60 hours of work in 8 minutes.
A few months ago we filmed a restoration of a 1950s Vendo 44 Coke Machine for Insider. It is part of their video series called Refurbished. They edited our video footage, added an interview, and created an 8-minute highlight video of the restoration. It gives a good overview of most of the full restoration process. They did a great job putting it all together from our amateur filming.
There were a few things I would have liked to have been included in final cut for our customers to see, but we are grateful for the opportunity to partner with them and share our work on their platform. See below for some common questions we got from the video. You can see the before and after images here.
One question we got about the video was in regard to cans vs bottles. In the 1950s cans were not a method of vending drinks, so this was originally an 8oz bottle machine. As explained here, the modern bottles do not vendor stack well on this machine. So, although did not make the video, we converted this machine to vend cans internally.
Another question we got is about is it always best to fully restore them as opposed to keeping them original. There are those on both sides of this. There are those who love the original “Americana”, the old patina, and there are those who want the machine to have a new factory restored look, maybe to go into an office or game room.
Much of this is a personal preference and we offer both full restorations or repairs for those that prefer the vintage look, dents and all. We wrote some tips and how to decide which is best for your machine here.
