Meghann Winters of The Ohio State University is a hero for our times. Sure, you carry a few strips of bacon in your everyday carry kit. But what if you run out and don't have time to cook more? That's when you need to stop by the bacon vending machine.
Winters, an employee of the Ohio Pork Council (it's sort of like a state legislature--or it was when I lived in Ohio), was tasked with finding a new way to deliver bacon into the hands of the needy. OSU reports:
“Originally, we were going to rent a vending machine, but that didn’t make much sense financially. So I ended up finding an old, used one on Facebook,” she said.
The next task proved to be much toughter: “baconify” the vending machine. [...]
“There was a lot of trial and error involved in that,” she said.
Configuring the bacon packages to fit within the rows and coils and then fall into the bottom bin proved to be quite tricky.
“Most vending machines are made for candy bars, not necessarily bacon,” she said. “We had to make sure the packaging didn’t get caught as it was falling out. We also had to find shelf-friendly bacon.”
So the machine does not cook bacon on the spot and then drop it out of the slot, but provides pre-cooked bacon in packages. That's okay because it just provides the heroic Winters with a new goal to aim for.
The machine, which is located in the Animal Sciences Building, has been hugely popular:
“We couldn’t keep it stocked fast enough,” said Lyda Garcia, an assistant professor of meat science, and faculty advisor to the Meat Science Club. The club worked to keep the machine stocked and available to students during finals week last December.
Four to five times a day, bacon had to be added. As a result, about 275 pounds of bacon were sold over the eight days the machine was on campus.
-via Weird Universe | Photo: OSU