The next generation of vending machines may soon be coming to fast-food restaurants, food courts, and cafeterias near us.
America's old favorite Coca-Cola and newcomer MooBella are both doing beta testing this summer for their respective high-tech vending machines. Coke's Freestyle is a touch-screen dispenser of soda (what else?) that allows customers to select from 104 flavors of Coca-Cola waters, juices, sodas, and sports drinks. The machine uses PurePour Technology to mix the drinks from concentrate within the same space as a typical six- or eight-valve soda fountain. The Freestyle also uses Impinj’s RFID technology to collect data on flavors selected, which helps both supply chain management (by telling HQ when refills are needed), and market research (by telling HQ which flavors are popular - or not). RFIDNews has details on exactly how the RFID works in the Freestyle machines.
Soda-drinkers can't exactly create their own combinations with this machine (which was designed to collect data on which Coke varieties are most popular), but 104 flavors provides a lot of options. For the full list of flavors, see the Coca-Cola Freestyle Facebook Fan Page.
"Cooler" still, MooBella (an eight-year-old company from Massachusetts) has developed an automated vending machine for...ice cream! And these machines are not mere purveyors of pre-packaged sundries. On the contrary, each MooBella Ice Creamery custom-mixes 100% natural dairy ice cream with one of 12 ice cream flavors and one of three mix-ins to create made-to-order hand-dipped-style ice cream - in just 45 seconds! MooBella flash-freezes the ice cream (rather than slow-churning it), which enables the quick service. The machines also feature a touch-screen interface, a behind-the-scenes Linux operating system, and wireless technology that relays inventory and sales data to headquarters via satellite.
With these new vending machines, it seems that both Coca-Cola and MooBella are doing an excellent job of using new technology to provide great products, great service, and great info on customer preferences. Are they using new technology just as successfully in their marketing communications for these products? Let's see:
On a scale of 1 to 10, I give Coca-Cola a 4. They have a Facebook Fan Page with lots of great information on flavors and locations, plus they seem to respond quickly and aptly to fans' wall comments. However, their Fan Page has only 1,067 fans as of 11:36pm Central, 18 August 2009 - a rather small number for the "world's largest beverage company," don't you think? Coca-Cola Freestyle is also on Twitter (@ccfreestyle) as of 7 August 2009, but only has two tweets, 30 followers, and no profile pic as of 18 August. Any blogs or mobile apps for the Freestyle? I haven't found any yet. Video? A few on YouTube - from customers, not the company.
On the same 1 to 10 scale, MooBella gets a 2. They also have a Facebook Fan Page, with frequent and interesting wall posts (more interesting than those on the Freestyle Fan Page, actually). Sadly, the MooBella Fan Page has only 43 followers (ouch!). As for Twitter, there is a "moobella" account(@moobella), but it might or might not be the same company. It's hard to tell when @moobella hasn't tweeted anything yet. Blogs? Mobile apps? Not that I can see. Video? A YouTube search only uncovered two - both more than five minutes long; neither from customers.
Ah, well. Perhaps Coca-Cola Freestyle and MooBella will jump more fully into social media and mobile marketing after they release their respective products to the public. For now, I suppose we must wait for beta testing to end. (The Freestyle is undergoing beta testing in Southern California; Moobella in Boston.)
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Strange that such interesting technologies that have social media components behind them (ie Facebook in these cases) have such little involvement. It's almost as if Coca-Cola and MooBella set up the pages & feeds and then left them to wither.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this piece on RFID. I think it's such a promising technology and it's great to see companies taking a more vested interest in it for consumer applications.
- Josh