If you want it, and you want it now, there's a place to go. Especially if it's meat—locally sourced raw meat—that you desire. Entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in the vending machine business in the Hudson Valley. It's modern, convenient and oh, so cool. Using vending machines for fresh food delivery may not yet be a visible business trend, but they're multiplying. Freshness, a lasting food trend, could become available around the clock.
Josh Applestone, craft butcher of Applestone Meat Company and the founder of Fleisher's Grass-fed and Organic Meats, has installed two carousel refrigerated vending machines in a room adjacent to the Applestone meat processing plant in Accord. They're available 24/7 with Cryovac-packaged, fresh, USDA- approved meat. All the products come directly from a local farm to the processing plant and finally to the vending machine.
The vending machines featured at the Horn & Hardart Automats Applestone recalls from childhood were his initial inspiration. Put in a nickel, open the glass door, reach in, and pull out an inexpensive and nourishing meal. It was all the rage. "They made a big impression on me," Applestone says, "which I hope will translate into the experience people have with our vending machines."
One-time vegans, Josh and Jessica Applestone, have long been pioneers in the sustainable meat industry. They revived nose-to-tail butchering in retail stores that offered a purchasing alternative to factory farming by sourcing from small local farms. "When we opened, we stuck with traditional products: steak, chops, burger meat, sausages—everything you'd find in the traditional butcher shop of times like my grandfather's," says Applestone, "but we reinvented it. What we did didn't exist before, except in shares of beef directly from small farms. It was sourced carefully, and still is; we brought attention to some oft-neglected cuts to promote the noise-to-tail/no-waste philosophy—not to mention that it tasted miraculously better than any other meat out there." Their first Fleisher's shop, in Kingston, fostered conscious consumers who now knew where their meat was coming from. It was locally raised, grass-fed, and organic, and had no antibiotics or hormones. "There has been a real change in the industry since we started Fleisher's," says Applestone. "And a lot of the people who started small butcher shops across the country walked through our doors."
As there is no retail shop at Applestone's it's possible to offer more affordable good quality, local meats—a sustainable approach. "By not having a shop we can keep all of our manpower at the back of the house," Applestone says. "In directing the energy of our consumer toward an automated system, we can focus the majority of our energy toward running the safest and most productive facility possible." The facility's multifaceted staff members are not just counter people.
Applestone's first foray into achieving the goal of increased affordability and accessibility is the installation of the two vending machines in Accord. "It's served as a kind of prototype for what's to come," says Applestone. "The response has been huge, and it's helped us shape where we're headed with this concept."
Tammy Carlile, who lives in Kerhonkson and works in Kingston, stops by the Accord location frequently to use the vending machines. "I hadn't been able to eat meat," she says. "Because of some general allergies to antibiotics, I'd get migraines when I did." Tammy has tried the hot dogs, sausages, and rib-eye steaks and doesn't get sick anymore. She's thrilled with the meat she can now purchase easily, any time, that comes from pasture-fed animals without antibiotics.
Applestone will have a new location in Stone Ridge open by the end of the summer with three new machines that are temperature-monitored, with food safety systems in place. "There will be more convenient features," Applestone says. "For example, you won't have to swipe your card multiple times to make multiple purchases, like you do with the ones we have now. We'll be introducing informative elements, like touch-screen displays with detailed product information. Expect some new kinds of products, new packaging. Also fun elements for kids and pets."
The Applestones are also interested in the community-oriented aspect of their business. They've started a garden and hope to create a lasting environment that their friends, families, and visitors to the region can enjoy for a long time to come. Applestone says, "Like the Automats, I want to make something that will be engrained in people's memories forever, something that they'll tell their kids about."
Applestone's automated machines might be the first in the Hudson Valley, but there have been vending machines with meat in France, especially Paris, for years. For 10-20 Euros ($11-22 US) you can get vacuum-sealed sausages, steaks, beef carpaccio, Basque ham, chicken, and eggs. A butcher in the French medieval city of Mennetou-sur-Cher (pop. 906) offers in his vending machine a specialty sausage of the area called andouillette that is rarely seen outside of France. It is made from a pig's intestinal system and has a gamey and strong scent. There is a saying about it that might be suitable to our current election cycle: "Politics is like an andouillette—it should smell a little like shit, but not too much."
Also in France, you can get a freshly baked baguette from several different 24-hour automated machines. The partially baked bread is baked on order for 60 seconds and left another 30 seconds to cool. In places where there is no bakery it's been a boon. So when bakeries close or go on holiday, the French can still get their daily bread.
Closer to home are fresh salads from custom-designed vending kiosks sold only in Chicago from Fresh Farmer. Gabi Fitz, who lives there and has used them, says she "wishes they were in many other places, since it's difficult to find fresh salads here." Intrigued, Daina Lyons, also of Chicago, tried them out recently and was superpleased with the results. The salads are offered in recyclable jars with the dressing in a small cup on top. "There's forks, napkins, and a small paper plate, and even a recycling bin on the side of the machine," she says. She was duly impressed by the touch screen, the neatly arranged salads and the fresh, mainly organic and locally grown, produce.
This system, started in 2013, was the brainchild of Luke Saunders, who just wanted to solve a problem. He traveled a lot and couldn't find nutritious, healthy food on the go. After modifying existing vending equipment, including designing reclaimed wood frontispieces, he put his first machine in a food court. Contacted by phone, Fresh Farmer confirmed they would soon have 45 machines throughout the Chicago area in hospitals, food courts, universities, and high schools. The machines are restocked between 2am and 10am, and leftovers go to food pantries.
Got a craving for caviar? Where else but in Beverly Hills, California, will you find caviar vending machines? Beverly Hills Caviar is sold in tins from the company's "automated boutiques" in three shopping centers since 2012. Cash only. A lot of development went into their machines and some patents were filed. You might have to fly to London to get the champagne from the Moet & Chandon vending machine at Selfridge's, though.
In San Francisco, Byte Foods offers credit card-accessed workplace refrigerators that are filled with packaged, healthy foods and beverages that are mostly locally sourced. The chip system Byte machines use is unique, since you are only charged for what you remove from the fridge. The boss pays a rental fee.
Since 2012, Sprinkles Cupcakes, a chain with 16 bakeries, have had "Cupcake ATMs" outside its shops. For $4, when the slide door opens, you can get the cupcake of your choice (from a touch screen) in a box. There's one in New York, next to the Sprinkles bakery on Lexington Avenue.
For the past seven years, in Cedar Creek, Texas (15 miles east of Austin), at the family-owned Berdoll Pecan Candy & Gift Company, a machine on the porch has been offering, at $19.50 each, fresh, chilled homemade pecan pie. Owners Jennifer and Jared Wammack say they also have "honey-glazed pecans, chocolate pecans, halves, pieces, jerky, and 15 other kinds of pecans"
Owens Meats, which calls itself "the Candy Store for the Carnivore" is in Cle Elum, Washington. Owens has 16 vending machines disbursing different meat products—all dried, no fresh meats—scattered around mid-Washington State. They are all refrigerated, and decked out with wireless technology and telemetry alerts that give the twin Owens brothers, Doug and Don, daily and hourly sales reports. The 15 different products, which are mostly various types of jerky and pepperoni that include a "trail mix" of pepperoni, beef jerky, turkey jerky, and cheddar cheese, get restocked weekly.
Then there's the Burrito Box, which calls itself "a fully automated Mexican restaurant in a box." Started in a gas station in Los Angeles, there are now Burrito Boxes in Grand Central Station and elsewhere.
With one vending machine per every 23 people, Japan could easily claim the title of the vending machine capital of the world. Cities there are replete with machines offering everything from bananas (trademarked by Dole, with a courtesy bin for the peels on the side of the machine) to apples, cooked rice, cans of bread, eggs, cups of noodles, natto (a traditional breakfast dish made from fermented soybeans), ice cream, soft serve ice cream, and yakisoba (fried wheat noodles). And there's the vending machine that grows and dispenses 60 fresh lettuces a day using 40-watt fluorescent bulbs and foam growing pads. Another machine is geared to natural disaster preparation and dispenses water, for when the water supply is cut off, and evacuation information.
We've come a long way from the earliest known coin-deposited distribution devices in 215 BC that dispensed holy water at Egyptian places of worship. The contemporary pluses of instant gratification and getting more fresh, basic, and specialty items available locally depend upon consumer demand and the balance between sustenance and desire. As farmers and other business entrepreneurs look for more ways to distribute their products, a freestanding, refrigerated vending machine might be the 21st-century equivalent of the pushcart. We can let our imaginations run wild with the novelty of local, fresh food vending machine ideas. Dinner is just a touch screen away.
