10 Most Popular Vending Machine Drinks

If you ever wanted to know about the 10 most popular vending machine drinks, then we have the answer for you.

Vending machines are a very common sight, as you can find them almost anywhere you go. At shopping malls, at random street corners, at hospitals, or hotels, these automated vendors are always there to help us quench our thirst or provide us with a joyful nibble at our favorite snack. Speaking of snacks, do you happen to know what are the most profitable vending machine snacks? Well, you can be sure that Snickers, Peanut M&M’s, Twix, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are some of the most sold snacks for vending machines. As a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups fan, I’m happy to see that I’m not alone. In fact, you can check out 10 Best Selling Vending Machine Products to learn about the best selling vending machine products if you are planning on setting up a vending machine yourself, which can be very profitable if done correctly. Like any other business, a lot depends on how competitive the prices are of the products available at the vending machine, and it can sometimes be really tricky to do the pricing on products. There is no set formula on how to price vending machine snacks, and vending machine owners must price the products they sell as reasonable as possible given the location and the operating expenses. Thankfully, if you are thinking about setting up a machine yourself, you can find vending machine items wholesale online with just a few quick searches.

However, you are here to learn about the top vending machine drinks, and we’ll answer your burning questions. In fact some of the best items sold through vending machines are drinks, be it coffee, water or any other soda of your choice. When you’re thirsty, you’re thirsty, and you’re likely to go to a machine to satisfy your need. In this article, we will take an in-depth look at all the available drinks that are fit to be sold through a vending machine. Whether you’re just a curious person, or you want to make some quick bucks off your own machine, this article will benefit you. One thing is for certain that when it comes to differentiating one vending machine from another, options are at times quite limited, so the owners must come up with unique vending machine ideas to differentiate their approach to the business from the competition. Some of these unorthodox vending machines are really quite interesting. You can find a gold vending machine at Dubai Mall, U.A.E that spews out 24 karat gold in various forms. In China, you can even buy live crabs from a vending machine. To be honest, I’m still trying to figure out how that one works.

Did you know that the first modern vending machines operated by coins were invented in 1883 a British man named Percival Everitt? The original vending machines were used to dispense postcards, and they became a popular feature at railway stations and post offices around London soon after. Nowadays, thankfully the vending machines offer a lot of products at our convenience. Whether you need a puff of perfume, a cupcake, or a cup of hot coffee to get you through the rest of the day, there’s a vending machine for you.

In this list we will seek out the most popular vending machine drinks, and thankfully there are several websites out there that we can use for assistance. Websites like Caffeine Informer, NBC News, Statista  and most importantly Beverage Digest were very helpful with their own rankings. We also did not forget to employ the help of Google as well to figure out the most popular drinks in general. We basically looked at the data of drinks with the highest amount of sales all over the United States. We believe it is safe to assume the drinks that sell the best from all sources are also the ones that get sold the most through vending machines as well. So, we made our list based on these assumptions and also ranked the drinks accordingly.

Get your quarters ready and take a look at our list of the most popular vending machine drinks.

10. Red Bull

We are going to start off our list with an energy drink, and not just any energy drink brand but the most popular one at that. Red Bull is the highest selling energy drink brand from vending machines, probably because it gives you that extra kick you need when you didn’t get enough sleep. When it comes to drinks bought from vending machines, energy drinks are not that popular, but this particular brand seems to have gotten the attention of the customers. Red Bull made it on our list for its tremendous sales volume

9. Diet Mountain Dew

The original Mountain Dew recipe was conceived by Barney and Ally Hartman in 1940, but the diet version was introduced much later in 1988. In recent years, the diet variants of several popular soda brands have risen in popularity, since people think they’re doing less harm to their bodies with them. About 2.1 % of all carbonated soft drinks sold are diet Mountain Dew, which is a significant number and that is the reason diet Mountain Dew is on the list of the most popular vending machine drinks.

8. Diet Pepsi

Did you know that the Diet Pepsi was the first ever sugar free brand of soda to be introduced in the United States? Diet Pepsi was introduced and distributed in the United States back in 1964, before any other brands came up with a diet option of their soda. When it comes to diet pepsi, you are not just limited to the cola flavor, as there are quite a lot of flavors of diet Pepsi available out there, like vanilla, lemon, wild cherry, and lime. You can also buy a caffeine free option as well.

7. Sprite

If we take a look at the carbonated soft drinks (CSD) sales percentage of Sprite, we find that of all carbonated soft drinks sold, almost 6% were Sprite. Sprite, one of the most popular vending machine drinks after all, belongs to the biggest soft drink brand, the Coca Cola Company. If you are fond of the lemon and lime flavoring, then this is your go to drink. Sprite has several flavors as well, but the original is a classic and a favorite.

6. Dr. Pepper

Dr. Pepper beats Sprite by about 0.7 % in carbonated soft drinks sales percentage, and takes the number 6 spot on our list. Dr. Pepper was introduced way back in 1885 and has been available all over the United States from 1904. Back in the day, Dr. Pepper was marketed as an energy drink as were other soft drinks at the time. The interesting thing is that Dr. Pepper is extremely popular in the United States, but the brand is not doing so well elsewhere.

5. Mountain Dew

We are half way through our list of most popular vending machine drinks, and at number 5 we have Mountain Dew. Mountain Dew seems to be extremely popular among customers who buy from vending machines. If you ask me, no drink should be the color of yellow highlighter ink, but that’s just my humble opinion. However, if you own a vending machine that dispenses soft drinks, then stocking up on Mountain Dew seems like a really good idea for a business. Mountain Dew has a CSD percentage of about 7% which is really impressive.

4. Water

Yes, pure and clean drinking water takes a pretty high spot on our list. In fact recent trends show that people are leaning towards buying plain water instead of other carbonated alternatives because it’s healthy and it gets the job done. Why go for more expensive (and less healthy) alternatives, right? This is why water is one of the top selling drinks from vending machines and trends dictate this will likely be the case in the foreseeable future as well.

3. Diet Coke

We are now venturing into the top three of our list of most popular vending machine drinks, and the third spot belongs to Diet Coke. It is the joy and pride of the Coca Cola Company and was introduced back in 1982. Since then it has gained a lot of popularity around the U.S. and beyond. Since we are talking about vending machines specifically, we had to place Diet Coke at number 3, otherwise Diet Coke would have at least been at the second position, due to the popularity of the brand and its market share.

2. Pepsi

The second most sold drink through vending machines is Pepsi. To be honest, pretty much everyone could tell that Pepsi would serve as a runner up. Now that makes it rather obvious which drink would take the number one spot on our list. But, let’s just not get ahead of ourselves yet. Pepsi was interesting first introduced in 1893 as “Brad’s Drink” named after its inventor, however, the drink was renamed Pepsi Cola soon after and it was eventually shorted to just Pepsi. PepsiCo holds about 30% of the soft drinks market share.

1. Coca Cola (Coke)

This should not come as a surprise to anyone, considering that up to this point the most famous cola in the entire world was never mentioned on the list. In our research we found Coke to be the most sold drink through vending machines thus it deserves to be the crowning jewel of our list. There is not much to be said about Coke, but that it is Coke and we all love to drink it. The Coca Cola company holds an astonishing 42.4% of market share, and we’re certain it would just about top any list concerning soft drinks.

This wraps it up for our list of the most popular vending machine drinks.