The present invention relates to vending machines, and in particular to a rear loading vending machine.
Vending machines have been used for many years to dispense a variety of different products. For example, vending machines dispense soft drinks, food products, candy bars, snack foods, or specific products associated with specific activities which occur at the dispensing area, such as vending machines for dispensing automobile protectant, towels, glass cleaner, and similar products at car washes.
Heretofore, vending machines have typically included a housing for storing the vending products and a conventional dispensing mechanism which can be accessed through conventional coin/token/card/paper money acceptors. Such vending machines can be filled through either a front or a rear access door and the vending products are normally dispensed through a front dispensing guide and/or dispensing opening. However, one problem with vending machines is that the doors have been able to be vandalized by prying a side of the front housing outward to access the money and vending products in the interior of the vending machine.
One attempt at trying to protect money within the vending machine is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,860,714. U.S. Pat. No. 5,860,714 discloses a vending machine that can be placed into a wall and includes a rear housing that pivots away from the wall to allow the housing to be filled with goods and the money within the housing to be withdrawn. However, the housing requires space to pivot away from the wall. Therefore, the housing of U.S. Pat. No. 5,860,714 cannot be placed next to a corner because the housing would then not be able to pivot.
Vending machines have also experienced problems when the product being bought does not fall to a front dispensing opening. Typically, vending machines selling candy or automobile related products have screws that rotate and thereby push the vending product to a front of a shelf, wherein the vending product falls into a tray adjacent the front dispensing opening. However, sometimes the vending product can get stuck between walls of the lane holding the vending product and the vending product will not fall.
Accordingly, a vending machine solving the aforementioned disadvantages and having the aforementioned advantages is desired.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds