Vending machine food of the future

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/dining/sc-food-0521-half-dineout-restaurants20100527,0,7124844.story
Vending machine food of the future
Christopher Borrelli, Tribune Newspapers
May 27, 2010

The tiny hot dog rotated on the slowly turning grill, its rounded metal slants glowing a deep caramel bronze. Jeff Kaufman plucked the hot dog from the grill and placed it in a tiny matching bun. A woman beside him in a green apron smiled. I took a small bite of the small dog. They waited. This was at the National Vending Show, the annual convention of the National Automatic Merchandising Association in Chicago. The assignment was: Eat, sample the finest the vending industry has to offer, return with a glimpse of the future of vended cuisine — the ultimate in casual dining.

Hence, the Slider Dog, which was surprisingly rich and garlicky, even juicy. It's coming soon to a vending machine near you. But will it taste like this if I have to microwave it? I asked Kaufman. He's executive vice president of Military Marketing Services, which places food in military vending machines, and here represented Nathan's Famous, which has decided that Slider Dogs will represent the next evolution of the slider. "It should, yes," he said.

The woman in the green apron looked at him: "Do you think three is too many, though?" Each package holds three dogs.

"Well, the price point matters. You get three for $2.50, which isn't bad," he said.

"Yeah, but I couldn't eat three," she said.

"I think the thinking here is that if you get two Slider Dogs you think you're only eating one hot dog's worth, but three Slider Dogs feels like a bit more," he said.

This, I learned, is what innovation looks like in the vending industry: small, seemingly obvious steps toward genius.

Likewise, among the innovations found at the booth for Wow! Foods, a new company out of Hickory, N.C., offering a raft of dishes endorsed by Dale Earnhardt Jr., was a microwavable 8.6-ounce Dale Jr. Cheeseburger that (and here's the innovation) comes with the pickle already on it.

I also learned, within minutes of arriving in the vast brightly lit hall, that the vending industry takes in $30 billion annually; and 100 million people, according to NAMA, find sustenance every day from 7 million vending machines. It is an industry never far from reach, steadfastly burrowed into our lives, and yet so intrinsic we rarely notice it or consider that the food inside vending machines has been made by humans, and that those people believe that vending machine food can taste good.

The shock of this realization was soon met with the news that, in some cases, they're not wrong. Consider Pierre, a vending-machine food corporation with a name that suggests afternoon spritzers but actually makes a hamburger called the Big Az, which, indeed, is both its big seller and a subtle mockery of the body shape you will adopt if you regularly hit a vending machine in search of a Big Az. Pierre is at the high end of the quality scale, in terms of sandwiches that come in crinkly plastic wrappers and look disgusting. Pierre's sandwiches are not disgusting. Particularly its latest minis, sliderlike pulled pork sandwiches and breakfast biscuits.

Further down the taste scale was Wow!'s new Dale Jr. Glazed Honey Bun. In its package, it resembled something found on a shelf in a county fair freak show. Or, to be generous, coiled and coated in a light, milky viscous-looking substance, it resembled a lower intestine. It's made by a large industrial baking company, Cloverhill, which, coincidentally, is almost the same number of letters as "Cloverfield." (Days later, when I removed it from its protective packaging, the Dale Jr. Glazed Honey Bun surprisingly was not sticky but felt oddly wet.)

Dale Jr. Glazed Honey Bun in hand, I wandered past booths with completely vague corporate names — both vague and specific, like Don Miguel ("Authentic foods since 1908"), and vague and familiar, if you've ever stared longingly into a vending machine about 4 p.m., like Bridgford. I saw grown men selling tuna fish-making kits and a battalion of middle-management types playing cards with a man dressed as Sasquatch (for unexplained reasons).

The unemployment rate, I heard, has been a worry to the industry — more people out of work means fewer people in a harried office held captive by the convenience of a vending machine.

Schools, I heard, are another concern, but also a potential bonanza. The vending industry supports education, one vendor told me. But what will the school vending machines of the future look like, and what will these machines serve, and how healthy will the new school health parameters become?

Consider Inko's White Iced Tea, a new gentle-looking, gentle-tasting flavored tea in a can. Cecile Schamisso, wife of Andy Schamisso, the founder, told me, as did a number of companies, that they're eager to get out in front of the new school district nutrition guidelines, but "it's hard to convince a high school kid to drink strawberry tea." As if being mocked by fate, Inko's booth was beside the booth for Ricos, which bills itself as the "originators of concession nachos." They have Nachos in a Bag coming to vending machines this summer. Yes, yes, I said, but how do I know you guys invented stadium nachos? Because, I was told, the company was founded by Frank Liberto, who, in 1976, "developed a sort of cheese sauce" to replace the unevenly melted cheese found on stadium nachos around Texas at the time.

The sauce in the new vending packet is this same sauce, the man said proudly.

I was thinking healthier.

I found Froobee, a clever alternative to can-based vending. The first machines go into production this fall: Choose your drink (acai pomegranate, etc.), then a pouch in the machine is filled with water, then mixed with concentrate, then dispensed. You sip from a rubbery pouch. That's innovation, I thought, briefly elated.

Until I found myself between dueling cotton candy vending machine-makers, their booths a few yards apart. The first machine played music until the voice of a Vietnamese woman announced your treat was ready. "Not sticky!" the owner pointed out. Right, not sticky, said the owner of the rival cotton candy vender. Then he added, whispering, leaning in, what they're not telling you is that their cotton candy will fall off its stick if you turn it upside down.

I nodded solemnly.

"Vending is not an exciting business," he said. "We have to make the most of it."

cborrelli@tribune.com