The invention pertains to a coating apparatus and method in which most of the relative movement between a dispensing head and the substrate to be coated is provided by the coating head. Integration can be improved by storing data in a 3-dimensional manner; a 2-bit operation can be performed by providing transistors on both sides of the gate. A control circuit supplies a respective control signal to each switching assembly in the bridge circuit. Nutritional supplements can be incorporated into one or more of the at least two phases.