While at the Mondrian Hotel in Miami, I gazed upon the future of...vending machines and automats. Yes, automats (which Wikipedia teaches us tried for a final comeback in New York’s East Village in 2006.) Mondrian’s automat is essentially an art installation that trounces our coffee or candy bar dispensing expectations, and its allure comes from the patent leather-slick packets of luxury—or access to luxury—a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow for rent, Kiki de Montparnasse’s 24-karat gold handcuffs—none of which fit in the conventional vending category and most of which don’t literally fit in the automat-like wall. This is conceptual art for the boutique hotel guest, an entire fantasy world compartmentalized, fetishized, set aglow, and, with a card swipe, there for the taking.

To the extent that Americans think of the lowly vending machine at all these days (devout collectors of vintage versions notwithstanding), we think of them in finite terms, always just out of dollar bills or your beverage or purveying a stale selection of warring sodas and their new age spawn. (Cultural apex for soda vending, indubitably: Cindy Crawford tossing back her mane and her Pepsi in front of one--standing sentry on a dusty stretch of Route 66?--for the erstwhile prime time spot audience. The Eighties Die Hard.) Some countries, it seems, solve this problem of predictable or short merchandise supply by piling on the machines—check out this vending bumper crop in Brazil:

The Mondrian’s “Semi-Automatic,” as it’s called, has put luxury and vending in the same sentence and this is in itself innovative. Perhaps more essentially, though, it has created the impression of an expertly curated collection of amenities and fantasies (I like to imagine the Marquise de Sade and Simon Doonan as querulous guides), thereby converting the vending machine liability—a small set of options—into an asset. This curatorial attribute has the potential to spark an unlikely comeback of the low tech box for a high tech century.

Enter U*tique.

A vending machine that recently debuted at Fred Segal in Santa Monica, it provides convenience—“because time is a luxury” is the company’s strapline—and video-based edification about the utmost in (principally) beauty products like Aira Mink eyelashes, with some Vosges chocolates thrown in. The LED-lit bubble windows make for a great retro space-age aesthetic (Ah! Remember the head helmets in The Andromeda Strain?...requisite movie reference), acknowledging the nostalgic appeal of these machines, no matter how complex their GUI’s. For me, they’ll always be associated unconsciously with World's Fair Tomorrow-Land-like appliances or goofy mechanical conveniences like a sushi conveyor belt.

A curated and rotating collection is half of these visionary vending machines' comeback strategy; the other half is location. Just think of all the downtime, waiting-in-line, airport dead zone opportunities for these machines. Real estate with captive audiences, in other words.

Rollasole, a deliriously fun footwear concept from Bristol, Avon, UK, is setting up their rollable, shimmery, après-dancing shoe vending machines in nightclubs across the UK and Oceana. Talk about being at the right place at the right time.

Visionary vending is a trend that could overhaul the CPG sample industry: what about a machine with nothing but your products? It could also provide some humor, solace and wit to the unromantic business of ziplock travel as well. Picture your products, and only your products, pristine and right-sized, here:

Tagged as: CPG, innovation, luxury, technology, trends

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