Much of the merchandising of food and beverages and the vending of a large number of other retail products occurs in circumstances that are ancillary to some other marketing activity by which other products and services are sold. That other activity is the primary attraction that brings the customer onto the business premises of the merchant or causes the customer to enter into a business relationship with the merchant. For example, hotel and travel accommodations, entertainment and sports events, recreational activities, and routine service activities such as tending to automobile fueling and service, personal grooming services and waiting for services or business appointments all may provide the primary reasons for people to enter onto certain business premises or to engage in a communication with a business enterprise. Such customers then purchase goods or services which result in charges or other forms of payment being made for such services or products.
On the occasions of the presence on such business premises, such people often have a demand for other products, such as food or beverage products, and become potential customers of the merchandising of such other products. The demands for such other products in such circumstances are not the result of any particular purchasing effort made by such customers to obtain such products, but are rather demands arising out of inherent needs ancillary to the occasions that attracted the people to the business premises.
Accordingly, the success of the merchandising of products to such potential customers is largely based on the merchant having in place a system to take advantage of the opportunity to serve the customers' needs. The ability to provide the needed products to the customer with maximum convenience while avoiding extra effort and time commitments by the customer may be the key to the success of any additional sales activity by the merchant. On such occasions, the success in vending such ancillary products may be based more on the convenience and ease of the transaction to the customer than on the price. However, the practicality of providing such systems by the merchant may also be based on the convenience to the merchant in servicing such system without employing additional personnel or space consuming facilities to display or deliver the products or to register payment for the additional goods provided.
In prior art merchandising systems, the vending of food and other ancillary products to persons attending some event or being on business premises for some primary reason other than the purchase of such ancillary products has required a generally labor intensive and space consuming enterprise that often requires substantially different skills and expertise than the main business being conducted on the site. Engaging in the vending of such products can add substantially to the overall business effort and cost of the business, which is often impractical and not worthwhile to the merchant. The activity of vending some unrelated products to a business's customers requires a commitment by the business, which, in many cases, deters the business from engaging in the vending opportunity.
Customers of many businesses have idle time during which they could purchase merchandise and would purchase merchandise but for the reason that there is no opportunity to do so. For example, when fueling an automobile at a self-service gasoline pump island of a gasoline service station, several minutes are spend waiting for the tank to fill. During this time, the purchase of a soft drink or other product could be made by the gasoline customer who cannot conveniently leave the pump location while the vehicle is being fueled to enter the service building or to approach a vending machine. Such a gasoline customer may be provided with a card reader at the pump, which accepts a charge card account as payment for the fuel without the need to enter the station. Such a customer may therefore forego the expenditure of the additional time required to leave the fueled vehicle at the pump to purchase food, a beverage, or another marginally necessary product. Other customers spend time waiting for professional services, for service to be performed on vehicles, for appointments in barbershops and beauty salons, in ticket and admission lines and at a variety of other business locations. During this idle time, the opportunities to vend products to these customers is lost due to the difficulty and cost of providing or adapting a merchandising system to the occasions.
Difficulty in merchandising products to customers is due in part to the need to protectively store products for sale, particularly where the product is a beverage or other food product. For example, the retail sale of beverages for immediate consumption is typically carried out in one of two ways: either by over-the-counter sale by a server or attendant at a store or other indoor location or by mechanized unattended sale from a drink dispensing machine, which may be at an indoor or an outdoor location. Beverages that are to be sold for immediate consumption are usually stored at a refrigerated temperature that is several degrees above the freezing point of water. The refrigeration is most commonly achieved by cooling a storage enclosure within the store building that is otherwise maintained at a typical room temperature. In addition, in geographic locations where temperatures drop below freezing, some heating of the building that surrounds the beverage storage enclosure maintains the building at the room temperature. With outdoor dispensing machines, such machines are usually not employed at times where below freezing temperatures are expected.
Systems have been provided for the marketing of beverages such as juices and soft drinks at locations more convenient to consumers. Such locations have included many that are frequented by vehicular or pedestrian traffic, such as gas stations and entertainment facilities. These locations have included concession counters and convenience stores that have been integrated with the gas station or entertainment facility.
Outdoor retail locations such as the vehicle service islands of gas stations are increasingly being provided with payment devices such as credit card readers that are operatively connected with the vehicle service devices, such as the gasoline dispensing pumps, for use by a customer purchasing gasoline, for example, to pay for the purchase without leaving the vicinity of the vehicle. At such locations, the customer is, nonetheless, required to enter the adjacent store facility to purchase snacks or beverages. The logistics of purchasing such additional products subjects the customer to an additional inconvenience, requiring some additional time and effort, which, in a certain percentage of cases, the consumer elects to forego, resulting in a loss to the retailer of a potential sale. Furthermore, the use of card readers at self-service gasoline pumps provides the capability for completely unattended gasoline sales, with the customer delivering the purchased gasoline from the self-service pump and making automatic payment without the intervention of a service attendant. Such a capability makes possible the sale of gasoline at night or at other times when no attendant is on duty, since there is no cash that must be handled and no requirement for the added security incident to a facility at which cash will be accepted and stored. At such unattended facilities, conventional systems for providing additional products such as beverages to the gasoline customer are not readily adaptable.
The vending of sandwiches and other solid food products for immediate consumption in the facilities discussed above present similar problems. Such products must usually be contained in their individual packaging, must be protected from environmental conditions such as excess heat or cold, and are preferably cooled or heated prior to or upon vending so as to require a freezer or a heating device such as a broiler or microwave oven that is preferable not to maintain at the vending area. With carry-out and drive-through fast food facilities, prepared heated or cooled foods are selected by customers from limited lists, packaged, paid for, and delivered into the hands of the customer in a manual labor intensive operation, presenting similar problems.
Accordingly, there is a need in the retailing industry, particularly for the sale of cool beverages, or temperature maintained, cooled or heated food items at locations such as gas stations, for delivering and dispensing such products to the consumer at a location of maximum convenience.
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