Tag: retail vending machine

Vending Machines in Retail and Office Spaces are on the Rise

Posted on by John Van Horn

Office and retail vending machines have become extremely popular in recent years; with many placed in hospitals, schools, office buildings, airports, outside in front of your local department stores, and almost any place where there is a high volume of foot traffic. These vending machines provide cold and warm beverages, snacks, candy, sandwiches, electronics and much more. You have probably even seen a vending machine that sold feminine hygiene products, Apple iPads and even stamps – this type of retail vending machine has become popular to assist users get what they need when they need it most.

Intelligent Dispensing Solutions has come up with new and unique ideas for retail vending, the most popular being the office vending machine able to dispense office supplies and any other item an employee may need in order to get their job done efficiently. The office vending machine has proven to reduce inventory shrinkage by 25% and increase employee productivity.

The Wittern Group

, is a vending machine U.S. manufacturer that has been in operation for over 80 years. Staying ahead of the curve, The Wittern Group is expanding research development in an effort to bring new innovative vending technology to the market. Heidi Chico, is the co-owner and CEO, said new “controlled dispensing solutions” are being sought by a variety of industries, from healthcare to retail to maintenance and repair.

“We’re breaking the barriers and moving on to bigger and better markets,” she said. “For that we need to sort of reinvest in the future and make machines smarter.”

The City Council voted unanimously to be a sponsor organization for the company’s application. Which doesn’t necessitate a financial counterpart from the city.

Chico said the company will still design and manufacture traditional food/beverage retail vending machines. However, there is a demand by some businesses who are looking to manage cost control and inventory, something The Wittern Group has built into many of their vending units.

Office Vending Machine

An office vending machine is an excellent way to keep employees stocked with the supplies they need to do their job. It is also more convenient for the employees to walk over to a machine swipe a card and remove the supplies they need, in place of walking to the supply room and searching for the supplies, which can sometimes be in a messy room and could take a good amount of time to find, hence loss of productivity. The office vending machine also cuts back on shrinkage – no more stealing pens, paper, rubber bands, or any other type of office supply.

If an office vending machine sounds like something your office could use, then you should call Intelligent Dispensing Solutions  at 877-771-4446 and order your office vending machine.

Healthy Vending Options for Hotel Travelers

Posted on by John Van Horn

When it comes to traveling, most of us are familiar with hotel vending machines. From a bag of chips to a chocolate candy bar, we’ve all ended up in our hotel rooms eating a rather unhealthy vending machine dinner choice. What if vending machines offered healthier options, though? Would you be more prone to frequent them? Probably, and this is exactly what Anjana Kallarackal thought when she submitted the idea to Marriott’s Travel Brilliantly campaign.

What about you? Are looking for a way to offer your customers or employees with better vending options? If so, you should definitely take advantage of today’s healthy hotel vending machines. Take for instance that you’re operating a hotel. By offering your guests with vending options that include fresh salads, fresh fruits and veggies, and even freshly cooked meats, they will be much more likely to have dinner in their rooms or in the lounge area. More importantly, they will greatly appreciate that you care about their nutrition. In return, this will boost guest loyalty.

Healthy hotel vending machines also make for an excellent way to impress your employees. Instead of them having to go out for lunch each day, they can purchase healthy foods right in the office. Being that they won’t have to go out for lunch, they will have more time to socialize with other employees, which will lead to a boost in employee morale. Offering healthy vending options to your workers will also help maintain low-rates of employee turnover. Workers will be able to see for themselves that you truly care about their health and well-being.

No matter the industry that your company operates in, it can benefit from healthy vending machines. From courthouse vending areas to daycare centers, everyone loves having access to healthier foods. Keep in mind that when offering healthy vending options, your vending machines need to be working top-notch. The heating and cooling of fresh items is extremely important, meaning you may need to invest in a higher-quality machine. With Intelligent Dispensing Solutions, you can rest assured that all of your vending machine-related matters will be attended to in the most appropriate manner. From maintenance to stocking, Intelligent Dispensing Solutions is your go-to healthy food vending service provider.

Redefining The Retail Experience

Posted on by John Van Horn

The very nature of the retail experience has been changing dramatically over the last several years. Even as recently as 15 years ago, you essentially had one option if you wanted a particular item – you left your house, got in your car and drove to the nearest appropriate store. The Internet changed all that and made it easier than ever to get items delivered right to your home with no car trip necessary. Now, a new type of vending machine solution is poised to take things one step farther by offering a huge range of different items that you wouldn’t normally find in these machines.

When you think about vending machines and the products inside them, you probably call to mind images of potato chips, soft drinks and candy. Items like designer handbags, cupcakes and children’s toys probably don’t fit your mental image of what a vending machine is capable of. The city of Toronto is working hard to challenge your perception, however, by installing a wide range of high tech machines around the city.

Deluxe vending machines are already popping up all over the Toronto area stocked with items like novels, beauty products, clothing and more. These items are strategically located in some of the busiest areas of the city, making them ideal for both tourists and residents alike.

These types of innovative retail vending machine solutions are truly taking the automated retail experience to the next level. In addition to the fact that they’re already starting to sell the types of items that you wouldn’t normally expect to find in a vending machine, they’re also playing music and even the latest Hollywood blockbuster in an attempt to attract the attention of everyone who passes by.

The retail experience is one that is in a constant state of flux that started with the advent of the Internet. Now that innovative vending machine solutions are automating the retail experience even further, it will be truly interesting to see what consumer shopping looks like five, ten or even fifteen years from now. Intelligent Dispensing Solutions will be there inventing and reinventing along the entire process.

Source: http://www.thestar.com/business/2015/05/08/how-a-new-breed-of-vending-machine-is-poised-to-take-on-retail.html

How To Avoid The 3pm Office Lull

Posted on by John Van Horn

custom vending machinesWe’ve all been there. It’s 3pm, you just ate a nice lunch at 12pm. But now the tiredness is creeping in and you are in need of a pick-me-up because even though you are tired, you still have that deadline to hit.

Somehow, the entire day just catches up with you and it’s a struggle to keep your eyes open and to not have your head smash into the keyboard. Taking a quick stroll around the office does nothing. If anything, it’ll make you even more sleepy.

The solution (besides a 4th cup of coffee)? Food. Food, especially anything with caffeine and sugar, will push you through the next two hours of work. Office vending machines are a simple solution to the food problem. Workers don’t have to waste time during the day to head to a store for refreshments. Instead, they can find the perfect snack in the break room. Of course, not all office snack machines have to be loaded with just candy bars and soda. You can choose a mix of healthy items and treats to keep you and the rest of the office happy and, most importantly, awake.

Visit Intelligent Dispensing Solutions to learn more about office vending machines and don’t let the “3 pm sleepies” keep you from getting your work done and hitting that deadline.

Have You Heard of Oasis? Robotic Retail Food Units to Bring Healthy Options to Food Scarce Areas

Posted on by John Van Horn

Have you ever wondered what type of benefits would be offered if healthy foods were available from a vending machine? While this may seem like something right out of “Back to the Future,” this is something you could be seeing in your area and very soon. Increased technology and the need to make good food accessible in food desert areas, has led to the development of this revolutionary product.

The latest Robotic Retail units will be stocked with foods such as eggs, milk, bread and healthy, prepared foods, such as salads that would otherwise only be found in a grocery store. The pricing in these units will not be astronomical either.  In fact, they’ll be right on par with what you would pay at your local grocery store. This makes getting healthy foods much easier for people who don’t live near a grocery store, don’t have a car to get there, or simply live in food scarce area.

When you shop a Robotic Retail vending machine you can pay with cash, a credit card, or a debit card, as well as with a Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program card, or other food assistance cards.

These machines, which are being called the Oasis 24seven are approximately the size of a shipping container. They hold between 200 and 800 different items, weighing anywhere between one ounce to 10 pounds. When you shop with the machine you will make your selection on a computer screen, and then a robotic arm will deliver your selected items.

While there are similar machines currently on college campuses, the goal of the Oasis 24seven is to provide access to food for those who may not have it.  And not just any food – but healthy, quality foods for those who may otherwise only have access to processed options.

In addition to benefiting those in areas where access to healthy foods may be low, these machines can help to reduce issues of theft. The inventory control in this machine is superior to even the highest quality grocery store security systems. Why? Because patrons do not have access to the actual groceries. Instead, they will enter their selections into the computer screen, and then have it delivered by the robotic arm and conveyor belt.

The first Oasis 24seven healthy food vending machine is going to be located in the Greater Des Moines area. However, if the trial run goes well, there is a good chance you will see one in your local area before you know it.

New Social Commerce: Vending Machines

Posted on by John Van Horn

TweetShirt-02It’s no secret that social media is more popular than ever. Twitter in particular is taking the world by storm, boasting hundreds of millions of dollars and a true billion dollar valuation to its credit. It seems that Twitter users can’t get enough of the “micro blogging” service and companies in many different industries are finding bold new ways to meet that demand. One possibility for social media interaction in the not too distant future has to do with the pairing of the vending machine manufacturer and social media-enabled vending machines.

Brands like Old Navy and Nike have zeroed in on an idea that is brilliantly simplistic. Patrons can walk by a Twitter-enabled vending machine, post a tweet about a product or service that the company offers and get some type of reward for their trouble. Old Navy has already begun rolling out these social commerce twitter vending machines in Japan to great success. After posting a tweet about Old Navy brand flip flops, users of the vending machines can actually get a pair of those flip flops to call their own.

Old Navy has had similar success with these types of campaigns in the United States. In years past, the brand had installed 28 machines in strategic locations in major cities like New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Not only did the company get promotion via the tweets, but the media attention also funneled directly into its big summer sale.

According to Evigo.com, these types of digital media vending machines accounted for 3,500 different tweets and 12 million impressions. Though that may not necessarily sound like much for a social networking site with hundreds of millions of users, it’s important to keep in mind that these campaigns were limited in their scope to this initial roll-out. Representatives from the companies involved were very clear that driving traffic wasn’t the goal – building excitement and displaying true innovation in the realm of social media is the prize that they were after and it’s definitely a prize they seem to have obtained.

These social media vending machines are a true example of “out of home advertising” and taking marketing campaigns and word of mouth to bold new heights in a digital age. One of the major factors that brands love about Twitter is that it is a great way to get customers involved in their marketing campaigns. Tweets can be seen by millions of people all over the world, creating the type of brand awareness in an instant that most companies only dream of. If social media campaigns like the type that Old Navy, Westin Hotels and other major brands like Nike are any indication, “social commerce” isn’t an idea that always seems to be just over the horizon – it’s one that is already here.

IDS | Twitter Activated Retail Vending Machine by Eddie Bauer

Posted on by John Van Horn

Eddie Bauer NYC Store OpeningTwitter is the second most popular social networking site on the planet, behind only the Internet behemoth Facebook. With hundreds of millions of users all over the world, it is also seen as a bold new source of both resources and innovation in terms of retailers. Eddie Bauer is just one example of a retailer that is using the social networking site to its fullest extent by installing Twitter-activated retail vending machine solutions in certain locations.

The Twitter-activated vending machine will be on display when Eddie Bauer opens a new store in New York City in the spring of 2015. The Eddie Bauer vending machine will be available for customers to interact with for the first two weeks after the store is opened. Not only will the machine be specifically designed to dispense the brand’s famous line of outdoor adventure products, but it will also offer discounts, gift cards and other promotions for people who Tweet using the @liveyouradventure hashtag and @eddiebauer Twitter handle.

For those who don’t want to wait that long to interact with a social media twitter enabled vending machine, Eddie Bauer is also opening a holiday “pop up” store in New York City that will feature the hardware throughout Christmas and New Years.

One of the major benefits of retail vending through IDS has to do with security. All IDS automated vending machine solutions are physically secured in such a way that puts bank vaults to shame. Not only is the frame of the vending machine itself secured with high grade steel, but it also uses high grade security glass. Customers will be able to clearly see the products on display but will never be able to gain unauthorized access. Regardless of the location in which these machines are placed, the vending machine manufacturer has gone to great lengths to make sure that all merchandise stays as safe as possible.

Retail vending through IDS is also secure in terms of digital security. Customers will still be able to access merchandise using all of the means that they have become accustomed to – fingerprint readers, credit cards and even traditional cash. Advanced technology called iQ Technology, however, makes sure that all customer information that is entered into the machine is secure at all times. Retailers won’t have to worry about hacking and other types of digital theft, as no credit card or other sensitive information is stored on the servers in the first place.

Twitter-activated retail vending machines are just one of the many ways that retailers are engaging with customers on their own terms – namely, in the digital realm. It is a true example of innovation at its finest and can be seen as an inspiration for retail businesses of all types to see the Internet not as a threat, but as a bold new frontier.