity it now represents the majority of food sold in vending machines. Snack and soft drink vending machines like the Antares vending machines still remain the all time favorite of vending operators. There was also an increase in integrated food vending machines which heat and serve food from a frozen state. They were more costly than simple frozen food vending machines, thus their application was limited.

HOT BEVERAGES

A few years back, hot beverages suffered a slight dip because of minimization of industrial accounts, which provides the main customer base for vending machine hot beverages. In other locations hot beverages vending machines don’t have such a large customer base. In all other locations, soft drinks vending machines like the Antares vending machines always have a strong customer base. However, coffee vending machines have continued to do well as a result of consumer demand. Despite the growing consumer demand for specialty coffee, vending operators minimized investment in the product because of the higher costs of vending machine equipped to dispense fresh specialty coffee. This is the reason that a large number of vending operators prefer snack and soft drink vending machines like the Antares vending machines, which are not highly priced and are easy to manage. Small vending machine operators had to increase coffee prices in order to maintain reasonable profits. Other operators opted to replace hot beverage vending machines with single cup brewers. This reduces investment and increases product variety, but cuts down on vending machine capacity.