What? No Huggies? Diaper vending machines to the rescue

VENDING: A single diaper costs $2.50

By Melissa Dribben
The Philadelphia Inquirer

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Vending machines used to be just for candy and condoms. They've evolved.

Slip your cash or credit card into the mouth of a 21st-century big boy, and it can reward you with a digital camera, DVDs, an iPod, a steamy latte, freshly made pizza, and solid gold bars.

You have to go to Italy to find the pizza machine, and to Germany for the Gold to Go wafers (in varying weights, with prices adjusted every two minutes for casual investors). The Philadelphia region, however, is now home to one of the most practical, why-didn't-I-think- of-that vending machines in existence.

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The Nanny Caddy.

The teal-and-purple machines dispense Huggies diapers in small, medium and large; two kinds of pacifiers; baby wipes; hand sanitizer; a nursing wrap for discreet breast-feeding; sippy cups; diaper-rash ointment; and, compassionately, Tylenol, Advil and tampons.

The mother of such an invention, as you can imagine, had suffered.

Three years ago, Celena Lentz, a former nurse from Gold Canyon, Ariz., took her 2-year-old son, Luke, shopping at a mall. "He had a poopy diaper, and I had run out," she recalled. There was no drugstore in the mall, so she packed up the stroller to leave.

"He was screaming, and I thought, 'Why isn't there a machine for times like this?' There have been so many times when I was at the mall or the zoo or the museum, and I ran out of diapers or wipes and couldn't buy those things. I looked around at all the moms and thought, 'I can't be the only one this happens to.' And the wheels started turning."

Yes, she said, she knows. Mothers and baby sitters ought to be prepared. And when emergencies arise, how hard is it to find a drugstore or ask a stranger pushing a stroller for a spare diaper?

"But it's not so simple," she said. "Babies and children are unpredictable, so you have to flow with that. You have an explosion, and you need more than one. If you're gone for the whole day, you may not have enough." And, she noted, there are diaper thieves afoot. "I have nieces and nephews. They get into your diaper bag and take stuff out."

Her husband, a building contractor, thought it was a brilliant idea. But Lentz had no business experience and didn't have the slightest idea how she would come up with the money to start such a project. She mulled it over for a year and a half, had another baby, and then, one day last January, at Bible study with her aunt, cousin, and mother, it clicked.

"We were praying," Lentz said. "My aunt said, 'I feel we need to invent something,' and I said, 'Oh, I have the perfect thing.' They said, 'We'll help you.' I kind of got my prayers answered." Within a few months, a Nanny Caddy was dispensing emergency diapers in Superstition Springs Center, a nearby mall. Lentz sent out fliers to the magazines she found in the pediatrician's office. One responded and wrote an article about her.

And that was how the Philadelphia connection came to be.

Shannon FitzGerald, who lives in East Falls, had just had her second baby when she came across the article about Nanny Caddy.

She told her husband, Patrick, about it. He has made it his career to get businesses off the ground. He co-founded Recycle Bank, a supplier of neighborhood recycling containers that allow households to earn points based on how much they recycle and redeem the points for discounts and coupons from retailers. The company continues to do business in other cities, but after its contract with Philadelphia expired in 2006, Patrick began looking for other startup opportunities.