This chapter deals with the development and spread of vending machines and the automatic selling of preserved and shelf-stable foods, more rarely of freshly prepared food, in the 20th century. By making food accessible 24/7, from the workplaces to everywhere people were transiting, this process marked the advent of new consumption practices: faster and cheaper, individual, free from any intermediary and anonymous, practically ubiquitous, in contrast to other collective forms of eating out (cafes, restaurants, pubs, etc.). Several actors led this process: the vending machine industry, the food companies and their product strategies, from design to packaging, the catering operators, who invented new systems such as ‘automatic restaurant’ chains and 24/7 open shops. While automatic vending has become a global presence, different paths and stories developed between Japan, North America and Europe. After a frame of this evolution at an international level, the paper focuses the Italian case. Despite the international pressures, for instance in the field of beverages, automatic selling of food has been accepted slowly, if compared with other states. Then the development of a specialized industry and market of coffee machines, where today Italy is a leader in Europe, will be considered.
Fumi, G., The coin-operated food selling and the machine-vending industry in 20th-century Italy, in D’Errico, R., Magagnoli, S., Scholliers, P. A. P. (ed.), Eating on the Move from the Eighteenth Century to the Present, Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, Abingdon (UK) and New York (USA) 2023: <<ROUTLEDGE STUDIES IN CULTURAL HISTORY>>, 92- 107. 10.4324/9781003327820-9 [https://hdl.handle.net/10807/236878]
The coin-operated food selling and the machine-vending industry in 20th-century Italy
Fumi, Gianpiero
2023
Abstract
This chapter deals with the development and spread of vending machines and the automatic selling of preserved and shelf-stable foods, more rarely of freshly prepared food, in the 20th century. By making food accessible 24/7, from the workplaces to everywhere people were transiting, this process marked the advent of new consumption practices: faster and cheaper, individual, free from any intermediary and anonymous, practically ubiquitous, in contrast to other collective forms of eating out (cafes, restaurants, pubs, etc.). Several actors led this process: the vending machine industry, the food companies and their product strategies, from design to packaging, the catering operators, who invented new systems such as ‘automatic restaurant’ chains and 24/7 open shops. While automatic vending has become a global presence, different paths and stories developed between Japan, North America and Europe. After a frame of this evolution at an international level, the paper focuses the Italian case. Despite the international pressures, for instance in the field of beverages, automatic selling of food has been accepted slowly, if compared with other states. Then the development of a specialized industry and market of coffee machines, where today Italy is a leader in Europe, will be considered.
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