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Want to create a five-star meal with a vending machine price tag, head to Singapore. I’m Brian Banmiller on Business.

In the middle of most Singapore neighborhoods, you can feed pretty much any craving with a couple of bucks. According to a b-b-c business reporter who lives in Singapore some of the delicacies inside vending machines include sashimi-style salmon, salad, and high-end steak. Others stock bread, curry puffs, pizza, fresh-squeezed juice, and cooked chili crab. So why the buy with buttons option? According to the b-b-c, machines offer people their own retail space. If they want to try out a new product it’s cheaper and easier to offer it in a machine than trying to open your own store. And besides launching a business, others are modeling them around vending machines. One company has a chain of cafes that serves hot local dishes from machines. Another uses them as unstaffed convenience stores to sell everything from band-aids to baked beans. And business is growing. Revenue has gone from ninety-one million in twenty fourteen to almost one hundred and five million in twenty nineteen.  Got change for a dollar? Brian Banmiller, CBS news.

About Brian

CBS News Radio national business journalist Brian Banmiller has spent more than 40 years in the news industry, covering business, politics and the economy on television, radio and in print. Currently, his “Banmiller on Business” reports are delivered to an audience of millions nationwide.