By LAURA REILEY | The Washington Post | Published: March 12, 2021 Stars and Stripes is making stories on the coronavirus pandemic available free of charge. See more staff and wire stories here. Sign up for our daily coronavirus newsletter here. Please support our journalism with a subscription. The pandemic has rocketed vending machines into new territory. Light-years beyond dispensers of Funyuns and Snickers, vending machines, robotic kiosks and other grab-and-go technology now broadly called "unattended retail" are putting artisanal pizza, hot bowls of ramen and prime cuts of beef into the hands of consumers 24/7. Carla Balakgie, chief executive of the National Automatic Merchandising Association, the trade group representing the vending machine industry, said coronavirus pandemic fears and social distancing have accelerated vending machine adoption.