5/3/2026 - Burlington, Vt. –  VEDA helps a Stowe mom grow her healthy vending machine business.

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Burlington, Vt. – With five-year-old twins, Danielle Rabidou of Stowe is a mom on the go. But more often than not, she didn’t like the snack options she was seeing when they were on the road.

“We would go places, see snacks, and they were always snacks that I really didn’t want to feed this to my kids or myself,” she explains. “So, I figured if we can't find a machine that has good snacks, why don't we just make one ourselves?”

And The Better Box was born, a line of vending machines full of organic offerings. No artificial sweeteners, nothing highly processed, but still full of delicious snacks.

“I knew I couldn't just fill these machines with a bunch of nuts and trail mix because at the end of the day, people still want sweet treats, they still want chips, they still want chocolate, they still want gummies.”

You will find Ollipop sodas, Dirty Potato Salt and Vinegar Chips, Yerba Mate, Lake Champlain Chocolates, and much more in The Better Box machines.

Danielle was using her own money at first, but it quickly became clear The Better Box needed outside funding. That’s when she heard about VEDA from a friend connected to the Hula community.

“We were talking about what I was building and that I needed injection of some capital to get going, especially with our BTV (Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport) install. It was five machines and that's a lot of money for the machines and the inventory to get them off the ground.”

So, she filled out the Contact Us form on VEDA’s website and Loan Officer Jules Shackman reached out to her.

“I felt like every time we spoke, he was so understanding and I felt like I could be very open and upfront with him. It just made the experience a lot less stressful for me as someone who doesn’t have a background in financial modeling or accounting. He made me feel like that's okay, and ‘I can help you make good choices’ and ‘I can help you understand this part of the process’ and so, for me, that's really what I appreciated.”

Today, there are 17 The Better Box machines spread across nine locations, mostly in Chittenden County. Danielle wants to deploy machines outside Vermont over the next year.

“We are looking to expand into Boston and New York City. We are in the Burlington Airport and UVM Medical Center, so it makes a lot of sense to copy/paste things that are working here to other places.”

She hopes to have 100 The Better Box machines up and running by July 2028.

“At this point, I don't see the need to wait to grow.”

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