I wouldn't trust this automatic data for shit. When's the last time you used a vending machine that did not have any problems? The classic meme of people beating on a machine because something got stuck. How is that inventory managed? Does the inventory decrement every time someone pushes buttons to vend an item? Is it tracked by weight? Who enters the weight?
This seems like a system ripe for abuse by the manufacture on needing maintenance like the McDonald's soft server machine.
Sorry?
You order by the # of the item.
This is recorded in NVRAM/sent to cloud nowadays.
There is absolutely no need to involve any human being in the process of tracking sales.
The guy with a clipboard counting how many Diet Coke cans are missing hasn't been the way these things are managed since probably 2003.
That's exactly how the vending machines at my workplace operate. No screens or weird tracking (as long as you avoid the stupid "pay on your phone with our app" option). The machine knows exactly how many of what items it has dispensed and when without any of that nonsense.
Whereas classic vending machine inventory systems requires an human person to track the re-fills or sales.
A happy medium would be no stupid cameras, but with electronic tracking and reporting of what is sold. That has to be a thing that can be done, right?