BS: Chip Vending Machines - fact or myth???

Subject: RE: BS: Chip Vending Machines - fact or myth???
From: Coyote Breath
Date: 27 Sep 02 - 01:03 AM

Yorp! Further proof that the English are comepletely mad!

I LOVE "chips" (fries, here in the USA), dip them in peppercorn ranch dressing, YUM! but from a machine? You can get 'Andy Capp "fries" all dried out and very thin and carboardy tasting from a vending machine (should you so desire) but I think that Castrol GTX would be an improvement.

I also love Chili Cheese Chips. They smell like one's armpits after an evening of eating huge quantities of Mexican food!

Well they TASTE good!

CB

Subject: RE: BS: Chip Vending Machines - fact or myth???
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Sep 02 - 11:06 AM

Well, I'm a little bit younger than the area of time that you are all referring.

But I recall seeing and trying a fries machine at my local hockey arena. It was easier than opening up the concession stand, i guess.

I remember them being crispy, which in itself was probably amazing since they kept it in the rink portion of the arena, which was of course, cold.

Steve

Subject: RE: BS: Chip Vending Machines - fact or myth???
From: Noreen
Date: 26 Sep 02 - 07:15 AM

Mmmm... deep fried maggots...

Subject: RE: BS: Chip Vending Machines - fact or myth???
From: Linda Kelly
Date: 26 Sep 02 - 04:45 AM

Gosh I remember chip vending machines -but more impressively we also have maggot vending machines in Hull -for the discerning fisherman!

Subject: RE: BS: Chip Vending Machines - fact or myth???
From: GUEST,KingBrilliant
Date: 26 Sep 02 - 04:11 AM

Thanks for the great response everyone - especially Noreen for finding an actual purveyor of the things.
Perhaps now Hammerite won't sneer at King whe he asks her whether the school chips come from a machine!!

Kris
{belly : rumble rumble}

Subject: RE: BS: Chip Vending Machines - fact or myth???
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 25 Sep 02 - 06:19 PM

There is a move afoot to bring back the chip vending machine... with the advent of microwaves and microwaveable chips (well, McCain micro chips....!) the machine is set to make a comeback.

Judging by the out take from the filming of the advert, they're crap.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Chip Vending Machines - fact or myth???
From: Bert
Date: 25 Sep 02 - 01:44 AM

Then extrude it continuously ... through an orifice

And I suppose you'd name such a machine Shit-a-chip!

Subject: RE: BS: Chip Vending Machines - fact or myth???
From: CraigS
Date: 24 Sep 02 - 07:23 PM

I remember the same machine at Victoria coach station, but the ones I got were better quality.

At a trade exhibition about ten years ago there was an American working in GB who had a machine which made excellent chips. He'd gone too far with the idea, though, and the chips were made from reconstituted dried potato - sort of dried Smash. While they tasted OK, there was no advantage because they were more expensive to produce than real chips - I don't think he realised his price was off until he found he was competing with two other automated chip machines at the same exhibition. All the same, his was the only machine there which could vend chips unattended.

Subject: RE: BS: Chip Vending Machines - fact or myth???
From: Mac Tattie
Date: 24 Sep 02 - 05:45 PM

I carried out maitainence and repairs on a chip vending machine, arround 1974-1975 at Vesuvius Crucible's factory in Newmilns, Ayrshire. I can't remember the makers, the machine was supplied by a firm based in Aberdeen. The machine was arround a meter high by a meter wide by a meter deep, it stored frozen chips, mesured out a portion into a basket, lowered the basket into hot oil for a set time, then dumped the chips in to a paper pouch which then appeared at a door on the front of the machine, and all for 5p. The frozen chips were thin cut and the oil was kept slightly over temperature. As I remember the chips were very good and the machine, when working well, did a roaring trade. It was tempermental and needed a good clean at least twice a day or the fumes and vapours from the hot oil gumed up the works and choked the filters.

Subject: RE: BS: Chip Vending Machines - fact or myth???
From: Noreen
Date: 24 Sep 02 - 09:52 AM

Looks like they're still available (click) though most "Chip Vending Machines" found by googling referred to US-type chips/Pringles, or "Blue Chip Vending Machines" :0)

Subject: RE: BS: Chip Vending Machines - fact or myth???
From: GUEST,Aldus
Date: 24 Sep 02 - 09:30 AM

I remember them...it,,, asI only ever saw one. It was briefly dispensing it's wares at my Colleges Student Centre....and the chips were'n bad.

Subject: RE: BS: Chip Vending Machines - fact or myth???
From: GUEST,Flying Scotsman
Date: 24 Sep 02 - 03:20 AM

I remember these machines very well but not in the UK. In 1969/70, I was working from Dover on the cross channel ships and there were several of these machines on the seafront at Ostend in Belgium.

The chips looked ok but they came smothered in Mayonnaise. There didn't seem to be a button for a "no mayonnaise option".

Subject: RE: BS: Chip Vending Machines - fact or myth???
From: GUEST,ozmacca
Date: 24 Sep 02 - 03:14 AM

With modern technology at our fingertips, I wonder if there's a market for an updated version. How about storing potato mash dry mixture in a sealed chamber. When the customer presses the button, it measures a quantity and mixes the powder with water. Then extrude it continuously through a shaped nozzle and through a small quickly heated hot fat/oil frier and out through an orifice with a cutter to chop of the endless chip into random lengths. Deliver to a convenient level (perhaps for the average mouth). Add auxiliary nozzles inside the delivery tube to spot the product with salt, vinegar, sauces as pre-selected by the customer. Hmmmm. There's a fortune there waiting for somebody who can find enough idiots to buy the stuff.

Subject: RE: BS: Chip Vending Machines - fact or myth???
From: C-flat
Date: 23 Sep 02 - 03:52 PM

My partner works for the local authority in Sunderland and remembers having one of these "chip" vendors installed on a trial basis.
Unfortunately it couldn't dispense the local favourite........"Cheesy Chips"(dripping with melted cheese)
Very good for the arteries, I'm told.:~)
C-flat.

Subject: RE: BS: Chip Vending Machines - fact or myth???
From: lady penelope
Date: 23 Sep 02 - 03:29 PM

I don't remember them in this country, but Parker says that circa 1988 in Japan, you could get not only chips but a full fried breakfast ( I kid you not ) including bacon, fried egg and toast + numerous variations on a theme. They were apparently next to machines that sold cans of beer ( Sapporo ) and tended to situated in areas where mainly westerners stayed. I sense an inscrutable ploy here.........

TTFN M'Lady P.

Subject: RE: BS: Chip Vending Machines - fact or myth???
From: GUEST,Davetnova
Date: 23 Sep 02 - 11:07 AM

I saw one at a petrol station in Edinburgh circa 1975 didn't use it. Not brave enough.

Subject: RE: BS: Chip Vending Machines - fact or myth???
From: GUEST,KingBrilliant
Date: 23 Sep 02 - 08:13 AM

Thankyou Jeanie.
I can take the straitjacket off him now then!
That sounds about the same era that he remembers - so perhaps it was the very same machine! (maybe there was only one.....)

Kris

Subject: RE: BS: Chip Vending Machines - fact or myth???
From: Jeanie
Date: 23 Sep 02 - 07:24 AM

Yes, I remember them ! Well, one actually. It was in the waiting room at Victoria Coach Station. I can pinpoint the exact year, too : 1972/1973. I spent many a merry hour in there, waiting for the coach to arrive from Leeds with my very hairy, incomprehensibly northern boyfriend on it. The inconsoable, soggy partings waiting for the coach back to Leeds were in no way helped by the totally repulsive chips that came out of this machine. They looked and tasted as if they had been fried in Castrol GTX.

Ah... memories ...

- jeanie

Subject: RE: BS: Chip Vending Machines - fact or myth???
From: Den
Date: 23 Sep 02 - 07:12 AM

There have been chip vending machines. They were I believe developed by a guy named Kaiser in the US. I did some promotional work for some guys in Vancouver who had developed a pizza vending machine that used similar technology. The pizzas, though unlike conventional pizzas tasted quite good.

Subject: RE: BS: Chip Vending Machines - fact or myth???
From: My guru always said
Date: 23 Sep 02 - 06:58 AM

As far as I know, there are Chip vending machines in the here & now. Don't think they can be very successful otherwise we'd all know about them!

Subject: RE: BS: Chip Vending Machines - fact or myth???
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Sep 02 - 06:42 AM

No memory of them, and considering the technical difficulties and costs (not to mention food hygiene issues) of keeping chips warm for days on end, I would respectfully suggest that:

your friend has run mad

Subject: Chip Vending Machines - fact or myth???
From: GUEST,KingBrilliant
Date: 23 Sep 02 - 05:02 AM

Hi all,

Mr King claims to remember chip (as in fries) vending machines in the UK at some time pre-microwaves (maybe 20 years ago).
Has he run mad, or does anyone else remember such things?

It sounds SO unlikely.... but....

cheers

Kris