"It went over like a turd in a punch bowl"

Speaking of vending machines, The Wall Street Journal just ran an article about the current push in the U.S. to offer healthier alternatives to chips and candy bars.

The Wittern Group Inc., one of the biggest makers of vending machines, and fruit and vegetable marketer Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc.have come together to design special vending machines that would dispense whole bananas and fresh-cut fruits and vegetables.

Photo from the WSJ.com

Engineers have come up with creative solutions to combat the obvious problems of keeping the fruit ripe, fresh, and unbruised.  The machines maintain two temperature zones to maximize the shelf life of bananas (at 57 degrees) while keeping the cut fruit and veggies cooler (at 34 degrees).  Bananas are kept in a plastic bag to help ripen the fruit, and next year, the vending machines will have an elevator tray "that retrieves products from their spirals and gently deposits them in the bin" to prevent the fruit from bruising.

But preserving the delicate banana isn't the only challenge they must face. While this new initiative could do very well in schools, so far, the new machines haven't been exceptionally well received in the workplace:

In 2007, Spencer Cox, president of Vending Services Inc., started stocking a box of carrots, celery sticks and broccoli (with a tub of light ranch dressing) in the refrigerated machine at a telecommunications company....  "It went over like a turd in a punch bowl," says Mr. Cox....

About 80% of the new products went unsold and had to be thrown away. "The truth is, people ask for this, but just because they ask for this doesn't mean they're going to buy it."

Today, he's removed the vegetable package from the vending machine and replaced it with a cheeseburger: the Landshire Big Daddy Charbroil Cheese. Now Mr. Cox will only stock healthier fare if the client has a marketing campaign or wellness initiative to support it.