VENDING MACHINES

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 132, 15 December 1928, Page 20

VENDING MACHINES

GROWING SYSTEM IN AMERICA. "Hardly a month goes by but what soino bright genius invents a new selling machine," reflects a paragrapher in the "Progressive Grocer" (New York). For instance, he goes on to tell us: 'A man has now invented a new cigarette-vending machine. It is the old Indian that used to decorate the front of every cigar store brought up to date. The Indian is placed on a metal bos. You drop a penny into the slot, push the plunger, the smoke issues from the Indian's mouth, and a lighted cigarette appears in the slot ready for your use." Of course the point of it all is, as "Advertising and Selling" (New York) notes, that "vending machines are making rapid headway." .We are reminded that the new Schulte 5-cents-to-one-dollar department stores are establishing automatic divisions which will sell packaged candies, groceries, toilet articles, etc. These will bo cxi panded as the idea takes hold. Wool- ! worth, M'Crory, Liggett, United Cigar, Union News, and other chains, are making decisive steps in this direction. The Seliulte 5-cents-to-one-dollar store alone expect to use 45 to 100 vending machines per store. When their contemplated 1000 stores are all .open, this will mean 50,000 vending machines in operation. Handkerchiefs, elastics, garters, cloths, and even dresses and hats —incredible as this may seem—are going to be sold by vending machines, according to development plans. National advertisers have everything to gfiin from this development, for' the public will most readily: buy ' from vending machines only when the goods thus sold are standard goods of wellknown trade-marks.