Childhood Obesity
Is a growing problem with negative effects that go beyond a child’s physical health. To this end we have programs designed for elementary schools, middle and high schools that combine working with the wellness groups and the teachers to educate the kids about the food and let them make the choice of what organic and natural snacks go into their school machine. Then they market the food to their fellow students. In this way the kids have a sense of ownership in the organic and natural snack-vending program. We believe if we can create healthy snacking habits in elementary school the kids will be much more likely to snack well throughout their childhood.
Shopping Our Values
At Organic Vending we believe that the best way to promote positive change is to show that you can have a high level of social responsibility and still have a profitable business. Our organic and natural suppliers all have wonderful track records in the area’s of environmental protection, human resources and fair wage. By nature these companies “Think Green” as do we. At Organic Vending we pay a higher than average wage, offer health insurance to all employees, recycle (we use both sides of the paper on all internal documents) and are looking into creating our own bio diesel for our trucks with waste from area restaurants. We believe that being green can actually save you money!
Educating Our Customers About Snacking Well
At Organic Vending we don’t just drop machines off and wait for the business. We believe that giving people a chance to taste our organic and natural snacks, inquiring about our food and telling us what they want is an important factor in making our program a success. To that end we do food tasting at all of our new accounts.
At Skidmore we would work with you to choose the right place and time and bring in a ton of our snack and food products for your students and staff to taste. We find that for people who do not already eat organic and natural this is a great way for them to try the snacks they are not familiar with. These are always a huge hit.
We don’t stop there. We will do free samplings through the machines when we have new products to offer. Our organic and natural suppliers are generous in providing us with samples. We find a tremendous increase in business when people have a chance to sample first. We even have a certified nutritionist who is also a holistic MD that is available at no charge to come up and lecture about the danger of all the chemicals found in non-organic and natural foods.
Giving Everybody a Choice
In our elementary, middle and high schools all of our products are organic and natural. In our commercial accounts and colleges we offer mixed vending, using organic and natural snacks and traditional vending items. We made the choice to offer mixed vending for several reasons. We realized that most commercial accounts would not want only organic and natural snacks. This way the people who want organic and natural get what they want and we have a shot at making some converts of the people who might not be aware of how good our stuff is. A good example of how this has worked is in the beginning we carried Doritos in our mixed machines. Doritos is the best selling chip in the nation. What we noticed is that because our organic and natural snacks taste so much better and most are $1 or less per bag, people stopped buying the Doritos’s. We had to throw out bags that remained unsold because they went out of date! We only do Doritos by request now and 80% of our chip offerings in our mixed accounts are organic and natural!
Social Responsibility
We like to think of ourselves as the “beacon of truth” in the vending industry. We can tell you that most vending companies have programs called “balanced for life” as a way to make you believe they are concerned about what snacks they sell. We can tell you that it’s all lip service, the prevailing thought in the vending industry is healthy does not sell. They will offer some low-fat selections but there is no consideration given to artificial color, artificial flavor, preservatives or other very unhealthy chemicals in food. We only mention this because it is a program that is in name only and we don’t like fooling people. We have seen the “Balanced for Life” sticker on machines selling jumbo-sized Snickers bars. Talk about super-size it!
We take the impact we make on our customers and our planet and our community very seriously. Here are some of the things we are doing:
Remote inventory software
This new software will give us the ability to “see” into all our machines. We will know before our truck leaves the warehouse if an account needs servicing. For some of our commercial accounts this will save gas on wasted trips. We will know if there is a problem with the machine instantly. The machine will send us an e-mail telling us what’s wrong and helping us to decide how best to handle the problem.
Glass
We use glass whenever possible. More petroleum goes into making plastic bottles than glass. Also plastic bottles left in the heat can cause chemicals in the plastic to seep into the beverage.
Fair trade
We are always searching for products that are “fair trade” in our coffee machines. We use Green Mountain Fair-Trade Organic Coffee. We also carry a line of fair- trade chocolate. As more food products have the fair-trade label we will make them available in our vending machines.
Helping Kids to Snack Better
The Guilderland School District had banned all snack vending machines for a few years prior to our partnership. Linda Mossop, the food service director, chose Organic Vending on a trial basis to see if the program would work and we’re pleased to say our machines in the Guilderland District are, for the second year in a row, doing great business. We need to service the high school machines four days per week as the kids almost empty it on a daily basis.
Niskayuna is one of our districts where they have done their own vending but realized the move toward healthier snacks was coming and wanted to get a program going before any state mandate might become law. We worked closely with the food service director, the wellness teacher and with the blessing of the school principle began our program. It started with our certified nutritionist bringing food samples to the wellness teacher’s class for the students to try and talk about what happens to our bodies when certain foods, additives and other compounds found in commercial foods are digested. There is so much evidence that artificial color, for example, is a direct cause of hypertension in kids. All sorts of behavior problems and health risks have been linked to artificial flavor, artificial color, preservatives, trans-fats, high fructose corn syrup and other unnatural compounds.
We engage the kids by having them taste the snacks and choose the ones they would like to see in the vending machine. The wellness teacher had the kids develop an in-school marketing plan to engage their peers in trying this great tasting organic and natural food. They did posters, held tasting and spread the word to their friends.
In Niskayuna we started out by selling wholesale so the food service people could put it in their existing machines. It was so successful that Organic Vending put a machine of our own in the other high school dining room and based on its huge success we are going into the middle schools with Organic Vending's machines.
Our Food
Every product in our Organic Vending school machines must meet the following criteria:
*No artificial flavor
*No artificial color
*No preservatives
*No hydrogenated Oils
*No trans fats
*No high fructose corn syrup
We have searched the country to find great tasting organic and natural snacks that people will love and buy and that no other vending company can offer. Additionally, we work with schools to insure great vending commissions!
