Cutlery dispensing system

A cutlery dispenser configured to serially dispense a plurality of cutlery articles, each of the cutlery articles having a handle and a head arranged at opposite ends of a long axis of the cutlery article, the head being at least one of wider and taller than the handle, wherein the cutlery dispenser includes:

• a housing having a front, a rear, two sides, a top, and a bottom, a front-facing width thereof being smaller than a side facing depth thereof;
• a dispenser cavity located in an upper region of the dispenser within the housing, the dispenser cavity being configured to contain a vertical stack of the cutlery articles, the vertical stack being terminated at its bottom end by a bottommost cutlery article of the vertical stack;
• an escapement mechanism configured to retain a first cutlery article of the plurality of cutlery articles in a dispensing position whereby the handle of the first cutlery article extends beyond the front of the dispenser housing, the escapement mechanism being configured such that removal by a user of the first cutlery article from the dispenser by grasping and pulling of the handle thereof actuates the escapement mechanism, causing the bottommost cutlery article to be singulated from the stack and gravitationally transitioned to the dispensing position, while a remainder of the stack is retained in the dispenser cavity, whereby the bottommost cutlery article becomes a replacement first cutlery article, and a next cutlery article in the stack becomes a replacement bottommost cutlery article;
• and
• a downward sloping slide track;
• wherein upon being singulated the bottommost cutlery article is gravitationally guided by the downward sloping slide track to the dispensing position, while a remainder of the vertical stack is retained in the dispenser cavity, and wherein the slide track includes a slide channel configured to laterally confine the handle of the bottommost cutlery article and a head channel configured to laterally confine the head of the bottommost cutlery article as the bottommost cutlery article gravitationally slides to the dispensing position.