A Healthier Vending Machine

It's kind of unusual to have an epiphany while foraging for a snack. But that's what happened to me in GotVMail's kitchen one afternoon. After surveying the snacks--a smorgasbord of items that were either high in fat, sugar, preservatives or both--I realized it didn't have to be this way! I knew we could easily find healthier alternatives to greasy chips or provide protein bars instead of candy bars to GotVMail team members in need of something to snack on. The easiest way to do this? A vending machine, but not any old vending machine, it would be free for GotVMail team members and would consist entirely of healthier snacks.

Since I'd already been trying to find foods with fewer processed ingredients for myself at home, I was familiar with a lot of brands that offered healthier versions of favorite items like chips, popcorn, and candy bars. I decided to buy items like Cascadian Farms Organic, LesserEvil, Luna, and Robert's American Gourmet in large quantities on Amazon.com and stock the vending machine with those items and then see the response of GotVMail employees. Naturally, overhauling our snack offerings was a big change, but I had a feeling it would be a really positive change that would enhance our productivity. To make the new system easier to swallow, we decided to offer the healthier snacks in the machine for free, permanently. It just made more sense to supply our employees with snacks that could potentially provide the energy we all needed to get through our projects every day.

Since setting up the new, healthier vending machines, the response from GotVMail team members has been largely positive. Obviously, every now and again people just want a candy bar, and nothing else will substitute, but in terms of providing healthier alternatives to fill that daily, 3pm post-lunch void, the healthier vending machine has made a huge difference. And in addition to food in our vending machines, we continue to offer free drinks (the non-alcoholic kind!), coffee and espresso. Fresh fruit deliveries have also been added to the roster of healthier snack items at GotVMail.

The vending machine project at GotVMail launched around the same time as another initiative of ours, the GotVMail Lunch Program, GotLunch. Look for a post in the coming days about this innovative employee benefit.