I think bitcoin and vending machines would make a great combination for several reasons.
The target audienceof course we're looking for bitcoin users, or people that are open minded about bitcoin. If i'm not mistaken At the moment this group is mostly formed by 20~40 year old males, especially tech-savvy males.
LocationWith vending machines, location is very important. The more persons that walk past your machine that like the products you are vending, the better your sales will be. It wouldn't do you much good to have a vending machine selling healthy drinks right next to a bar, for example. As the audience that visits the bar is unlikely to buy a healthy drink before, during or after visiting a bar.
Therefore, it would be best to think about where most bitcoin users would gather, and what products they're interested in. Possible good locations are:
1) Japan (Tokyo especially)
2) Any university or college in Western Europe (especially Scandinavia, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands) or North America, especially universities focusing on engineering or computer technology.
In Japan, they have vending machines for pretty much everything, although cold and hot drinks make up about 40% of all vending machines. In universities in Europe and America they mostly sell snacks and soft drinks.
What would be the benefits of the vending machines?There's several advantages with bitcoin-based vending machines.
- Not everyone carries cash (although in japan they do, that's one of the main reasons vending machines are so popular there, but that's another story)
- Collecting cash is not needed with bitcoin, the money will instantly be safely in your wallet (this could reduce vandalism, can lower the operational costs, and is more practical in general)
- it's very easy to keep track of sold goods, and therefore you can achieve smart restocking and targeted product placement (more about this later in this post)
- if enough vending machines are placed and used, bitcoin will become a stronger and more legit currency (this benefits the whole bitcoin community)
How does it work?Basically unlike regular vending machines, which operate on their own, bitcoin vending machines have a front-end and a back-end. The front-end is the machine itself, and the back-end is the server behind the machine, in another location.
Front endThe machine will look like most machines, except it does not have a vault for cash at all, and depending on the model, it could either have a number dial pad or not.
Model 1Model 1 will have a dial pad, and there is 1 QR code (or NFC device) for each machine. You can pay bitcoins to the address and the machine will allow you to dial whichever number you want to pick your item. (or push the button corresponding with your item of choice).
Model 2Model 2 will have no dial pad, and instead it will have a different bitcoin address for each item. As soon as the server recognizes a payment made to an address, the machine will know which item the customer wants, and gives that item to the customer.
Back-endThe back end is a server that handles all transactions accross all the machines owned by the company. It actively scans all addresses to see if any address recieves the correct value, and once an address recieves the right amount of bitcoins, it will send a signal back to the corresponding machine to give the product that matches the transaction. If the machine recieves too little, it should probably just return the bitcoins to sender, if it recieves too much, it should probably return the amount that was too much.
ExtrasSince you already have a server, this allows for a lot of cool features that regular vending machines do not have.
- Since the machines need internet anyway, you can and should offer free wifi to nearby persons
- Since the server recognises which address matches with which product and which machine, you can see exactly how many items are left in the machine, so you can refill in a smart and efficient way. If you store the data you may even see patterns and can plan around the patterns. For example a certain drink may be sold more often in a certain place and/or season.
- You could even have the server remember the addresses it recieved payment from, and allow the users to benefit from actions, either discounts, a free drink on their birthday (if they make an account and link it with their bitcoin address), or some nice virtual goodies. Coca cola once made machines with QR codes and when you scanned the code you could get some avatar on your smartphone and dress it with all kind of items. This would be easy to implement since you have a QR code and a server already anyway. So some kind of fun program and/or a loyalty program will likely catch a lot of attention and recurring customers.
http://www.simplyzesty.com/Blog/Article/November-2011/Coca-Cola-s-Happiness-Quest-Brings-QR-Codes-Gamification-To-Vending-Machineshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw-f4GABMTgI hope someone can put this idea to good use.
