The Food You Never Knew You Could Order From Vending Machines
Ah, the vending machine. As a kid, there were few pleasures more satisfying than spending the dollar your mom gave you for a snack at your school or rec center's treat-filled glass case. Oh, the variety of (mostly extremely unhealthy) candy bars and deep-fried starches! Oh, the anticipation of watching that curly metal arm gently push the trans fats towards your waiting hands!
In our memory, these magical machines peddled the likes of Kit Kats, Snickers, Fritos, Lays, and other plastic-packaged treats which, while very tasty, were not exactly the kind of nourishment a growing body needs. While you may have given up on your vending machine habit long ago, you might need to take it up again upon learning — as we just did — that you actually can find healthy food in vending machines. Not just healthy, but whole and unprocessed, too. Here's what food some lucky vending machine users have been able to get more recently.
The incredible, edible egg
Fancy a trip to an egg vending machine? That's right: You can purchase farm-fresh duck and chicken eggs straight from a vending machine — that is, if you live near the town of Haskell, Oklahoma. There, according to the Muskogee Phoenix, poultry farmers Derrick and Sarah Gilbert have installed a machine that offers chicken and duck eggs by the dozen and half-dozen. Day or night, customers can select their eggs from one of the machine's 27 compartments (via the Muskogee Phoenix).
The idea occurred to the Gilberts, they told the Muskogee Phoenix, when they saw a sign advertising duck eggs for sale. "We never wanted to go in and bug people for the duck eggs," Sarah told the paper. "We were like, 'Wouldn't it be nice if we could just get the eggs at any time without worrying about bothering them, or if they're at dinner?'" Their egg vending machine turned out to be popular, sometimes selling up to 10 dozen eggs in one day (via Muskogee Phoenix).
As it turns out, this isn't just a one-off; egg vending machines are a thing. Glaum Egg Ranch in Aptos, California also sells its cartons from a machine, at $4 per 18 eggs (via Allrecipes), as does Wise Acre Farms in Windsor, California, whose egg vending machine even accepts credit cards (via Sonoma Magazine). Eggs don't quite provide the immediate gratification of, say, a Baby Ruth, but they don't provide the sugar headache or tooth decay, either. Sign us up!