Meat Vending Machine Unveiled At Alabama Convenience Store

Meat lovers, forget the long wait at the butcher. Now you can buy everything from New York strip steaks to juicy pork chops out of a vending machine.

Dubbed 'the Smart Butcher', the concept was first introduced last month at a Lil Mart convenience store in Odenville, Alabama, reports CBS News 42.

The refrigerated vending machine sells a wide variety of meat for no more than $6 a piece and accepts cash, debit and credit cards, notes WANE.com.

Customers, enticed by the competitive rates, have been buying between 10 and 20 pieces of meat per day, store manager Amir Sagani said in an interview with CBS News 42.

There's only one machine on the market for now. But owners Chase Evans and Rob Harrison, the two Alabama businessmen who came up with the unusual meat dispensing idea, told the Birmingham News that they're planning to expand if the concept takes off.

Though the vending machines are refrigerated, Treehugger points out there could be some potential health and safety concerns. But according to the Birmingham News, to combat those challenges, Harrison's phone receives a message every time a sale is made and he's alerted when the machine needs to be restocked.

This isn't the first time meat has been sold in this fashion. Last year live Shanghai Hairy crabs were reportedly sold out of vending machines in China.

Comments

[Paula Berglund Blum]

05:45 AM on 11/10/2011

Check this out......fail!

[candyazzbb]

12:38 AM on 11/10/2011

I think the venting machine could be cool if its in a rural area that just has a small general store. but then whats wrong with frozen?

[ontariogirl]

06:16 PM on 11/09/2011

From my grill to yours!

[Kelly Jade]

05:10 PM on 11/09/2011

I don't even eat meat (but I do pick it up for my boyfriend who does) and I'd rather be able to get a good look at it and pick it out myself....
I don't trust peapod to pick out my produce why would I trust a vending machine to give me meat?

[Karl Wilder]

01:28 PM on 11/09/2011

I buy meat from farmers I know, not from vending machines.

[Yam716]

08:35 AM on 11/09/2011

WTF?!?!?

[walshsr]

10:46 PM on 11/08/2011

The ignorance posted in the comments is just astounding.

[AndrewNY2011]

08:43 PM on 11/08/2011

And people wonder why America is the fattest country on the planet. Also, who could find meat out of a machine appetizing?

[walshsr]

10:41 PM on 11/08/2011

Meat doesn't make one fat.

[blackjacki2]

12:06 AM on 11/09/2011

Did you mean to type vegetables?

Eating too much meat, especially read meat, is one of the worst aspects of the typical American diet. Red and processed meats are known to increase your chance of developing type 2 diabetes and colon cancer.

But I don't care if people eat themselves to an early grave. To each their own.

[elcerritan]

02:54 AM on 11/09/2011

Since buying meat from vending machines is apparently new and not wide-spread, it can hardly account for why so many Americans are overweight, can it? I think you should be pointing the finger at the other junk that's been sold from vending machines for decades (e.g., candy, snack foods, sodas), instead of acting as if meat is the problem. (That said, I won't be sourcing my meat from vending machines any time soon, unless I can find one stocked with beef from Marin Sun Farms or the equivalent.) By the way, the U.S. isn't actually "the fattest country on the planet," at least not by percentage of the population. There are 8 countries where the percentage of overweight people is higher than it is in the U.S., and quite a few others that are not all that far behind the U.S.

[snork]

08:37 PM on 11/08/2011

ewwwwwwwww

[Brown Buddha]

08:35 PM on 11/08/2011

That's really neat. When I think about what's lacking from the US diet and especially in Alabama, I think of meat.

[Gina Parziale]

08:24 PM on 11/08/2011

I'll buy meat from a vending machine right after I buy sushi from duane reade (which they do sell at some locations...)

[Lisa Del Fante]

08:19 PM on 11/08/2011

That is just gross.

[AcesHighSays]

08:19 PM on 11/08/2011

You might be a redneck if..

[Michael McLellan]

07:49 PM on 11/08/2011

this is just so wrong.

[Hydro916]

07:46 PM on 11/08/2011

I bet all of it tastes like chicken.