Heinz is selling mayo-loaded sandwiches for 57p from a Soho vending machine
The Heinz Mayo AutoMayoMat is serving sandwiches cheaper than a Tube journey
Finding lunch in central London for under a tenner now usually involves either meal-deal maths or a level of personal sacrifice nobody should have to make before 1pm. But Heinz is attempting to briefly heal the capital’s broken lunch economy with a brand-new Soho pop-up that’ll dish out fresh sandwiches for just 57p.
To celebrate National Picnic Week, Heinz Mayo is launching what it’s calling the UK’s only sandwich automat, creatively titled the Heinz Mayo AutoMayoMat, in Soho on the 17th and 18th of June. The retro-inspired vending machine setup will serve more than 800 freshly made sandwiches across two days, all packed with Heinz mayo and sold for the deeply specific price of £0.57.
The whole thing is landing at 15 Bateman Street and honestly sounds like the sort of concept somebody would pitch after watching The Bear while starving hungry in a Pret queue.
Inspired by old-school European automats and Japanese convenience stores, the AutoMayoMat is basically Heinz attempting to romanticise the lunch break again. Which, to be fair, might be necessary. According to the brand, more than half of Brits admit they no longer properly take a lunch break, with most of us instead inhaling sad desk lunches while pretending to listen during Teams calls.
Heinz’s answer to this modern tragedy is, of course, mayonnaise.
Visitors will be able to grab sandwiches from self-serve compartments before heading off to enjoy an actual lunch outdoors during National Picnic Week. Every sandwich also comes with a personalised engraved lunchbox, a tote bag and a bottle of Heinz Seriously Good Mayo, which feels either generous or threatening depending on your relationship with condiments.
The sandwiches themselves are coming from cult favourite Sandwich Sandwich, which means this isn’t just some limp triangle situation sitting beneath fluorescent lighting for six hours. The menu includes a Chicken Kyiv-inspired number stuffed with crispy fried chicken, bacon, garlic parmesan mayo, caramelised onion chutney and salad, alongside a more classic egg mayo option with cucumber, tomato and rocket.
At 57p they could probably just hand over two slices of bread, and Londoners would still queue around the block.
The wider idea here is apparently to encourage people to actually step away from their desks and reclaim lunch as something enjoyable rather than a transactional necessity squeezed between meetings. A noble aim, even if most people will realistically just eat the sandwich while doomscrolling in Soho Square.
Still, there’s something undeniably fun about the whole thing. London loves an overly elaborate pop-up, and the combination of nostalgia, cheap food and novelty vending machines feels almost scientifically engineered for social media queues.
The Heinz Mayo AutoMayoMat will run from 12pm until 4pm on 17 and 18 June at 15 Bateman Street in Soho. And considering you can barely buy a banana in Zone 1 for 57p anymore, expect the queues to be absolutely feral.
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