PICTURED: HOW WESTO’S NEW MACHINE WILL LOOK IN SITU
When someone said ‘vending’, we used to think of ‘wet and warm’ coffee in a dodgy cup, ‘enjoyed’ with a chocolate bar or a packet of crisps. But the times, they are a changin’…
From our busy lifestyles, a ‘grab and go’ food culture has emerged and with the Nanny State at pains to raise our awareness of sugar intake and calorie content, us ordinary peeps have been made more aware than ever of the possible consequences of our eating habits.
We’ve run out of excuses, to be honest…
Hospital waiting areas, university corridors and large public sites with a 24/7 foot traffic once concentrated on sugary snacks and drinks and although the quality of vended coffee has improved beyond recognition, there remains a dearth of choice when only something hot and substantial will do…
Until now, that is… Westomatic has added a hot food vending system to its portfolio and the company has also sourced ‘the perfect product’ for the new machine, in that it ‘meets customer demand and it’s operator friendly.’
The new Pot Stuff and Westlers product line from The Big Kitchen offers a wide range of popular dishes, such as Irish Stew, Bolognese and Chilli – there’ even an All Day Breakfast – all of which have a twelve-month shelf life. 
Mitch Higginson, The Big Kitchen MD, must have seen our eyebrows raise at the prospect of food with a twelve-month shelf life: ‘Our products are free from preservatives and maintain their shelf life due to the ‘pressure cooker’ style of manufacture’, he said, to our audible relief. ‘They also have very reasonable calorie content and have no added salt.’ That’s a relief, then.
Food Futurologist, Dr Morgaine Gaye was reported in the Daily Mail recently as saying ‘we are moving away from three meals a day towards snacking more and eating on the go, which will increase demand for vending machines and change what we want to be able to buy from them. We are going to start seeing hot-snack vending being much more available’ (You can read the Daily Mail story in full here).
She must have a crystal ball.
‘Hot food vending has always had expensive restrictions for vending operators’, Richard Brinsley, Westomatic’s urbane MD told us. ‘Factors such as a short shelf life, stock fatigue and expensive refrigerated transport put a lot of people off, but now we’ve eliminated those issues by identifying the perfect product to complement our equipment. The partnership of the Easy 6000 drum vendor, the Easy Kitchen Microwave unit and this fantastic new long-life product line will open up new sites and opportunities for operators all over the country. Finally, we’ve got the full hot food package that these sites have been crying out for.’
It’ll be interesting to see how the UK’s operators respond to the offer…
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