Your Vending Machine Just Got a Whole Lot Fresher

Check out the Farmer’s Fridge – a touch-screen « veggie vending machine » of fresh options. Chicago gets the first taste.

Vending Image 1It’s 3pm.  Your lunch is long gone and you need a pick-me-up.  You cruise the vending machine on your floor, only to feel slightly ickier having even considered downing that Twix. You consider the potato chips, figuring that at least they start with a vegetable.  Do you eventually cave to the pre-packaged temptation?

Enter Farmer’s Fridge, to make these 3pm doldrums a more healthful adventure. Their very first kiosk has plugged in in Chicago, and it offers a touch-screen menu of fresh options.  Founder Luke Saunders, as quoted in Modern Farmer, says that he figured the only two things preventing distributing healthy food was the hgh upfront cost and convenience, and that his « veggie machines » solve both those problems.

Vending Image 2Pick your salad – the Antioxidant, the Detox, the Cheater, among them – and the produce is dispensed in attractive (and recyclable) jars that can stay fresh in your fridge for up to two days. Food is made each morning and delivered to the reclaimed-wood kiosks, and all unsold food is donated to a local food pantry.

There are currently two kiosks in the Chicago area, but Saunders invites fresh fanatics to request a kiosk in their area.

Do you think this innovation will fly?