This invention relates to coffee vendors, i.e., vendors for brewing and vending coffee, and more particularly to a hot-water sanitizing system for such vendors.
The invention is especially concerned with vendors of the type having a brewer in which a cup of coffee is fresh-brewed from ground coffee in the brewer on each vend cycle. Reference may be made to the coassigned U.S Pat. No. 3,446,137, issued May 27, 1969, entitled Hot Beverage Merchandiser, for disclosure of the single-cup fresh-brew type to which the present invention is particularly applicable. For brewing good coffee, the brewer and delivery line for the brewed coffee should be thoroughly cleaned at frequent intervals. In the absence of a cleaning system, this has been a time-consuming operation, resulting in many instances in too infrequent thorough cleaning by servicemen with resultant vending of inferior coffee. More recently, coffee vendors sold by the assignee of this application have been equipped with cleaning systems, such as of the type described in coassigned U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,338,153 and 3,390,626, involving delivery of a charge of cleaning agent and hot water to the brewer for cleaning it. Although the operation of such cleaning systems has been generally satisfactory, the use of cleaning agents constitutes an added expense and requires that the vendor be equipped with a reservoir for the agent and apparatus for delivery of the agent to the brewer during a cleaning cycle.