Patent ID: 8126764

Claim:
A method for operating a vending machine comprising the steps of: monitoring sales of each of a plurality of product offerings for the vending machine by receiving sales information from the vending machine transmitted via a wireless network; analyzing the received sales information with a computer and identifying an underperforming product offering in the plurality of product offerings; responsive to the analyzing step, replacing the underperforming product offering with another one of the product offerings; determining that the vending machine exhibits lower sales performance than other vending machines in response to comparing the sales information of the vending machine to sales information of other vending machines transmitted via the wireless network; identifying a second vending machine in the other vending machines as an outperforming vending machine based on the transmitted sales information, wherein the second vending machine is located at a site; conducting computer analysis to reveal characteristics of the site; and conducting computer analysis to identify a new site for the vending machine that has similar characteristics to the revealed characteristics of the site of the second vending machine.