by Abco | Jan 7, 2014 | Vending Business Show
Vending Success Secrets Episode Transcript:
Tom: vending Success Secrets of Vending Professional is a webinar coming up in the middle of January. Actually, I think it’s January 14th. And joining me to talk about the webinar is [Larry Towner 00:00:08] who is a vending business consultant with Service Group International and Joe Nichols, owner of A and M Equipment Sales.
Tom: So, Larry, why don’t you start by telling us what the webinar’s about.
Larry Towner: Well, the webinar is about,Vending Success Secrets we’ve got multiple vendors who are gonna be sharing their success secrets with you all out there. And then, we’ll have a whole series of components on operations and sales and marketing, and equipment purchasing, and all the, really, the things that you need to know, along with a large question and answer section.
Tom: Well, who’s this webinar designed for, and who will get the most out of it?
Larry Towner: The person that’s gonna get the most out of this webinar Vending Success Secrets is gonna be somebody that’s looking to run their own business. They want to get away from, perhaps, a job that they might get laid off from, something like that. They’re looking to get ahead. They’re driven by financial independence. They want to get there as quick and as easily as possible. They’re all want to suck our brains dry as it were, and learn a whole lot of things. Joe, what do you think about the people who want to come to this seminar?
Joe NIchols: Well, I think they need to be self starters. They need to be hard working people. Vending is not rocket science. You just got to, you know, you got to have a little bit of common sense and hard work. And some sort of drive. And the harder you work, the more money you can make.
Tom: Now, I know you two guys have been in the vending business for decades, so, but I want to know, how did you create this vending business training that we’ll be getting on the webinar?
Larry Towner: Well, I’ll take … I started the vending business in 1985. I worked for a fellow in the greater Boston area. He was very, very successful. He taught me everything there was to know. I moved to Atlanta for personal reasons, and I was doing very well in the job I had. But, I was looking for some tax advantage. I was looking to be back to being the captain of my own soul, so I started part time out of my garage. I bought a guy’s assets out. I just bought about 13 sets of equipment from him. Went from that to full time, three trucks, three routes, five employees, about 7,000 customers, 135 accounts.
Larry Towner: Basically, I spent a lot of time training employees. I probably forgotten more about the vending industry than most people will know. So, that’s why we decided to do the training. Joe, what about you?
Joe NIchols: Well, I started in ’73. I’ll tell you how long I’ve been in the vending business; Back when I started, they didn’t even have dollar bill validators on the machines. All you could do was be, put change in the machines and pull a handle. So, I’ve seen the vending industry progress, you know, a lot of different ways. You know, everything’s electronic now, but I’ve seen a lot of change, but you know, a guy that’s just starting out can still make a lot of money.
Tom: All right, well, thanks Joe and Larry. You can learn more about Vending Success secrets at Vending Business Show webinar at amequipmentsales.com. There should be a link around this video somewhere to the registration page, and we will see you … Vending Business Blogs Vending Machine Technology
by Abco | Oct 29, 2013 | Start A Vending Machine Business, Vending Business Show
Finding Good Vending Machine Locations ? Perhaps a better question is what areas might you be most effective in by account demographic and account type?
The work force has shrunk and a lot of industries have down sized. How do you get the tactics to get accounts that remain profitable for you in smaller type accounts?
- 50-100 person range with the right demographics
- Be cognizant of your geography to limit drive time between accounts
- What’s your service interval that makes the account profitable?
Examples of good small accounts:
- Small logistics warehouses with lots of truck drivers coming and going
- Knock on all doors in an industrial park for opportunities – get in one facility and you might get into all in the industrial park
What about saving money on the equipment?
Return on investment is important but consider operating costs and turn.
Episode Transcript:
Tom Shivers: Hi, I’m Tom with The Vending Business Show. And I’m here with Larry Towner, who is a vending business consultant and been in the vending industry for closer to three decades. He’s sold the majority share of his vending business in 2012. So thanks for being here, Larry.
Larry Towner,: You’re welcome, Tom. It’s always a pleasure.
Tom Shivers: Yeah. I noticed an interesting question in a vending group. Basically went like this: Finding Good Vending Machine Locations right now? And it was a good question because there’s a lot of people, a lot of vending operators who are struggling to find those. So I thought maybe you could help us figure that one out.
Larry Towner,: Well yeah. It’s a multi-tasking approach. Finding Good Vending Machine Locations. It comprises marketing and sales. Vending is largely a sales effort. So you want to focus in on your sales skills. Basically if you knock on enough doors, you’re going to get accounts. I think what this gentleman’s looking for is what areas might you be most effective in. And so, and meaning by account demographic and account types.
Larry Towner,: There’s a bunch of different ways to go about Finding Good Vending Machine Locations. Traditional vending has always wanted the 150 plus population of account peoples. Meaning that they have at least 150 employees there all of the time for, again, for traditional vending companies. And traditionally, that works for the models that they use for their traditional vending operations where you need larger facilities.
Larry Towner,: But Tom, what’s been happening to the workforce and the workplaces in America?
Tom Shivers: Yeah. Things have shrunk. You know, more people working from home. Things like that.
Larry Towner,: Yeah. So what we’re seeing is we’re seeing workplaces out there, particularly vending always was kind of a smokestack industry. It was done with a lot of industry and a lot of manufacturing and things like that. And a lot of those industries have gone away. And particularly, not so much gone away, but they’ve downsized. Like everything has downsized.
Larry Towner,: And so the number of facilities that have large numbers of people has been steadily declining. So how are we Finding Good Vending Machine Locations I guess the thing is, is how do you, there’s a couple ways to look at it, but how do you get the tactics to get new accounts that remain profitable for you in smaller type accounts?
Larry Towner,: There’s always been a huge market in the 50 to 100 person account range. And if the demographics are right in those accounts, they can be highly profitable. And I say demographics, and that’s age, sex, ethnicity, who actually is working in your account? Are they good vending purchasers?
Larry Towner,: And lots of times on those types of accounts, you’ll get a good mix. You’ll get white collar plus blue collar. Vending is largely a blue collar event. You’re looking for blue collar workers.
Larry Towner,: Examples of these types of accounts. If you, first off, let’s set the stage. If you’re gonna go after smaller accounts, you need to be very cognizant of your geography. And you might ask what do I mean when I say geography. You’re gonna want to limit the amount of drive time you have between your accounts.
Larry Towner,: The other thing in small account vending that you need to be thinking about constantly is what’s your service interval? How long between my stops makes it profitable for these accounts? And that issue sometimes has to be done by trial and error.
Larry Towner,: But in general, you can draw some, there’s some numbers and some equations we can use that’ll give you an idea of what your service interval’s gonna be as per the number of people that are in your account.
Larry Towner,: So between geography and scheduling, those are the two things that’ll keep you profitable in small account vending. You’ve got to have accounts that are close together. Because you don’t want to spend time behind the wheel, you want to spend time in front of the machines, filling machines and dealing with your customers.
Larry Towner,: So those two issues are biggies, but after that, the industries that are smaller that are increasing are things like small logistics warehouses where they have a lot of truck drivers that come in and out. And they might have 20 to 50 employees that work there. They might have another 20 to 50 truck drivers that are dropping product off and getting it ready for their distribution. Or they have 20 truck drivers that are out on locations.
Larry Towner,: We had a bunch of these actually in retail stores. There were some retail furniture stores that gosh, you look at the furniture store and you say, “Boy that’s not much of a vending account.” And if you looked at the number of people that actually worked in the retail side of it, it wasn’t much of a vending account.
Larry Towner,: But they also had about 12 trucks on the road every morning with three guys on each truck. So what happened was is you didn’t really realize that unless you were out doing your sales prospecting at 6:00 in the morning like I often did. Where I’d be driving through industrial parks or I’d be driving around and I’d see all these trucks parked there.
Larry Towner,: Well if I saw all these trucks parked there, I would stop in just to see what was up with all those trucks. So that’s one of the tactics that I used. But that is the kind of accounts that are out there. They’re somewhat plentiful. And they’re generally very close together.
Larry Towner,: I had a habit of when I would go out and I would go selling, I would knock on every single door in an industrial park. I would go door to door. Do what I call walking and talking. And I would hand out business cards. And I would just be looking for any opportunity.
Larry Towner,: And sometimes you would get into one facility in a small industrial park, and by the end of the year, you end up with ’em all. Because they’re having terrible service, and then they start to see your trucks and then employees talk to employees. And the next thing you know, you’re getting an opportunity to service a different company. And you end up with a really nice little piece of business where you go spend one day every two weeks in that industrial park and you walk away with decent profit.
Larry Towner,: The converse of that is you’ve got one on this side of town and one on that side of town and you spend all your time driving back and forth and you don’t make any money doing anything.
Larry Towner,: So a couple of quick tactics there on how to go out after small account. Traditionally what they call small account vending.
Tom Shivers: One other question.
Larry Towner,: What other questions, Tom?
Tom Shivers: About that. There’s sometimes. So like this one fellow responded to this question with he’d located 20 Sega Office Deli Two’s on small locations. And I guess he was saving money on the machine. What is your take on that?
Larry Towner,: Well it’s like anything. It’s all relative. If you’re looking for return on investment, which is a financial concept, but you have this amount of equipment that you’re gonna put into a location. And you’re gonna spend whatever it is you spend on that equipment. And you expect to get a return on your investment. Meaning if you put 1,000 dollars out there in the field as a tool, it needs to be generating whatever it is you deemed to be profitable every single day so that you get a return on investment. If you get a machine for free and it works. Key phrase being that it works. And you can place it, your initial investment is zero so your return on investment is unlimited.
Larry Towner,: Now that’s hard to get. You know, you won’t get ones that are free. But then you also have your operating costs, meaning for every piece of product that you end up throwing, you lose your profitability if you have to throw product away. So you have to look at it more as, it’s not just placement, it’s also turn. Turn is sometimes more important than actual placement. How many times you roll your inventory over in a year determines your actual profitability in the end. And also determines your profitability on that particular set of machines.
Tom Shivers: Okay. Yeah. So.
Larry Towner,: Did that make sense? Did you understand what I said there?
Tom Shivers: Yeah. I think so. And the equipment is, sometimes can be a hazard if you don’t get the right stuff up front.
Larry Towner,: Correct.
Tom Shivers: So tell us a little more about what you –
Larry Towner,: And it can cost you the wrong equipment placement. Well I’m in the consulting business. What I do is I take questions like these and I help people solve these types of problems. How do you go about getting new accounts? How do you maintain the accounts that you have? How do you stay profitable? How do you deal with other issues? These are all things that I work on. I’m available at servicegroupinternational.com. Just drop us an email.
Tom Shivers: Thanks, Larry. And you’ve been watching Finding Good Vending Machine Locations on The Vending Business Show, a publication of A & M Equipment Sales.
You can Look at a great snack machine the Automatic Products 113 Snack Machine
by Abco | May 25, 2012 | Vending Business Show
Credit Card Readers in Vending Machines An interview with Greg Hasslinger, VP of Sales at InOne Technology
Credit Card Readers in Vending Machines How new does the machine need to be to incorporate a cashless reader?
It does not depend on the age of the machine, but instead on the machines control board. It must have the capability to accept card vends. For example, InOne Technology provides replacement control boards for older AP and National snack machines built in the mid 80’s to the mid 90’s. Also if you are interested in remote monitoring the machine must have DEX and an updated version of the firmware (will show Card sales in the Dex file). The firmware levels are maintained and provided by the machine manufacturer. There are numerous options an operator has available to install the card reader. These range from installing in the additional knockout hole, surface mounting to the door, attaching card bezel to the bill validator and other adapter kit options available from the vending machine manufacturers.
Does it need a multi-drop bus?
MDB is required in vending machine environment. We will aslo work in a pulse mode.
How does the digital exchange collect the data?
DEX is an industry standard. The vending machine controller tracks/stores all of the activities at the vending machine. This data is then transmitted remotely by the modem to operators database that is hosted by the Cashless/Remote Monitoring provider. The majority of the machine manufacturers provide resident DEX in their vending machines. InOne provides Dex kits for those machines that do not have DEX.
What else might someone need to know who is installing a cashless reader for the first time?
- Having adequate Cellular Signal Strength is needed for Cashless to operate. InOne provides service via different carriers, Ethernet and wi-fi. Boosters and different antennas are also available.
- There is a merchant processing fee for all card vends- currently 5.95%
- Ability to have a cash (discounted) price and a card price for the same product. For more information on credit card readers USA TECHNOLOGIES ePORT G9
by Abco | Mar 30, 2012 | Vending Business Show
Vending Efficiency Delivering Product An interview with Larry Towner, vending consultant
In this podcast, Larry discusses: Vending Efficiency Delivering Product
- Plan your route schedule in advance
- Park out of the way and avoid being off the curb if possible: marketing, security, safety
- Inventory of each machine in one box
- famous saying: “Vending is a business of minutes”
- Do a pick list
- Limit trips from truck to machine
- Items to keep in your pocket
- Drive in a line to limit windshield time
- Plan well for a smooth and efficient route
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Tom Shivers: I’m Tom Shivers with the Vending Business Show here with Larry Towner who is a vending business consultant. Larry sold the majority share of his vending business a few years ago. Thanks for coming back, Larry.
Larry Towner: Good to be back, Tom.
Tom Shivers: Our topic Vending Efficiency Delivering Product The last time we talked, you had a lot of interesting things to say about efficiency and specifically you’re talking … told us a lot about loading the truck effectively so that you can have a smooth flow of your … of the products from the truck right into the machine. What are we gonna cover today?
Larry Towner: Well, I think today, Tom, what we’ll talk about is now that we’ve got the truck loaded and we’ve got it ordered in a way that makes sense, basically the way you have your machines laid out, let’s talk about getting out to the machines and getting out to the accounts.
Tom Shivers: Okay.
Larry Towner: Like I say, you’ve got your truck loaded. You’re ready and you’re rearing to go. Generally, just as a course of action, I usually started my day the night before. What I would do is … Well, actually, I started a week before, but I would have my route schedule printed out on a weekly calendar program. I used a office shelf calendar program that you can get at any store, but that allows you to do repeating schedules where you can do things weeks and weeks and weeks in advance. The keys here are is when you’re scheduling your time, you do it the night before so you have an idea. One thing that a lot of people don’t do, they don’t plan around traffic. Tom, you live here in metro Atlanta like I do. Is traffic a factor here?
Tom Shivers: Just a little bit.
Larry Towner: A little bit, yeah. We, in the vending business, don’t get paid to sit in front of the windshield of the truck. We get paid to sit in front of the glass of the machine and actually fill that machine up. One of the things that I always did, and just depending on the days, I would go and look on … look at my schedule and say, “Where do I need to be during the traffic time?” [inaudible 00:02:19] and I always used both traffic times, both morning and afternoon. I would be making sure that I had a series of stops that were all very, very close together during those traffic times.
Larry Towner: Generally vending people start very early in the morning. They start 4:00 AM, 5:00 AM, 6:00 AM in the morning. By the time the main traffic time rolls around, you are pretty much … you should be in a stop if you’re doing everything right. Of course, here in metro Atlanta as you know, you can get stuck in traffic anytime of the day, anytime of the night. It’s just how it goes being a major city. Anyway, you start the night before you go and you lay out your route and where you wanna go and when you think you wanna be there. You give yourself an approximate amount of time as far as your sales and your dollar [inaudible 00:03:01] per your accounts. That’s the first place where you start.
Larry Towner: When you get into the accounts, there’s a couple of techniques … Or, you’re heading into the accounts. You pull up into the driveway. There’s a few things that I used as a rule of thumb. One is I’m very marketing oriented and also … but also safety and security conscious, too. I would be very careful. I usually parked on the loading docks and I wanted to make sure that we were out of the way. We didn’t wanna be an eyesore to anyone and we didn’t wanna have to work off a curb if we could help it. You end up working off a curb a lot, but you try not to work off the curbs where you’re out in the plain view of everyone, at least that’s my opinion. I always liked to kind of stay back and out of the way.
Larry Towner: Then again, I don’t like to be in dark corners either for security purposes where there somebody might come and accost you because the minute they know you’re in the vending business, they know you’ve got cash and you become an easy target. Try to stay like, if you’re working at night, well-lit areas and things like that. You get out of your truck. Now, there’s several different ways to do it in the vending business. One way … The way that I currently do it is I have boxes inside the truck. Inside each box I carry a whole inventory of a machine, rolls into the account with me. I have a set … preset level of inventory that’s in each box and it’s arranged just the same way as the machines are. I start top shelf down and work my way down through the machine using my boxes.
Larry Towner: You think this is kinda silly, but the amount of time that you spend walking back and forth between your truck and your … the machines can add up to considerable time. In past shows, we talked about how the vending business is a business of minutes. It’s all about how many minutes. If you can cut five to ten minutes out of each stop, you can add one to two stops per day, which is giving you an extra impact on your bottom line of your business.
Larry Towner: We roll in to our stops with basically a full amount of snack on the thing and then we do a pick list on the drinks. You can roll in and do a pick list on your accounts if you want. I do that on some of the more difficult locations that I have. If I have to go up some stairs and I don’t have an elevator access or something like that, I might go in and make a pick list. A pick list just is you go into the machine and you pick out the particular items you need as per the shelf and you write them down in a card you brought. You pull them out. You put them into a box and you just carry one box in instead of carrying in nine boxes, which is what I currently take in with me every time.
Larry Towner: If I have a good, easy access, I roll the whole thing in. I make one trip into the machine. I don’t have to make multiple trips in and out in and out and in and out. Generally we try … Right now we limit our trips in and out to two. We can’t carry the whole amount of product with drinks and snacks in our hand truck all at once. We usually do too much volume to do that. That’s should be your goal that you have that much volume. Do you get an idea of what I’m talking about, Tom?
Tom Shivers: Yeah. It sounds like you wanna cut off those minutes and find a way to get things in and out quickly.
Larry Towner: Right. Right. That’s really the key. You also, when you make your lists, make sure you can read your lists so that you know. When you come out to get your drinks, don’t guess. Make sure you know exactly what you need. Again, to make one extra trip back out to the truck takes anywhere from two to five minutes just depending on the stop, but two to five minutes adds up at the end of the day. That’s what we do. We also walk in with our money bags.
Larry Towner: We walk in … I keep in my pocket, you’re gonna think this is funny, but I keep in my pocket, I carry two pens, a small screwdriver, a magic marker, and I also carry a three by five pack … I don’t use three by five cards, but they’re the three by five spiral ring notebooks is what I use now. I used to use three by five cards. They got a little pricey. I keep those in my pocket. I always have something to write with. I always have something to do a small minor repair and or open a box, which is what that little screwdriver is for. If I need to mark on something, I always have a marker. Don’t think it means that much, wait til you forget and you have to run out to the truck to get a small screwdriver to tighten something up or to cut something.
Tom Shivers: How ’bout a stopwatch?
Larry Towner: We’ve … We’re not UPS yet. If you’ve ever talked to … When you get out there, talk to a UPS driver. They’ll tell you, they’re measured by the minute with a watch, too. It is something that if you wanna do it, actually, we used to do a little bit. We tried. We’d time ourself and see how long it’d take us to get in and out. We would strive to do better and better on a daily basis.
Larry Towner: The key, again, it starts at night though. You wanna make sure you have all the prior … It starts the day before. You want all that product on the truck and you wanna make sure you have enough. You wanna make sure you get your boxes full and get your route scheduled because it’s the same issue if you’re driving … you don’t wanna drive back and forth and back and forth. You wanna drive in a line. We generally work our route lines … or routes in circles, where you start at one place, you go out, you loop around, and you end up back at home. We try to limit the amount of windshield time between stops because, again, we don’t get paid to drive. We get paid to fill.
Larry Towner: That’s really, really critical. All it takes is good planning. I think in a previous show we had talked about scheduling as far as your … how …what’s your interval between stops are as far as weeks go or months or days. It just depends on the size of the account. Again, you have to integrate all this information together so that you’re nice and smooth and efficient. Theoretically, on a great day, you’re gonna spend 80% of your time filling machines and 20% of your time driving, if you’ve really got everything clicking and doing really well. That’s where you’ll be.
Larry Towner: That’s some of the tips is basically use a pre fold type system. If you get farther on and you have better resources, there’s all kinds of technological things that stream real time data back into your handhelds or into your iPhones and stuff like that. For most guys starting out, you can’t afford that technology. It’s very, very expensive. It works great for very, very large companies, but for small guys it’s just a little pricey.
Tom Shivers: Good stuff, Larry. Thanks for the tips. Tell us a little about your business and what you do.
Larry Towner: Well, we do vending consulting. We specialize primarily in startup type operations and helping guys get out there and get efficient so that they can start to make some money in this business because, believe it or not, just because you buy it for a quarter and sell it for 50 cents, you can’t necessarily make money on that. We help people get efficient so that they can start earning money faster.
Tom Shivers: How can people contact you?
Larry Towner: Best way to get ahold of us is send us an email. It’s [email protected].
Tom Shivers: You’ve been listening to Vending Efficiency Delivering Product at the Vending Business Show, a publication of A&M Equipment Sales. More Blogs of the Vending Business Show Vending Efficiency Operating Procedures
by Abco | Mar 23, 2012 | Vending Business Show
How the Vending Business has Changed An interview with Jimmy Bryan of Eagle Vending
Jimmy has been in the vending business for 29 years and runs 18 routes in the Atlanta area.
How the Vending Business has Changed What changes have you seen in the vending business?
Over the last 10 years there’s been a gradual decline in buildings and stores being built, so fewer opportunities are available to place our equipment. There are a number of issues:
- Reduction in work forces
- Down turn in the economy has been tough
- Healthy snacking and nutritional issues has had an impact
- Sales are stable now, so no more reductions but no growth either
There’s more going on with technology now that will have a positive impact on our business:
- Validators now accept higher bills with bill recyclers
- Credit card fees aren’t justifiable yet
- Micro markets – the unmanned stores are coming
- Handheld computers that download sales data for better merchandising
- Reducing energy consumption and recycling is a new trend for vending machines
What do you see in the forseeable future?
- Remote monitoring brings the ability to monitor real time data so the operator knows exactly what sells at a location and what doesn’t, but it’s costly right now
- Yes the marketplace is changing and those who can grow with it will adapt How the Vending Business has Changed You can see another episode of the Vending Business Show School Vending Machines Have A Healthy Option
Listen to the interview:
Episode Transcript:
Tom Shivers: I’m Tom Shivers with the Vending Business Show, here with Jimmy Bryan of Eagle Vending. He’s been in the vending business for 29 years, and runs 18 routes in the Atlanta area. Today we’re going to talk a little bit about how the vending business has changed.
Tom Shivers: So, Jimmy, thanks for being here.
Jimmy Bryan: Great, glad to join you.
Tom Shivers: What changes have you seen in the vending business, especially I guess more relevant in today’s market?
Jimmy Bryan: Well, over the last 29 years there’s been huge changes. Back many years ago, there was almost continuous growth and new buildings going up, and companies adding employees, and lots of industrial blue collar locations. And we’ve seen over the last 10 years or so, a gradual decline in many of those. You don’t see too many home depot stores being built, or plants, or factories going up. It’s just the opposite. You’ve got closings and reductions in workforces, and shopping centers closing down.
Jimmy Bryan: So, there’s just fewer places for us to place equipment than there was years ago. The downturn in the economy we’ve seen over the last three to four years has been particularly tough on us. We’ve probably lost 15% of our base of accounts because of what we’ve gone through. And in addition to that, we see issues with healthy snacking and drinking, that’s had an impact on our business. And schools look like they’re going to be addressing some of their concerns with childhood obesity, which is also going to have a negative impact on vending sales.
Jimmy Bryan: And I think the per capita consumption at the average location is down as far as money that goes into vending machines, and that’s just because of the workplace, and concerns over nutritional issues, and they way people stop on the way to work and get a cup of coffee. So, all those things combined have had a downward pressure on our overall sales.
Jimmy Bryan: Currently where we’re at, it’s fairly stable, just like what you hear with the economy and the stock market, it’s kind of leveled off. So, we’re not seeing reductions, but we’re not seeing a lot of growth either. There’s probably more going on now as far as technical, or technology issues than any time in the past. So, I think that’s going to have a positive impact on our business.
Tom Shivers: Oh, really? What do you mean in terms of technology?
Jimmy Bryan: Well, if you go back many years ago, we started putting validators on all machines. Now we’re seeing just about the majority of our machines going out of our warehouse take ones, twos, fives, and in some cases take tens with bill recyclers. Credit cards are growing, but the fees that we get hit with on the credit card sales make it somewhat difficult to expand that in all areas, which is a problem, because so many young people today don’t carry much cash with them, and it would be great if all vending machines took credit cards. But the fees are so significant that it would almost require an across the board price increase.
Jimmy Bryan: So, I think as time goes on you’ll see more and more credit cards, and hopefully the fees will become more manageable, and more accepted. And you know, then there’s issues, the micro markets is a new thing that’s coming out. The unmanned C Store concept, I think that’s going to be a growing area going forward where vending operators are going to have to add that to their ability to service locations. And I think there’s some exciting things with that, but you know, you’ve got to be able to handle that technology and that merchandising.
Jimmy Bryan: We’ve recently moved into handheld computers, where we’re downloading sales data, called Dexing. And we think that’s going to help us in terms of being able to [inaudible 00:04:33] at some point in time, and also merchandising gives you great information in that regard. So, a lot of smaller operators might find that difficult to start off with. But I think that’s going to become more and more commonplace.
Jimmy Bryan: And then there’s areas like customers will come to us wanting options on reducing energy consumption, and recycling. And I think those are becoming key areas of concern along with some many of our accounts have someone in charge of nutrition, or wellness. And we’re seeing more and more requests for what can you do to provide our employees, or our associates, with healthy options for their drinks, and their snacks, and their cold food, and all? So, those are areas that are also of concern, that we can address.
Jimmy Bryan: But it’s tough to grow a vending business, because of the market place and the competition. And it’s just not an overall growing business, where a lot of new accounts are sprouting up. Most of the business we get now, we actually take from another operator, because there’s just not a lot of new accounts moving into our market.
Tom Shivers: Well, anything else you see in the future? What else do you see there?
Jimmy Bryan: Well, I mean remote monitoring is an interesting concept, with the ability to obtain real time data from your locations, Cannon is kind of the leader in that area. And I think that it’s certainly exciting to be able to get that information, but it’s also very costly to be able to harvest that data based on the cost hit with the fees and all. So, it would be nice if everyone in the industry could pull their vehicle up to the location and know exactly what they needed to take in on that first trip. But a lot of the equipment is older and won’t accept that kind of technology. And the newer equipment that will, it’s expensive to do it.
Jimmy Bryan: So, it’ll be interesting 10 years from now to look back and see how much of that is going on, and how much more efficient routes can be come, where drivers are not spending as much time in elevators, and going back and forth to trucks. But they’re spending more and more time actually in front of the machine, loading it. And they have that merchandising information, where they know exactly what sells at a location and what doesn’t.
Jimmy Bryan: And I think those are the exciting things that will allow the vending industry to compete with the other food service channels that are out there.
Tom Shivers: Yeah, maybe the price of that Cannon date will be coming down over the years as more machines are made with it. Who knows?
Jimmy Bryan: Yeah, yeah. I hope that’s the case, and you hope technology becomes more efficient. And we just recently went through a transition from our former software system to an upgraded Cloud based system called Census. And the transition was so much easier than it would have been a few years ago, because of the ability to transfer data.
Jimmy Bryan: So, things are changing, and the old concept of just a vending machine that takes coins and dollar bills, and spirals turn, and the guy with the vehicle that pulls up there. Certainly that is changing, the marketplace is changing. And you know, the people that survive longterm and are able to grow and be efficient, they’re the ones that are going to adapt. And it’s an interesting process that we’re all going through right now.
Tom Shivers: Good stuff, thanks for sharing, Jimmy. Anything you want to share about your business and what you do?
Jimmy Bryan: We’ve been in business 29 years, and we’re in Marietta, Georgia, just north of Atlanta. So, we’re members of USG, and enjoy that relationship and the benefits that come with it. So, we’re alive and well and learning, and hoping to survive and grow in a tough marketplace. So, I’ve enjoyed being able to talk with you for a little bit about it.
Tom Shivers: Great. You’ve been listening to the Vending Business Show, a publication of A&M Equipment Sales.
