NSF/ANSI 25-2023: Vending Machines for Food and Beverages

An American National Standard, NSF/ANSI 25-2023: Vending Machines For Food And Beverages, addresses the performance and safety of vending machines.

Vending Machine Components

There’s an old bit in which a character inserts a coin tied to his or her finger via a string into a vending machine and then pulls it out, yielding both the coin and the dispensed item from the vending machine. Fans of classics might recognize the coin-on-a-string trick as the act of Buster Keaton or Porky Pig; Millennials may recall Mr. Krabs completing this action.

In the real world, the design of modern vending machines prevents this type of theft. However, the intricate composition of the 15 million vending machines around the world encompasses much more than their apertures. Welds, solders, fasteners, hinges, covers, inspection and maintenance panels, refrigeration components, temperature indicating components, and other features comprise vending machines, and careful considerations for their design help assure vending machine performance and sanitation.

About NSF/ANSI 25-2023

NSF/ANSI 25-2023 establishes minimum food protection and sanitation requirements for the materials, design, construction, and performance of vending machines that dispense food and beverages, including those that vend in bulk. It also includes test methods and acceptance criteria.

Vending machine design needs to consider protection against multiple elements. Not only does NSF/ANSI 25-2022 call for vending machine materials to resist wear, but also penetration by vermin and the effects of foods, heat, cleaning compounds, sanitizers, and other substances that may contact the materials during use.

Definitions for vending machine terms used throughout this standard can be found in NSF/ANSI 170-2022: Glossary Of Food Equipment Terminology.

Changes to NSF/ANSI 21-2023

The current American National Standard for vending machines revises the previous edition from 2022. NSF/ANSI 25-2023 went through the following changes:

• New language was added for the dispensing of time / temperature control (TCS) for safety food as Section 5.1.2.1.
• Language was added for equipment mounting as Sections 5.19.9 and 5.19.10.

NSF/ANSI 25-2022: Vending Machines For Food And Beverages is available on the ANSI Webstore. It is also part of the NSF Food Equipment Complete Set.

Changes to NSF/ANSI 21-2022

For further information in this standard’s history, NSF/ANSI 25-2022 went through the following changes:

• Information was incorporate information from the National Automatic Merchandising Association (NAMA) document Standard for the Sanitary Design and Construction of Food and Beverage Vending Machines (v2013).
• Clarity was added to Section 5, “Design and construction.”
• Normative references were revised.

Changes to NSF/ANSI 25-2021

Even further back, NSF/ANSI 25-2021 went through the following changes:

• Updated the year on the American National Standard for Metric Practice reference for IEEE/ASTM SI 10 from 2010 to 2016.
• Language regarding the challenge culture preparation for clean-in-place (CIP) performance testing was updated in Section N-1.8.2.c.
• Throughout the standard, the terms “in-place cleaning” and “IPC” were changed to “CIP,” an industry standard term meaning “clean-in-place.”
• The term “potentially hazardous food” was changed to “time / temperature control for safety food(s)” throughout.
• Annexes were changed from alpha characters to numeric and preceded by “Informative” or “Normative.” They were also reordered, so the Normative Annexes appear first, followed by the Informative Annexes. This made NSF/ANSI 25-2017’s Annex A into Normative Annex 1 (N-1) and Annex B into Normative Annex 2 (N-2).