Vending machines offer variety

Max Jacobson

Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2001 | 9:14 a.m.

Who among us hasn't dropped a few pieces of change into a vending machine for a soda, snack or sandwich? The technology hasn't changed much over the years, nor has the selection, because of our eating habits.

Snickers, various sodas and Doritos snack chips are still the biggest sellers in the snack world, Jamie Costello of Southwest Services says. Ham and cheese is still his best-selling sandwich.

There are many reasons why this remains the case. Perhaps a brief look at the world of food vending in Las Vegas can shed a little light on the subject.

On a bright morning last week, a huge semitrailer painted with the Coca-Cola logo was parked outside the facility that houses Snac's, a vending service and catering company. Snac's provides vending machines for several large companies, including Merc-Medco, a company of more than 1,800 employees at three locations.

It's relatively simple to set up a gum-and-snack machine, but servicing a machine that offers perishable foods is another matter. Those machines tend to be less profitable, Snac's owner Byron Hoopes says, because there are always going to be "bringback items" -- dated items that expire before being sold.

Also, food safety is always a thorny matter.

Clark County Health Department Environmental Health Supervisor Lon Empey weighed in on the subject.

"Anyone who dispenses potentially hazardous foods must first get a license from the city," he said. "Storage and dispensing of these foods requires a health permit, and my department employs field agents to inspect the vendors who sell to the vending machine companies. Or in the case of companies that produce their own items (such as Snac's), we inspect those companies themselves, to make sure products comply with our rules."

Empey also cited, as an example of an outside vendor, Bridgeford of Oregon, a large sandwich supplier.

"In that case, we inspect transportation as well as the storage of the products, and make sure the sources are approved either by the FDA or USDA," Empey said. He explained that in the case of nonperishable foods, such as packaged cookies, M&Ms or canned sodas, such a license is not required.

In the larger companies such as Merc-Medco, there is a large demand for sandwiches and hot foods, and so Snac's produces many of these items in its commissary. Nearly all of these items sell for less than $2, and most are made fresh on a rotating schedule between Sunday, the biggest production day, and Thursday.

On any one of these days you'll find items in the Snac's commissary such as the Villager, which Hoopes describes as a "goofy" sandwich made with the heels of bread, bologna, cheese and thousand island dressing; egg salad sandwiches; grilled cheese sandwiches; turkey burgers; and even homemade Yankee pot roast sandwiches smeared in brown gravy. The old favorite, the tuna sandwich, comes in a modular package, with the tuna kept in a little cup so that it won't moisten the bread.

Most of these items are sold in a machine known in the trade as a carousel, where you slide back a door and a carousel rotates into place as you pull out the item.

"Our food appeals to customers for many reasons," Hoopes says. "Some people just don't have the time to leave the office at lunch, and others like the low prices, usually around half of what you'd pay for a comparable sandwich in a local deli."

When I visited, employees were wrapping apples, pickles and slices of pie. They were making platters of triangle sandwiches and freshly baked pie, which sell for around $1.75. The goal here, Hoopes says, "is to provide a high-quality product in the price range of the target market."

In fact, just about all vending machines service items sell between 40 cents and $2.

Another company, though, Southwest Services, is the industry giant in Las Vegas.

Similar to Snac's, Southwest Services also prepares a variety of foods, but in this case, in a separate facility. Most of the nonperishable items come to a giant warehouse located in an industrial sector of the city.

Jamie Costello is Southwest Service's CEO, and he is extremely forthcoming about his business. He stocks a mind-numbing number of products for his many machines, such microwaveable fare as Hot Pockets and Lean Pockets, a Weight Watchers line, Lunchables, small pepperoni pizzas, and even a Chinese entree sold under the name Yu Shing Beef and Peppers.

"The hot, canned vending machines have gone away," Costello says, "because the packaging has become more sophisticated. You no longer see Dinty Moore Beef Stew or Hormel Chili in machines much these days. We sell lots of Posada burritos, almost 15,000 fresh sandwiches per week, and more than 300 different items altogether."

Costello showed off one of his refrigerated trucks.

"We ship food separately," he says. "Actually, perishable foods are a small part of this business. There might be around 6,000 or 7,000 vending machines in town, and only around 10 percent of them have sandwiches or potentially hot foods in them."

But Costello is quick to point out that there are some innovations.

"We now have a single-cup coffee brewing machine capable of producing better coffees, Bigelow teas, Irish Cream Cappuccinos and similar premium products," he says. "And there are new gizmo-type machines entering the market all the time."