august2024 - 27

operator receives each month varies,
depending on the promotional level,
the location and other factors that
can be important to advertisers.
This summer, Cantaloupe
Inc. will launch the Cantaloupe
Advantage Program, an advertising
and consumer engagement program.
" We are really excited about
Cantaloupe Advantage, a digital
advertising program, where we
leverage the footprint of not only
our micro market kiosks, but also
our engaged devices, which are card
readers that have digital touchscreens
on them for vending operators, " said
Elyssa Steiner, chief marketing officer.
" It is about ad space and ad revenue.
What we want to do is make it as easy
as possible for the operator to sign up
and then for us to just create, manage
and deploy it for them. "
PRE-KITTING
Pre-kitting - the process of
preparing in advance the products
necessary to service locations - has
been around for quite some time,
of course. Improved technology has
accelerated its use.
" Lightspeed Fast Track is the
pre-kitting technology that we offer
for an operator's warehouse, and
they were a fantastic company for a
long time before they joined the 365
family, " said Ryan McWhirter, vice
president of product development
at 365 Retail Markets. " Since then,
we've been able to integrate them
even more deeply into our back
office and of course our VMS. "
Although Lightspeed has been
on the market for 10 years, many
operators still haven't tried it. " When
they see it in action, and they see
the amount of labor, time savings
and accuracy improvement that
comes with it, they wonder why they
hadn't been using this all along, "
McWhirter said.
Cantaloupe's Steiner acknowledged
that pre-kitting solutions have
been centered around one supplier
in the past. " Our goal is to be a
one-stop shop for operators, so I'm
really excited about our warehouse
picking solution, Seed Pick Easy. We
showcased this at the NAMA show.
We now have some operators actively
using it, and we're adding new implementations
every week, " Steiner said.
" It was built as a mobile-first kind of
strategy around warehouse picking.
We really look to leverage the way
they have their warehouse organized
to build the mobile picking solution
around the operator's current warehouse,
so there's very little change
they need to make, " she added.
INTEGRATING MULTIPLE
TECHNOLOGIES
As technology advances, integrating a
vending management system (VMS)
from a company that is not associated
with a specific piece of new hardware
such as a smart cooler would seem to
be a potential challenge. Evan Jarecki,
co-founder of Gimme, said his company
has solutions.
" Our tools provide a suite of software
to help operators of any size, and
we do provide all of the core functionality
that an operator needs - micro
markets, vending, delivery, reporting. "
" We provide integrations with
the major hardware providers -
that's on the cashless side, like
kiosks and pre-kitting hardware, "
he said. " We also have software for
the additional functions like online
OCS ordering or enterprise-level
reporting with some of the groups
that are out there. "
" As far as integration with the
major providers, 365 and others,
as these companies build tools
like smart coolers, a Pico, on their
existing platforms, the integrations
are available right away to operators
through VDI integrations, " he added.
Pete Carmain, vice president of
enterprise sales for Nayax, said he has
an increasing number of conversations
about integration each week.
" We always look at any project as a
payments facilitator. So, we may not
be making machines, but we want
to be involved in the payments and
the data that comes out of that, " he
said. " If we can get a payment on a
machine and we can get data sent to
where it needs to be, that's where we
as a company want to be. We develop
solutions that make our payment
solution integrate with a machine. "
Carmain added, " If there's a
machine that needs cashless payment
on it, we're going to design something
that fits. " ■
READY TO SELL YET?
Mike Ferguson has over 34+ years Vending & OCS industry experience, as an
ex-operator and owner turned intermediary business broker to assist you in
selling your business. I speak fluent Vending and Office Coffee.
2020
All conversations
are confidential!
Contact Mike@VMACsolutions.com or 713-569-6463
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August 2024 * VendingMarketWatch.com 27
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