THE AUTOMATIC

School Cafeteria

Vend-ucation provides automatic cafeterias, offering student access to meals, fresh food and Smart Snack compliant refreshments through School Lunch POS integrations wherever students congregate.

What Can Vend-ucation Do for Your School?

Reimbursable Meals & Increased Income

Speed Up Lunch Lines

Increase Income

Increase Sales without Increasing Labor

K-12 Vending Success Stories

POS-connected vending has positively impacted our school nutrition program by increasing access, improving efficiency, and offering a food service option that students are genuinely excited about! By integrating vending machines with the school’s point-of-sale system, students can purchase snacks using the same payment methods they use in the cafeteria, creating a seamless and quick experience. High school students especially appreciate the option to use their credit cards!

This system has also expanded our revenue streams by providing a more passive and consistent way to generate income. Overall, POS-connected vending extends access to healthy food beyond traditional meal periods while supporting the long-term financial sustainability of our program.

– Laura Wagner, MS, RDN, Nutrition Services Coordinator, Thompson School District

The administration of both buildings are already saying we need more machines. They love it! It has been so rewarding for us as a department to just see how successful these have been! The kids pretty much just took to it -EASY!

– Heather Lonnberg, Adams 12 Five Star Schools, CO

Equity isn’t just the value of the dollar—it’s that the child can learn because they’re not hungry.

– Jeanine Davison, Windsor Charter Academy, CO

A participation study revealed that 70% of students who came to the cafeteria were either purchasing a reimbursable lunch or purchasing a la carte. We realized the variety of students who chose to eat lunch at other locations in the school or added a class and forfeited a designated lunch block. We looked at several different options including opening a secondary location in the furthest wing of the high school. We were attracted to the vending solution due to the expansion of our cafeteria hours to whenever our students were on site. Additionally, as a fully a la carte option we could recoup the increase in supplies for packaging and the labor of loading the machine. Thank you to Jim Dillingham who walked me step by step through the purchasing and set up of our machines. Due to the immediate popularity we immediately put an order in for three more machines. The machines all paid for themselves within six months. We could not have anticipated their immense popularity. Today we have four units in our high school of 1400 students and one in our middle school. This is by far the best solution for us and last year we ranked in the number one spot for sales per student per day. Vending or as we call it “Dining Services On the Go” will be a part of our business for decades. Our students and teachers both love the fresh selections and the ease of use.

– Amanda Venezia, Director of Dining Services, Londonderry School District

For us it’s a full REVENUE program where we are generating income….also If you can take that kid that the only thing he wants to buy today is a bag of chips and you get him out of your serving line and put him at that vending machine, it makes your line go faster. You’re increasing your lunch line EFFICIENCY, focusing your staff when the kids are eating lunch on those hot meals—which is so very important…. We’ve seen that in a lot of cases, those single item transactions that aren’t meals have… substantially reduced.

– Allen B. Henrico District VA

I do have to give a shout out to Brad and Marty, and Lance of course how easy they made the roll out process for us. From a customer service perspective, they made us comfortable. They walked us through the whole process in a very comfortable manner. We were so nervous about this; lots of anxiety! In less than an hour we were up and running and SERVING students, much easier than we ever expected. They made it just like Mayberry every day.

– Joe Cook, Antelope Valley CA

I love this report—you print it, hand it to the state, and walk away. No extra paperwork needed.

– School Cafeteria Staff, referring to automated machine temperature logs

The staff love it because they know they can feed students and they don’t have the stress of having to get there at a certain time, it took a level of anxiety away for the timing of service. Now the vending machine is the happy café assistant who is always lit up and ready to go.

– Joe Cook, Antelope Valley CA