Workplaces
Office smart vending that knows Tuesday from Friday.
Hybrid work turned the office pantry into a forecasting problem. 8Kava office smart vending stocks for the people actually in the building, runs employer subsidies and payroll deduct without petty cash, and shows facilities what's working before the next engagement survey does.
- checkout accuracy
- 99.4%checkout accuracy
- out-of-stock events
- −41%out-of-stock events
- business days to go live
- 10business days to go live
Your pantry was stocked for headcount. Your office runs on attendance.
A fixed weekly delivery assumes the same people show up every day. They don't. Tuesday's pantry is empty by 1 p.m. and Friday's sandwiches go in the bin. Forecasting & Auto-Replenishment learns your building's weekday pattern item by item, so the Tuesday restock is heavy, the Friday restock is light, and the pick list arrives already sized.
Whatever still goes unsold gets marked down before it expires. Dynamic Pricing can drop a sandwich's price on Friday afternoon instead of throwing it out on Monday. Across 8Kava deployments, expiry-aware pricing cuts fresh-food waste by 33%, and forecasting cuts out-of-stock events by 41%.
- Par levels by weekday, learned from your own sales, not a vendor's template.
- Markdowns inside guardrails you set, such as never below cost.
- Restocks timed to land before your busiest in-office mornings.
What we'd put in an office
Most offices start with one or two smart coolers. Larger floors add open shelving and self-checkout. Every format runs on Kava OS.
Kava Cooler C2 and C2-XL
The pantry itself. Tap, open, take, close; vision and per-shelf weight build the receipt within 10 seconds. Holds up to 240 items (C2) or 480 (C2-XL). From $5,900, or $189 a month on VaaS.
Kava Kiosk K1
Self-checkout for open shelves of snacks, fruit and bakery. Vision recognizes a banana without a barcode, and it works with fixtures you already own. $2,900, or $99 a month.
Kava Lockers LX
Heated and refrigerated compartments for catered lunch pickup, plus ambient bays for laptop loaners and IT asset swaps. 18 compartments for $7,400, or $229 a month.
Kava Link L2
Already have a vending machine people like? A $349 retrofit adds telemetry, remote pricing and cashless passthrough in about 22 minutes.
Employer subsidies without the expense report
Payments & Loyalty turns food perks into rules, so finance gets a report instead of a box of receipts.
Subsidy rules
Free breakfast before 9 a.m. on in-office days, half-price salads for one team, a monthly allowance per person. Rules apply at checkout automatically.
Badge checkout
Employees tap the badge they already carry. No app download, no card on file, no line at the pantry.
Payroll deduct
Purchases above the subsidy can go to payroll. Kava OS has connectors for Workday, ADP and UKG, by file or API.
Caps and cost centers
Set spend caps per person or per team, and see subsidy cost by department in the finance view.
Guests and contractors
Visitors pay with contactless cards or mobile wallets. Nobody pays a cashless convenience fee.
Single sign-on
Admins sign in through Okta, Microsoft Entra ID or Google Workspace via SAML/OIDC on the Enterprise plan.
Three ways to feed an office
| Honor-system micro-market | Traditional vending machine | 8Kava smart cooler | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fresh food | Yes, on open shelves | Rarely; mostly packaged snacks | Yes, held at 33–41 °F |
| Shrink control | Relies on trust | Locked glass, narrow selection | Locking door; 62% less shrink than honor-system markets |
| Ways to pay | Kiosk card reader, sometimes badge | Cash and card | Tap, wallet, app or QR, badge, payroll deduct |
| Subsidies | Possible, often manual | Rare | Rule-based, reported by cost center |
| Restock planning | Fixed schedule | Fixed schedule | Item-level forecast by weekday |
| Floor space | A room or an alcove | One machine footprint | 30 or 54 inches of wall |
Not every office needs a cooler. For a small team with steady habits, a retrofitted machine can be the better buy. Our format guide walks through the trade-offs.
What the system does while nobody's watching
- Monday
Light day, light shelves
The forecast knows Mondays are quiet. The pick list carries fewer salads and more shelf-stable snacks, so nothing fresh waits around for Tuesday.
- Tuesday, 6:30 a.m.
The heavy restock lands
The busiest in-office day gets the biggest delivery, finished before the first badge tap.
- Wednesday
All-hands lunch
A one-day subsidy rule covers lunch for everyone who badges in. Finance sees the total the next morning.
- Thursday
A seal starts to slip
Door-seal and temperature telemetry flags a cooler drifting warm. A service ticket opens before anyone finds a warm yogurt.
- Friday, 2 p.m.
Markdowns, not waste
Sandwiches that expire tonight drop in price within your guardrails. They go home with someone instead of into the bin.
- Weekend
The cooler idles
Adaptive compressor scheduling eases off while the floor is empty, part of how refrigerated units use 19% less energy.
What each team in the building gets
Facilities
No plumbing, a standard 115 V outlet and a 30-inch footprint. Alerts go to the operator, not your help desk.
People teams
A perk you can adjust weekly and measure in aggregate: how often it's used, on which days, by which teams.
Finance
Subsidy cost by cost center, payroll-deduct files and sales reports that reconcile to the cent.
IT and security
Built-in LTE keeps the cooler off your corporate network. No images of faces are stored or sent. Read our security approach.
The pantry is the only office perk with a receipt.
Commuter stipends, offsites and new furniture are hard to measure. A subsidized Tuesday breakfast is not: you can see, in aggregate, how many people used it, what it cost and whether in-office days got busier after it started. If your company is spending to bring people back, which perk in your building can actually show it worked?
Office smart vending FAQ
How much space does an office smart cooler need?
A Kava Cooler C2 is 30 inches wide, 32 inches deep and 80 inches tall; the double-door C2-XL is 54 inches wide. Both plug into a standard 115 V outlet and need no plumbing.
Can we subsidize some items and not others?
Yes. Subsidy rules can target items, categories, times of day, days of the week or groups of employees. For example, you can cover breakfast on in-office days and leave snacks at full price, with any balance going to payroll deduct or a card.
Who restocks and cleans it?
Your choice. Your current operator can run it on Kava OS, your own team can use the driver app, or Managed Operations handles stocking, merchandising, cleaning and service end to end.
Does it need our Wi-Fi?
No. Kava Cooler has built-in LTE Cat-4, with Wi-Fi 6 and Ethernet as options. If the connection drops, it keeps selling and buffers up to 72 hours of transactions.
What does it cost?
A Kava Cooler C2 is $5,900 to buy, plus Kava OS from $19 per device per month. Or it's $189 a month on a 36-month Vending-as-a-Service term that includes the hardware, Kava OS Pro and service. See pricing for every option.
Where to go next
Give the people who come in a reason to come back.
Send us your floor plan and your in-office days. We'll size the pantry, the subsidy rules and the restock schedule to match.