Healthy School Vending Machines

I’ll never forget the first question I was ever asked in a television interview. I was subsidizing the New Hampshire Healthy School Coalition’s test for determining the possible financial success of healthy school vending in Middle Schools. It was back in 2003. An attractive young newscaster asked me: “ Vending and healthy foods, isn’t that an oxymoron? Aren’t those mutually exclusive?”

The answer was and still is... that a vending machine is just a store with shelves. You can put anything on those shelves that you want to offer for sale. It can be chocolate candy bars or energy bars. It can be high fat apple muffins or whole fresh apples. It can be high calorie milk shakes or 2% milk. It can be deep fried potato chips or lowfat baked potato chips. The products on the vending ‘shelves’ are entirely your choice. The challenge arises with the vending configuration. This is where Vend-ucation offers significant value to public schools choosing to operate their own vending machines for nutritional education and the very significant profits. We configure every vending machine to dispense the healthy vending products that satisfy each school’s wellness policy. We do not offer the usual cookie-cutter machines with gum & mint selections and twenty selections for candy.

We customize most machines to exactly the product configuration each school wants, but we leave room for future changes. You can be as basic or as creative as you like. You can operate healthy vending machines in your schools.

We funded the New Hampshire Healthy School Coalition’s two year Middle School vending test from 2002 through 2004. This was initiated by a committee chaired by a proactive District Food Service Director who soon became a state legislator (Nancy Stiles). The committee included a University of New Hampshire professor, the head of the state Dental Association, various School Food Service Directors, a Dairy Council Nutritionist and me (Jim Dillingham). Six New Hampshire Middle Schools each received a healthy snack & beverage vending machine offering milk, water, string cheese, baked chips, apples, and other nutritional selections. Product sales were incredible! My out of pocket ($25,000) investment was reclaimed in a matter of months from the profits of the machine sales, even after the significant (and audited) sales commissions were paid to the schools. Our machines actually upset some school departments whose income from less than healthy vending machines had dramatically dropped due to the sales of our healthy selections. However, it is always nice to be on the politically correct side of the fence. Yes, Virginia... there are successful healthy vending machines.

If we want healthy snacks and beverages to sell well in school vending machines, there are several ground rules for success. This is where Vend-ucation’s experience and familiarity with the category of retailing known as ‘vending’ offers great value. We are not some simple vending salespeople... hawking cheap steel and plastic machines. We are experienced consultants specializing in successful school self-op vending. We didn’t just jump on the bandwagon... we built the bandwagon. We have been promoting self-op school vending for over 20 years. Fill out a survey on our Contact Us page so that we can offer you substantial estimates of what you could earn from operating your school’s healthy vending machines.