Patent ID: 8820574

Claim:
A method of dispensing a number of products comprising original products and new products from a vending machine shelf with a number of product columns, the method comprising: selling down, by a product delivery system, a first column of the number of product columns; selling down, by the product delivery system, a number of adjacent columns one by one while leaving one or more product columns stocked in full with the original products; restocking the sold down columns by pushing in the new products from a front of each of the product columns to create one or more product columns stocked in full with the new products and a product column stocked in full with a mix of the original products and the new products; selling down, by the product delivery system and initially after restocking, the one or more product columns stocked in full with the, original products; and selling down, by the product delivery system, the one or more product columns stocked in full with the new products prior to selling down the product column stocked in full with the mix of the original products and the new products.