People keep inventing these things, high tech food in machines so you can serve instant Beef Wellington at the race track or airport, and has anyone ever been successful with one? Maybe Dippin' Dots is making a fortune, but I doubt it. Years ago, when I was actually paying attention to my investments online instead of posting about food all day, there were guys on stock boards going nuts over an instant french fry machine, that took freeze-dried potato pellets and reconstituted them into a cup of hot, greasy fry-things (somewhat like the terrifying Edith's
fry-pooper). The company was constantly issuing press releases (clearly its main product, along with its penny stock):
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
POOPER-FRY(TM) COMPLETES TESTS OF SUBSONIC KETCHUP DELIVERY SYSTEM
(Terre Haute, IN) Pooper-Fry (Kamchatka Stock Exchange: POOFRY), the world's leading maker of robotic French Fry activation and deployment technology, today successfully completed tests of its subsonic ketchup delivery systems at its potato proving grounds in an unpoliced region of the Brazilian rain forest...
If you dared question whether people would eat their godawful space food fries, the faithful would jump all over you screaming "Pringles! People love Pringles!" If you pointed out that, actually, the company that invented Pringles still hasn't recovered its investment in the technology (but sells just enough to keep making them), well, they didn't take that very well either. Anyway, there's always stuff like this out there, but the number that have been successful is, I think, just about limited to Coke machines and the ones that dispense potato chips and candy bars. Otherwise, I think there just aren't that many places, really, where it'd be worth it to install a machine but not quite worth it to install and man an actual hot dog stand.