iVended Ice Tea


As a dedicated tea drinker, I am always interested in new serving possibilities. BOS produce cans of ice tea for their vending machines in South Africa. They specialize in their local rooibos or red-bush tea, which is particularly good for you apparently.

With no caffeine and low tannin, but with lots of antioxidants, flavanones and the like we should all be thinking about sipping some. It’s not just good for us, though. The Slimbridge Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust on the Severn Estuary of the UK fed it to their tadpoles.

Not ordinary tadpoles mind you, but tadpoles of both yellow and green banded poison dart frogs from the Amazon, which were reared in pint glasses (there is a local hostelry not far away) and did very well, growing up fungus-free (1). This was in 2010 and perhaps we’d better keep our coat collars turned up and hats pulled down to avoid any dart attacks from breaking the rules.

Clearly this tea is not to be sneezed at and BOS are pioneering a new vending scheme that has the blogosphere in a hubbub although not seemingly all of a twitter (1, 2).

BOS have installed chatty vending machines which are called “Bev” and these are for iVending in that you have to tweet to Bev that you are ready 4T and she will deliver a cold can with a friendly bit of chat in exchange for your Twitter address.

Currently, there aren’t too many Bevs about although there are plans a foot to clone her in a big way and spread her service wide and far so soon many more of us will be drinking iVended ice tea. Maybe the concept will spread to other goods locked away in vending machines.

Can you see the golden future? Your local vending machine will have learned your needs and preferences and as you travel, the machines will communicate and, like a good butler, make sure your needs are available at your pit stops and final destination. The twittering classes will not know if they are here or in Valhalla.


  1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10252907
  2. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18535165
  3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzUXa6JThVQ&feature=player_embedded



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