Industries
The cooler is the same everywhere. The clock isn't.
8Kava builds unattended retail solutions for nine kinds of places, and no two keep the same hours. A hospital needs a temperature log at 4 a.m. A warehouse needs gloves by badge on third shift. A highway charging plaza needs cold drinks with no grid power at all. Here is how each industry changes the format, the payments and the paperwork.
- connected retail points
- 3,400+connected retail points
- operators and location hosts
- 190+operators and location hosts
- transactions in 12 months
- 11.8Mtransactions in 12 months
How the job changes from one industry to the next
Four variables decide most of the design: when people come, how long they stay, how they pay and who checks the records.
| Busiest hours | Time to shop | How people pay | What gets audited | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Workplaces | Midweek mornings and lunch, swinging with hybrid schedules | A short break, several times a day | Badge, payroll deduct, employer subsidy | Subsidy spend by team |
| Manufacturing & logistics | Around the clock, spiking at shift change | A fixed break with a hard stop | Badge, payroll deduct, cards | PPE issue by role and cost center |
| Healthcare | Nights and weekends, after the cafeteria closes | Minutes stolen between patients | Badge and payroll deduct for staff, cards for visitors | Food temperature logs |
| Higher education | Late night, peaking in finals week | Long and social | Campus card, wallets, cards | Card-office reconciliation |
| Multifamily | Evenings and weekends | A quick trip downstairs | Resident app, wallets, cards | Amenity use for the owner |
| Hospitality | Late arrivals and early departures | One hand on a suitcase | Cards, wallets, room charge | Outlet revenue by property |
| Transit, airports & EV | Commute peaks and first departures | Fixed and short: a boarding call or a charge | Contactless cards and wallets | Concession reporting |
| Fitness & recreation | Before work, after work, weekend mornings | Right after the workout | Member app, wallets, cards | Member spend and margin |
| Government & public | Office hours, plus crews that work all night | Anything from a library visit to a dispatcher's break | Cards, wallets, badge for staff | Procurement and accessibility records |
These are typical patterns, not rules. Site Intelligence measures your actual traffic, shifts and dwell before we recommend a format.
Nine industries, nine playbooks
Each page names the formats, payments and platform modules we'd start with, and the trade-offs we'd warn you about.
Workplaces
Pantries that follow hybrid attendance and run on subsidies and payroll deduct.
Manufacturing & Logistics
Fresh food and badge-limited PPE for all three shifts, charged to the right cost center.
Healthcare
Real meals for night shift, automated temperature logs and hot meal lockers.
Higher Education
Campus-card checkout in residence halls and libraries, restocked before the morning rush.
Multifamily
A 24/7 lobby market that costs the owner no capital to install.
Hospitality
A lobby pantry that keeps selling long after the gift shop would have closed.
Transit, Airports & EV
Fast contactless retail for platforms, gates and charging plazas, on or off the grid.
Fitness & Recreation
Protein, hydration and gear at the gym exit, and cold water at the trailhead.
Government & Public
Accessible, procurement-ready retail for public buildings, libraries, dispatch centers and parks.
Four questions that pick the format
We answer these for your site before recommending any hardware. They usually rule out more options than they rule in.
How long can people stay?
Short, fixed breaks favor a smart cooler: tap, open, take, close, with the door released in under a second. Longer visits support a micro-market kiosk or a walk-in Kava Box, where browsing sells.
When do they show up?
If the busiest hour is one nobody wants to staff, unattended retail wins outright. If demand spikes once a day, forecasting sets par levels for the spike, not the daily average.
How do they pay?
Employees carry badges, students carry campus cards and travelers carry phones. Kava devices take EMV contactless, mobile wallets, the Kava app or QR, badges and payroll deduct, so the store fits the wallet already in the pocket.
Who checks the records?
Hospitals audit temperatures, plants audit PPE and agencies audit procurement. Kava OS keeps the record each of them asks for, without a clipboard.
A cooler in a hospital and a cooler in a gym are two different stores.
The cabinet, the edge cameras and the ±2 g load cells are identical. Everything around them changes. A hospital cooler sells grain bowls at 4 a.m. and has to lock itself if the inside stays above 41 °F for 30 minutes. A warehouse cooler must be full for third shift, which means the restock lands in the evening, not mid-morning.
That's why Kava OS models each site on its own. Forecasts learn the local rhythm, prices can follow the clock and the expiry date, and Kava Agent drafts pick lists for the site you actually have, not a fleet average.
- Item-level, site-level forecasts instead of one par level for every location.
- Prices that can change by time of day, expiry date or subsidy rule, inside guardrails you set.
- Service windows planned around your hours, not the route's convenience.
What holds true in every industry
From a floor plan to a first tap
Score the site
We map traffic, shifts, dwell and nearby food options, then recommend a format and an opening assortment. Sometimes the answer is a smaller format than you expected.
Match payments and records
Badges, campus cards, payroll deduct, subsidies and room charge are set per site. So are the records your auditors expect: temperature logs, PPE allocation, sales by outlet.
Go live
A smart-cooler program of up to 10 units typically goes from signed agreement to first sale in 10 business days. A Kava Box micro-store typically opens in 6 weeks.
Run it, or hand it off
Run the program yourself, keep your current operator on Kava OS, or let Managed Operations stock, clean and service it for you.
Three industries, measured
Mountain West hospital network
22 Kava Coolers and 4 Kava Lockers across 3 campuses. Revenue rose 46% over the prior vending program, and fresh-food waste fell 31%.
Midwest vending operator
520 legacy machines retrofitted with Kava Link in 9 weeks. 140 locations added in the first year without adding a route.
Southeast distribution center
PPE dispensers, coolers and a kiosk for 900 workers on 3 shifts. PPE consumption fell 24%, with zero on-shift PPE stock-outs after month two.
Your clock says more about your site than your industry does.
A hospital's night shift and a warehouse's third shift want nearly the same store: fast, fresh, paid by badge, ready at 3 a.m. A downtown office and a suburban office park, both "workplaces", may want completely different ones. Industry is where the conversation starts; hours, dwell and payment habits decide the format. If you sorted your sites by their busiest hour instead of by their industry, which ones would end up side by side?
Questions we hear from every industry
Which industry pays back fastest?
The fastest sites share two traits: long hours with no food nearby, and people who come back every day. A hospital floor at night can beat a busier office with a café downstairs. Run your own numbers in the ROI calculator.
Can one account run sites in different industries?
Yes. Kava OS treats every device as its own store, with its own planogram, prices, payment rules and reports. Role-based access lets a hospital's food service team see their coolers while the operator sees the whole fleet.
We already have a vending operator. Do we have to switch?
No. Operators run their routes on Kava OS too, and a $349 Kava Link retrofit connects the machines already in your building in about 22 minutes. If you'd rather hand off everything, Managed Operations can take over the program.
What does a site need to host a smart cooler?
A Kava Cooler C2 needs 30 inches of wall, 32 inches of depth and a standard 115 V outlet. It brings its own LTE connection, so it never needs to join your network.
Where do you deploy?
Across the continental United States. 8Kava technicians cover the Colorado Front Range with same-day on-site service; vetted, 8Kava-trained field partners cover other served metros next business day.
Where to go next
Tell us who's in your building at 2 a.m.
Describe one site or a whole portfolio. We'll come back with the format, the payment setup and the records your industry will ask for.