
History of Vending and Coffee Service (2016) - wallflower
https://www.namanow.org/vending/history-of-vending-and-coffee-service
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nihonde
A history of coffee vending that ignores Japan?

I can buy seven kinds of hot or cold coffee on nearly every corner from
Shibuya to the deepest inaka. People outside Japan often focus on the wacky
vending machines, but the real story is the incredible availability and
quality of the standard-issue 自販機. The engineering story of how vending
machine manufacturers repurposed exhaust for heat while keeping cold drinks
cool alone is worth the price of admission.

I'll keep my thoughts about American vending machines (and coffee vending in
particular) to myself.

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Robelius
Now you have me interested. Do you have any links to follow up on?

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nihonde
I’m afraid I don’t. I saw a documentary on NHK about it, but they’re
unfortunately bad about distributing their content outside Japan.

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stevefolta
This one?:
<[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev93FNJy7Ws>](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev93FNJy7Ws>).
Here in SoCal, we can get NHK World over-the-air.

~~~
nihonde
Good find! In my recollection, it was in Japanese, but it’s probably the same
content.

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tyingq
When I was a kid, stuck in a hospital waiting for hours, I poked a pencil up
into the bottom of the cup stack of their automated coffee machine. The kind
that drops a cup down and fills it.

In retrospect, an asshole thing to do. I was, though, at the time, highly
amused. Doctors would walk up, pay their quarter, watch the coffee fill up,
then slowly drain.

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koolba
Good thing you didn't have access to a condom dispenser.

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DonHopkins
The coffee vending machine in the math department at the University of
Maryland had a sticker on it with a medallion that proclaimed that it won some
prestigious award for great coffee.

My friend and I would meet for coffee and to laugh at and admire it, as if
there's some competition between vending machines for best coffee, and it was
a hard-won legitimate award like a boxing title, with judges and urine tests,
that our coffee vending machine successfully defended every year.

But I'll be damed if it wasn't really great coffee! We kept coming back for
more.

Are there really awards for great coffee vending machines? Are they for
brands, or individual machines? Or was it just effective advertising and the
placebo effect? It it possible to buy fake award stickers to affix to vending
machines that subjectively improve the taste of their products? Or maybe there
was some addictive mind altering ingredient in the coffee it dispensed.

~~~
bmelton
I know that feeling. When we first moved northward of Tennessee, everybody
would tell us about how great this little convenience store was. I, as someone
who'd grown up thinking names like Wawa were stupid and dumb, refused to shop
there for a long time, despite having to drive past it for somewhere else.

One day, I was in too much of a hurry to skip them and stopped at the
unfortunately named convenience store, only to marvel at its wonders. It had
coffee, of course, as convenience stores tend to, but it also had a coffee
bar, complete with easily poured syrup containers of sugar (if you're into
that), and a variety of different creamers in half gallon containers so that I
didn't have to fumble with those little creamer packs, readily available
stirrers, etc. It was amazing. Of course, convenience store coffee is
terrible. It's a rule -- only, this wasn't. I mean, I'm a coffee snob -- I buy
my coffee from a micro-roaster who issues the beans just after degassing, and
I usually prepare the coffee in either an Aeropress or a pourover system. I
had an instant hot-water dispenser installed at the kitchen sink set to
exactly 210 degrees... but, despite that snobbery, Wawa somehow managed to eke
out a drinkable cup of coffee, and with all the extraneous luxuries they
offered, it was nothing short of amazing.

7-11 and other convenience stores have started catching on to the coffee bar
aspect of things, but for some reason, Wawa still stands alone in making a
drinkable cup for about ~$1.

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ekianjo
This does not include the games vending machines for the nintendo
entertainment system in Japan, where you could come with a blank disk, pay
with money and go back with a game on that disk that you could use on a NES
with a disk drive.

[http://www.nesworld.com/article.php?system=nes&data=neshardw...](http://www.nesworld.com/article.php?system=nes&data=neshardware_fds)

~~~
mitchdoogle
Japan has vending machines for seemingly everything, most of which are not on
this list.

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zerohm
I once had a business trip (TDY) to Aviano Air Base, Italy. The office
building we were in had an Espresso vending machine that for 0.5 Euro made a
legit Espresso or Americana. We need these in the US and I can't help but
think they would be a big hit in certain places. (Looking at you, Costco)

~~~
stephengillie
Some WinCo and Albertson's near Seattle have a large red coffee machine, where
you can't get a decent cup for $1. Similarly, Starbucks has been providing the
"Starbucks Microsoft" machine to Microsoft and other offices for over a
decade.

Like self-check, this is another instance where we have the automation but do
not use it. Automation is eating the world, except where it's not.

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crispyambulance
Jesus H Christ, one would expect more from a national organization dedicated
to vending machines.

Wikipedia has more and better info:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vending_machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vending_machine)

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petra
I don't get one thing: since current coffee can dispense great coffee,
cheaper, altough it cannot replace the social roles of a coffee shop why isn't
one installed close to any coffee shop?

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tyingq
I don't dispute that an automated machine may be able to dispense great
coffee, but I haven't seen it.

At my various client sites, all the automatic machines dispense vile coffee.
And I'm not picky...I can stand drip brewed Folgers.

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Gracana
There's nothing wrong with drip brewed folgers.

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zwieback
My favorite is the one at the oil change place where they never clean the pot.
Add some powdered creamer for extra deliciousness.

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jsz0
I have a nasty old drip coffee machine (the type you find in hotels, very high
milage) sitting next to my fancy espresso machine at home exactly to make this
type of coffee. I love all of god's coffee children.

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jhull
they should add "1997: When this website template was created"

