Consumption volume in the vending sector in Italy 2014-2022

In 2018, Italian consumers used to buy a lot more food from vending machines than they used to do four years before. The annual sales volume of the supply increased from 4.7 billion items in 2014 to a bit more than five billion units in 2018. For instance, the consumption of hot beverages from vending machines went from 3.1 billion units in 2014 to 3.2 billion units in 2018. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, consumption volume of the vending machine industry plummeted reaching 3.4 billion units in 2020. By 2023, the figure had increased slightly to just over 3.9 billion units

Bestselling products

  In the ranking of bestselling products from vending machines, coffee was the most purchased product with 2.7 billion units, followed by water with 722 million bottles and sweet snacks with 323 million units.

Portioned coffee

  This increasing consumption of vending machines’ food pre-pandemic was highly related with the sales volume of portioned coffee distributed in capsules for vending machines. In 2018, the Italian vending industry’s association released data on the sales volume of this specific type of coffee. This showed that the number of units sold went from 5.4 billion in 2014 to 6.1 billion in 2017.