Why don't we have cool vending machines in the US?

TriflingToad@lemmy.world to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 466 points –

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.

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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.

Vending machines in the USA are common, but they are typically attached to an existing business. For instance, a Walmart or gas station will commonly host several machines in its entrance area.

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 your fellow Japanese man. They have a long way to go in the xenophobia angle.

Americans often don't respect other Americans, NOR other countries. We also know xenophobia/racism well.

Respect for others property might follow respect for others but that's not a popular concept in America

When I visited california, there was a mall with multiple vending machines like the one in the OP for various foods and icecreams.

Bet it was inside the mall, with a camera watching it. Japanese vending machines like the one mentioned can be just outside nbd.

They were in the hallways, not out on the street. I didn't look for any cameras, but there wasn't any security nearby that would've seen anyone vandalize them. If there were cameras, I can't imagine it mean much to people wearing a mask.

I'm not saying vandalism isn't more common in the US, I'm sure it is in compared to hyper-respectful Japan, but I don't think it's absolutely impossible to have these.

Growing up in the south eastern US vending machines were a common sight in a number of public spaces, and they were completely fine. No idea what third-world parts of the country the rest of these people grew up in.

It’s a shame too because automats used to be a great way for urban poor to get low cost food. I know a vending machine isn’t the same as an automat but they are similar and would be treated similarly.

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. For a time there was cigarettes vending machines near bars but I think those are now forbidden.

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!

Trust and respect are some of the core principles in Swiss education and society. There are those well known newspapers stands that always amaze tourists. They are not locked nor monitored but people still pay for the newspaper.

For the restaurants it can be true but most places will know what you had only because the cash register system works like that (like they take the order on a phone that automatically sends everything to the kitchen and till). It’s mostly because all the systems available on the market works like that.

But as everywhere, things are changing for the worse, there’s more and more violence, disrespect etc.

Fun fact, I once had French friends visiting and they saw a field where you can take fruits yourself, weight them and pay the according price. No human supervision, no cameras. They were amazed and told me "In France we wouldn’t pay for the fruits, steal the money box AND the weighting machine"

Hm, actually now I do remember countryside Netherlands (achterhoek, to be more exact) has (had?) farmers selling their potatoes, strawberries or other produce just by putting them all on a big table next to a road, and putting a sign saying how much they cost with a little plastic container to put your cash in.
Also no human supervision, whatsoever.

Though I haven't seen them as much anymore, and quite some seem to have been replaced by vending machines or disappeared completely...

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):

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.

The pizza vending machine is in a hotel a block away from a larger physical location by for the same company. So similar arrangement. Probably easy for them to maintain

Probably easy for them to maintain

Agreed. I made the maintenance comment as to why pizza vending machines aren't more widespread.

In the USA they lack the population density pressure to make it the most optimal solution of serving food, and the startup costs don't justify changing from human labor to fully automated food sales. Also I bet the quality isn't as good as you think it is from some preserved fried food wrapped in plastic.

Japan loves wrapping everything in plastic. They and the US were the only ones not to sign a promise reduce plastic usage. For all the appearances of Japan being eco conscious, they have this one big issue.

And whales.

Whale meat isn't even that popular. Boomers just like it and like "pissing off the libs". Younger generations don't like it.

Your first sentence hit the nail on the head. Most Americans travel nearly exclusively in their car. Why would they get out of their car to use a vending machine when McDonald's has a drive-thru? Or if they are willing to get out, why wouldn't they just pick up fresher food from a restaurant? Moreover, mobile ordering has solved the issue of having to talk to people.

The US does have some vending machines like this, but pretty much exclusively in areas with very high foot traffic, like airports, train stations in major cities, etc.

Is that really what's happening in the picture OP posted? Like someone puts foil wrapped morsels of... food in there once a week and the machine just keeps a couple hot and ready to go?

Seems very unappealing.

That said here in Australia the food you get at gas stations / road houses is more or less the same, just that there's a person to heat it up and hand it to you.

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Factories I've worked at had vending machines filled with microwavable food (burritos, burgers, sandwiches, etc). All of it was pretty disgusting.

Exactly.

My thought when opening the post was basically, "Can you imagine the depths that American corporations would sink to in a market where they can totally conceal the flavor, size, quality, etc. of their products until after the sale, and not have anyone from the company present, making them totally immune to any negative feedback?"

Presumably the companies behind these things in Japan are at least delivering a somewhat acceptable food item. I wouldn't be surprised in any way to find an American version of this thing dispensing literal dead rats.

My experience here. Had one a place I worked which did breakfast foods (yogurt, breakfast sandwiches, breakfast burritos , etc) with a small microwave slot to heat up after it vended. Food was absolutely gross and it was always dicey if anything it vended was still in date. Only nice thing was the front was see through so you could check which items had visible mold and avoid those...

Was cheaper than the cafe and had better hours (all of them) for my shift, but I don't think the trade off of rolling the dice on food poisoning was worth it lol.

Reminds me of when I had a summer job in a Steel Mill. Two hotdogs for a dollar from a vending machine (AVI). I'd eat that almost every day.

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.

I'd argue places like Sheetz serve a similar function in the US

We do have lots of places like Sheetz that serve a similar function, but to be entirely automated is rare.

Automats might be a closer analog.

In the Netherlands Food Automats are still very popular

Looks cool! How is the quality?

Wow. Those words are so wild that my mind just defaulted to thinking the image was AI generated.

I sure can't wait to get my hands on a speciaaltje kassouffle.

In France they have this: Distributeur automatique de baguette

We have this: and this:

I've been way for too long ! I only knew of Baguette and pizza vending machines. Things are evolving so fast. Today it's potato and mushrooms, tomorrow it will be seeds to grow in your own garden !

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.

Except robots don't need to take as many breaks nor do you have to pay them minimum wage.

You do actually have to pay them more than minimum wage, if you think about it.

Minimum wage in many countries is so low it's not enough to sustain a human. You can't do it to a robot, since it will just not do its job, no matter how many regulators you capture or how many middle management manipulations you pull. You have to pay a living wage to a robot.

This is why "people are still cheaper than robots". What happens if there's a 20% wave of inflation? With workers, it's "we don't give out 20% pay raises, grow up", with robots, it's "here is your power bill, it's 30% higher to cover for any further fluctuations in inflation, pay it or shut your factory down".

Robots need breaks too, if they are not regularly maintained they will start to make mistakes, costly mistakes, and they might break, and when one breaks, you don't just recruit one more wage slave from the fucked up job market, you shell out a lot of money for a new robot.

There may be cases where the price of labor is lower than the price of a specific machine, but the Industrial Revolution was built on replacing labor with capital.

It isn't evenly spread out, but it is something increasingly happening to more and more jobs.

Obviously, automation is changing work, and you can make cheaper robots that will be cheaper than working someone to do the same thing. All I'm saying is there is a significant component next to the direct "pay vs. machine maintenance costs" question.

My point is that companies and employers have got used to a ton of leeway with workers, where they can offload a ton of risk to people just because they are employees.

See for example that one case when that US airline wanted to weasel out of honouring a deal offered by their chatbot. That's them realizing they can no longer just say it's been a mistake made by an employee, as there is no separate legal entity to push responsibility on.

The same with paying a wage lower than living wage. If they pay sub-living wages, then the onus to make up the rest needed to lead a life that enables you to work long term, thus the risk is on you instead of the employer. If they replace you with a robot, and skimp on its requirements, it will break, and there is nowhere to push the responsibility.

I don't see how the use or nonuse AI affects the adoption of a vending machine or self checkout.

Take the case of self-checkouts.

Money is missing from the tally at the end of the day.

In one case, you have an employee as cashier. You can reprimand them, in some jurisdictions even take it from their pay.

What do you do with a machine if money is missing? It may be a tricky customer/thief, it may be just that the machine is not always 100% accurate in certain circumstances, maybe you skimped out on maintenance one too many times. Who do you blame?

That's why there are no vending machines for certain types of goods, or no self-checkouts at car dealerships or "bad neighbourhoods". Sometimes the risk component is too high.

What do you do with a machine if money is missing? It may be a tricky customer/thief, it may be just that the machine is not always 100% accurate in certain circumstances, maybe you skimped out on maintenance one too many times. Who do you blame?

Having dealt with automation in a specific context, the people making these decisions aren't focusing on blame. Instead, there is an assumed increase in shrinkage which gets factored into the cost-benefit analysis on whether to choose automation. The conditions in which shrinkage can happen affects the risk shrinkage.

No one is looking at who to blame if an electronics store goes for self checkout, they are looking to see at how much easier it will be for people to steal from that store compared to if all cashiers are human.

The problem is minimum wage is the break even equivalent of like 2-10k human hours without even factoring in expensive maintenance costs.

A return on investment of 0.5 to 2.5 years is pretty good for companies. You also have to factor the costs of maintaining a space for a human equivalent. Paying a wage doesn't cover all labor costs.

I mean, maintenance is going to be a bitch. Your going to have to pay thousands in travel fees and probably thousands of dollars an hour labor, plus whatever robit parts cost everytime it breaks down. And while it's broken down, you can't earn revenue, like you could just replacing an employee.

You have to pay them minimum wage, It's just called "monthly maintenance expenses" and it's quite a bit more than minimum pay for humans

and it's quite a bit more than minimum pay for humans

Is it? I can buy a vending machine for less than $8000. Converting that cost to minimum wage, that is ~28 full time weeks worth of labor to act as a mechanism to sell items. There are probably a lot of times when the cost in capital is less than the cost in labor.

We used to. They were called Vendo-mats. They had sandwiches and cakes and all kinds of things. They weren't exactly vending machines in the sense that things would fall down. The food was behind a little door you'd open after paying. I'm too young to remember what the stuff tasted like, but it seemed pretty good because the food would always have to be put in the machines fresh every day.

as an elder millennial, I can say they were not that great. I enjoyed the novelty though.

Oh, we had something like this in college. The vendor would load up the... well, actually, it was more like a big version of those little coolers you see in the checkout line in grocery stores—the ones with the sodas and stuff in them. Anyway, the vendor would load them up every couple days. It'd have sandwiches, salads, puddings (which were actually really popular), sodas, Gatorade, water, and a bunch of other stuff. If we wanted something, we would just get it out, scan the barcode on the scanner attached to the handle, tap our phones or cards to pay, and be on our way.

the food would always have to be put in the machines fresh every day.

ate from these on a few occasions as a kid, and no, they were not fresh every day. I remember my mom sniffing egg salad sandwiches and throwing half the ones they purchased in the trash at a rest stop. also had them at rest stops in the UK in the late 80s as well. it was not great.

I’m seeing a lot of advanced retail in US vending machines - inside airports. Food, electronics, cosmetics, all kinds of stuff.

This hints at the problem. Airports have improved security and you have to spend money on a plane ticket to enter so they don’t suffer the same dystopia as public spaces in the US which are trashed and destroyed by any asshole coming through who doesn’t give a shit, including the extremely impoverished and homeless which as a category includes many drugged up people, congenital criminals, and mentally ill. There are some over generalizations here about Americans all having no respect for others and this isn’t fair. Most are wonderful people. But enough Americans suck that it spoils the party for everyone, and broken window syndrome is a thing.

Sidenote: Homelessness_in_Japan is really low because they made some serious efforts to tray and reduce it.

Homelessness in Japan is illegal, so people turn Internet cafe pods into “homes”.

I wonder if they're including those that are living in internet cafes and such. I remember that being a pretty prevalent problem a bit back. Wikipedia says they counted it on 2007, but no notes of whether they continue to include them or not as homeless.

Not discounting their achievement though, they have their shit together, at least way more than the US

That’s interesting. It sounds like people are paying to be in those facilities, where they can get showers and food in addition to a place to be. Almost like everyone is tacitly okay with the arrangement. This is certainly not housing but neither is it exactly homelessness.

I’ll give that a read. There’s also almost no homelessness in San Francisco Chinatown, despite the rest of the city being an open sore. I’ve never heard the whole story about why but I think it’s a combination of active community development organizations offering low cost housing and cultural differences in how families work, how drugs are regarded, and what is permitted out in the open street.

Chinatown is a more unique environment. Lots of foot traffic, sidewalk vendors, and really tight knit community. Its not a scaleable solution though. Hard to make that kinda of super dense area everywhere

Somehow related. There is a Japanese anime where the protagonist is a human that reborns as a vending machine.

Uh where can it go from there

It is quite interesting. I don’t think that there is a better adjective than that. It is called ‘Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon’.

Japan has a lot of drink vending machines, but relatively few food or candy vending machines. This is actually an area where the United States performs strongly. That being said, Japan has a real number of strange vending machines.

I just loved the beer vending machines. Not as much as I would have as a teenager that looked 20 something but that’s why we can’t have nice things here

My company has a vending machine for computer accessories. For example, if you need a replacement mouse, just go over to the machine, wave your badge in front of the sensor, select the mouse, and wait for it to drop

I just saw a book vending machine in an elementary school this weekend....I thought that was kind of cool.

I recall reading that part of why Japan has more vending machines and more variety is the ownership model. In the US vending machines are typically run by companies that service them and collect the revenue. But in Japan, they're typically owned by the shops. So shops are more likely to put a variety of products from their store in the vending machines.

I also suspect a higher incidence of social anxiety increases the demand for them in Japan.

That's just self checkout with fewer steps.

I guess that's what any vending machine is though.

cuz nobody likes eating out of plastic containers in the United States. these vending machines are full of extremely processed garbage taste like shit and produces a shitload of plastic garbage, waste garbage crap. I like Japan.

Have you ever seen the frozen food section of a grocery store?

I always assumed nobody buys that crap except for one town's whale

I can't tell if this is satirical.

Where I am in Canada we have personal pizza machines, coin-op skate sharpening and once I saw a french fries/onion rings one. Coffee vending machines used to be a thing but I think K Cups kind of took that over

Coin op skate sharpening sounds perfect for Canada.

I wonder if I could bring that to Finland...?

Think about it realistically. Considering just food machines, what foods popular with Americans can realistically be sold out of a vending machine?

Popcorn is a clear winner. It can be made in advance, stored for a while, and then easily dispensed. Its profit margin is high. You can charge two dollars for a bag of popcorn that only cost you twenty cents in ingredients.

Packaged food like potato crisps is also a good idea for the same reason. You don't even need to keep the vending machine heated. Similarly, cold drinks and ice cream can also be easily dispensed out of a cooled vending machine, although I don't consider those different from "packaged food".

But what other American classics are there to consider? Hamburgers are out immediately. They're too complex to prepare fresh and most people wouldn't buy a reheated frozen burger.

Hot dogs might be viable, but a machine that sells hot dogs can only see hot dogs due to the mechanical complexity. I think many people would also question the freshness of a vending machine hot dog unless you cooked it right in front of them and let them see it via a glass window. Additionally, a hot dog has a much lower profit margin. If you charge four dollars for a hot dog, it might cost nearly a dollar in ingredients along with the mechanical complexity of the machine. Most people would expect the machine to also dispense condiments like ketchup, mustard, and relish.

Pizza is also complex and would take several minutes to bake from fresh or reheat from frozen. I don't think people would stand around for several minutes waiting for a machine to heat up pizza. Unless you can get the cooking time under sixty seconds, forget it. Pizza also traditionally baked at 700 degrees Fahrenheit, or 370 degrees Celsius. It's not an easy to safely install a component that gets that hot in a machine. Pizza that is pre-cooked and kept warm tends to not taste very good.

Fried chicken tenders will lose their crispness over time, even when kept warm. There is no temperature you can keep fried chicken at where it will remain crisp for hours but also not overcook. Hot oil in a machine is a recipe for disaster. French fries are a possible inclusion (the machine in the post sells French fries), but Americans don't really eat French fries on their own; they are usually served as a side dish along with something else.

Ideally, a machine should be loaded with frozen or pre-cooked food, which it merely keeps warm and dispenses to a buyer when purchased.

Think about Japanese food. Curry, in particular, can be served just barely hot and still delicious. Rice balls can be served refrigerated, as can cold Lawson sandwiches. Instant ramen is also popular, but that's just packaged food that requires a hot water spigot. I argue that Japanese food in general is just more suitable to be served out of a vending machine.

When I was stationed at Camp Pendleton around 2003-ish, one of the barracks I was at had a pizza vending machine. It made cheese pizzas (maybe pepperoni too, but I am not sure) that were a little smaller than a frisbee and cost around $5 (at a time when the priciest McDonald's value meal was almost $5). I never had any myself, but it did take a couple minutes to make and (if I remember correctly) the crust was mostly pre-made. Being able to watch the process (a crust drops onto the conveyor, a robot puts the sauce on, another robot puts the cheese on, another robot puts the toppings on (if any), the pizza is conveyored through the oven) would help occupy the customer's time. If the crust is pre-made, you're really just broiling the cheese and toppings to get them melty and hot.

I don't think the pizza was too tasty or popular, but it was a convenient option if you were drunk.

It's a lot more complex than an ordinary vending machine though. That increases costs. A curry machine is nothing more than a normal vending machine with a heater. A ramen machine is nothing more than a normal vending machine with a tap for hot water. Adjusted for inflation, the pizza machine would cost $8 for a small pizza. You can buy one from Little Caesar's for the same price and it's bigger and probably tastes better as well, since, as cheap at it is, the crust is at least fresh.

Walmart and Amazon have expensive canned bread.

apparently people like it?

https://www.walmart.com/ip/B-M-Brown-Bread-Raisin-16-oz/10291606?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=4296

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

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.

Sometimes those vending machines are very unsanitary and would not pass health regulations here in the US.

Popcorn seems like the simplest to me. Saw one in a subway in Buenos Aires once. Its so cheap and once it pops, the smell sells itself

Needs to be cleaned every day.

By human or machine?

Having worked at a movie theater, I can tell you that the answer is "by a human"

If you can make a machine that cleans a popcorn popper well enough to pass a health inspection, you'll be a very rich person. Especially a small vending-machine-sized popper-and-dispenser all-in-one jobby.

I don't understand the question.

You have a vending machine in a train station cooking greasy popcorn all day. Is there a machine that can clean that ?

Baked on greasy-buttery-ness is very difficult to clean.

Pretty sure a machine that can be built to make popcorn can also.be engineered to self clean. Human maintenance one per week to swap out parts and re-top corn.

I'm sure it's possible but I suspect it's simply not cost effective.

Removing grease requires hot water, harsh solvents, and scrubbing. If you've ever cleaned an oven or bbq or whatever I'm sure you'd agree that it would be very difficult to automate.

I will say while I deeply agree that we don't have a cool vendung machine American identity...

My mall has vending machines for cotton candy that will make shapes, a vending machine for hijabs and other covers, a vending machine for medication and beauty products, a vending machine for umbrellas and a vending machine for weed.

I'd rather just have curry and hot chocolate but hey... Its something.

I don't trust vending machines anymore. I barely used them ever but over the years I got moldy food a couple times and a bunch of times the thing gets stuck and I end up not getting what I paid for. fool me once, shame on, shame on you... fool me, can't get fooled again

I just realized that in something like 200 years, no one is really going to understand the difference between George Bush and George W Bush. Like, they'll know they were two different people, but mis-attributing something that one Bush said to the other Bush will be seen as an easy mistake to make (much like how nowadays, John Adams and John Quincy Adams are seen as two different people but are not really that different in the average person's eyes).

Like, there might be memes of 41 saying "...fool me -can't get fooled again. Heheh" and no one will realize what's wrong with the picture.

That looks more like a hot vending machine

Is this cool because it has Japan signs? Has it any more features than US machines? Or US has no vending machines at all?

There are vending machines but they generally don't serve hot food or nearly the same amount of variety as Japanese machines do. Usually only soft drinks and shelf-stable snacks like candy bars, chips, cookies or crackers.

The US could have more hot drink vending machines, but I think the sort of clientele that wants a hot coffee wants it to be highly customized like the shit you get at Star Bucks. Highly customized, burnt coffee.

I think you underestimate how many Americans just want a cup of Joe with cream and sugar. A whole lot of us are out there drinking gas station/convenience store coffee or brewing a cup or pot every day of store brand pre-ground.

And the ongoing joke about people getting frustrated with just wanting a "large coffee" and being confused by starbucks calling it a "venti" and spouting off about how they don't want any fru-fru mocha-chino late bullshit even though no one asked.

I think the bigger issue is that of how Americans get around and how available real estate is.

Japan has a lot more people who can/will walk, take the train, etc. that's a lot more opportunities for them to walk by a vending machine.

Americans tend to get around in our cars, so if you want to sell them a coffee, snacks, hot meal, etc. they need to be able to park somewhere.

And vending machine food isn't exactly a huge draw, people probably aren't going to go to your parking lot with a row of vending machines just to grab something to eat, so you kind of need something else to draw them in, some bathrooms, gas pumps, or at least convenient parking to other stuff they need to get to, so you might as well stick a gas station there, and since you're going to need a cashier you might as well move that vending inside and you can get more and more variety of merchandise on shelves that you can cram into some vending machines so it might as well just be a convenience store.

This looks like it's serving hot food. US vending machines only have cold or room temp packaged stuff. They're very basic. The range of machines in Japan is seemingly endless, and many of them are far more complex machine wise than what we typically have here.

This is not exactly accurate. There are vending machines in the states which produce full cooked products. I've mostly only seen them in Airports ,and they generally cost more than a comparable meal at an actual airport restaurant .

And to be fair, didn't we invent the Automat? Basically a giant vending machine general store in, like, the 50's? I'd love to see one of those. They sounded rad.

Those automats had a fully staffed kitchen behind them, cooking and placing the food in slots to be bought

Yeah. There are vending machines that will cook you a pizza. It just turns out there isn't that high a demand for vending machine pizza.

This vending machine is serving good that comes out already heated/ at the very least warmed. It's not just bags of chips

Food without a human guarded? Free meal?

I saw an orange juice machine but it had a stupid fancy touchscreen and was out of order.

I feel like there's potential in this if you avoid the temptation to go with a complicated touchscreen and instead just keep everything as mechanical as possible

I saw a ramen vending machine when I was there a few weeks ago. Japan is light years ahead of us in so many ways.

It replaces workers with robots so it would probably save money too.

And now the workers cannot afford bread.

Next move?