Social Entrepreneurs Launch Healthy Vending Business to Tackle Obesity Crisis

Local Pasadena residents Steven Sanchez and David Grant are on a mission to make healthful foods easily accessible throughout their community in partnership with HUMAN Healthy Vending – a company that distributes the only socially conscious vending machines to educate consumers at the point of sale.

More than half of LA County is considered overweight and obese and many residents live in food deserts – areas without convenient access to healthful foods.

Fortunately, LA County and the City of Pasadena itself are taking proactive measures to mitigate environmental factors that play a role in unhealthful behaviors, such as the prominence of junk-food vending machines.

Pasadena passed a healthy vending initiative last month becoming the largest city in LA to pass such a policy and making the city mission-aligned with Sanchez and Grant to tackle obesity.

Unlike antiquated vending machines that have long been complicit in encouraging unhealthful eating habits, HUMAN’s vending machines offer healthful snacks, drinks and entire meals along with health education streamed digitally via HD LCD screens attached to the machines.

The LCD screens can educate consumers on the products in the machine as well as give general nutrition advice, such as how to read a nutrition label. Sanchez and Grant’s partnership with HUMAN Healthy Vending ensures that residents in their community have access to foods and drinks that meet a high caliber of nutrition standards, including the school-based standards delineated by the Alliance for a Healthier Generation. Both Sanchez and Grant have been Pasadena-area residents for over twenty years and feel a vested interest in seeing their community thrive. “I think that everyone should have access to healthy food. Just because you’re at work or at school and strapped for time, you shouldn’t have to settle for food that isn’t nutritious or satisfying,” said Grant. “The HUMAN vending machine gives busy people that access and I am looking forward to bringing them into my community.”

Creative agencies, such as Petrol Advertising, are interested in providing their employees with food options that are not only healthful but also innovative. In addition to its LCD screens, HUMAN’s state of the art machine technology includes credit card readers, infrared sensors that detect and relay when a product’s supply is low, LED lighting and a conveyor belt system rather than old-school coils, which improves machine capacity and versatility.

“Everything about the HUMAN healthy vending concept is right. From the ultra-modern, energy efficient machines to the mission of bringing healthy food choices within arms reach of busy workers and students is perfect for our time,” said Sanchez. “By bringing HUMAN machines into my community I feel that I am making it easier for others like myself to make those good choices.”