1800s: Selling Ice From Lakes

The 1800s was the birth of the ice industry. Frederic Tudor, the “Ice King” of Boston, felt people across the world would like the chilled beverages previously enjoyed only by the upper class, and in limited areas. Here’s how it worked:

• Workers cut the ice in large blocks from the lakes, storing them in ice houses built and insulated with timber, hay, sawdust, and other materials.
• Next, the ice was packed, insulated with similar materials, and transported using wagons, railroads, and ships.
• The final stop in the old ice supply chain was the horse-drawn ice wagon. “Icemen” would deliver 25-, 50-, and 100-lb blocks of ice to houses once or twice a day. The block would be placed in customers’ houses in an icebox - an early refrigeration device, before electricity would bring in the modern refrigeration system we are familiar with today.

1900s: Manufactured Ice and Refrigeration

With the rise of electric refrigeration technology, in addition to the increased quality of bulk ice manufacturing, the industry would step into the modern era. In fact, some of the same ice delivery services you’re familiar with today got started in the 1920s (and little has changed in the way they operate since).

In New York alone, plant ice production doubled in the first decade of the 1900s, and by 1914, artificial ice had overtaken natural ice in the United States. Modern refrigerators had become common in U.S. households by the 1930s, allowing people to make their own ice right at home. At the end of the 20th century, there was very little left of the natural ice trade.

2000s: The Invention of Ice Vending

The companies established in the previous century continued to (and often still do) operate the same way, aside from occasional updates in transportation, technology, and facilities along with the standard pace of advancements at the time. Here’s how it looks:

• Ice is manufactured and bagged in a plant (or ice house).
• The bags are packed onto pallets.
• The pallets are moved by forklift and stored in freezers until it’s time to ship.
• The pallets are loaded onto a refrigerated truck.
• Delivery drivers can make around two dozen stops to deliver ice to various retailers.
• The ice bags are unloaded, sometimes using a pallet jack, dolly, or other equipment, and stacked inside the merchandiser.
• The customer travels to the retail location and pays the attendant who unlocks the merchandiser for the customer.

Sound familiar? Some in the industry thought so, and decided to invent the ice vending machine, a more sanitary way to sell ice made on the spot with no additional employees or inventory necessary.

The first ice vending machines were the sizes of small buildings, utilizing a series of belts, chains, motors, augers, and other complex machinery to accept payment and dispense bags of ice automatically. Despite the complex machinery, the process for manufacturing and selling ice was drastically simplified:

• The customer approaches the machine and inserts payment.
• At the push of a button, the machine dispenses a bag of ice from a chute.

2010s: The Invention of Ice Vending

Although the introduction of ice vending was a huge improvement for the industry, the complicated mechanisms and massive machinery left a lot of room for improvement and innovation. Augers and beater bars don’t just cause numerous maintenance problems for the machine owners, but often end up crushing the ice the customers are buying.

Enter Everest, with the revolutionary VersaVend barrel. By eliminating the reliance on outdated technology, we introduced the most advanced ice and water vending machine on the market with only ONE MOVING PART.

With the smallest footprint at only 20 square feet (or half the size of a standard parking space), retailers and entrepreneurs have more flexibility in where they can place their business, saving several thousands of dollars on permits, maintenance, and the machine itself.

Everest is also the first - and only - ice vending manufacturer in the industry to offer water vending in the machine as a standard feature, creating two revenue streams in one plug-and-play business.

Additionally, with growing awareness and concerns around environmental issues, we wanted to eliminate wasteful practices in favor of eco-friendly alternatives. By creating a high-efficiency machine with bulk ice vending and water recycling components, we have drastically reduced the waste of single-use plastics and eliminated excessive water waste - all while using far less energy than the older machines.

For customers, that means clean, safe, high-quality ice and water at a lower price. For machine owners, that means less maintenance, a faster ROI, and a truly passive income.