Automatic Merchandiser - 28

tion to enable a touchless experience
when making a selection, paying, and
retrieving the product. Crane is working to make all three touchless, which
likely will accelerate in the next couple
of years and become more permanent. "
Not only is the number of employees on location drastically reduced in
most locations, but it's also completely
unpredictable from week to week. This
makes telemetry more essential than
ever, Reed stressed.
" Operators can't count on any pattern of attendance in locations, " he said.
" Telemetry lets you query the machine
remotely and see what's sold and what
hasn't, which is more important than
ever to merchandise machines and
maximize service efficiency. "
EXPAND INTO HOME DELIVERY

Port Huron, Mich.based All Star Services has become the
first operator in the U.S. to go live with
LightSpeed Automation's new feature
that allows operators to provide their
clients' employees the same snacks
they had at the office in the comfort of
their homes, exemplifying one of the
many ways operators can pivot heading into 2021.
" Like many of our fellow operators, a 'new normal' was in place with
our business being heavy in pantry
service, where employers gave perks
to their employees. And now, all are
working from home and we needed to
find a way to service it, " said Duncan
Smith, All Star Services' president and
chief operating officer. " People have
grown comfortable with having food
delivered to their door and that is not
going away even after the pandemic
is long gone. This provides us with a
chance to build a new revenue stream
and a direct customer base no matter
where they work. "
LightSpeed completed the integration with Shopify over a year ago and
when the pandemic hit, it supplied a

Automatic Merchandiser * December 2020

way for the company to help its customers quickly pivot. The orders flow
directly into LightSpeed to be picked
just like a vending or market order.
" Once picked, the order is
shipped using Shopify's shipping
module and you get the benefit of
using their extremely low shipping
rates, " explained David Marler, LightSpeed's vice president of sales and
marketing. " You can literally get into
the home delivery business in just a
couple of days. "
Elyssa Steiner, vice president of
marketing at Malvern, Pa.-based USA
Technologies said a bright side to the
pandemic is that it has forced operators to get more creative and diverse
in their offerings and to leverage
technology to gain insight about their
customers to better compete against
brick-and-mortar retail and online
and delivery services.
" Operators who have invested in
telemetry and a VMS [vending management system] are positioned well to
really leverage technology to expand
and pivot their services for unattended
retail, " Steiner stated. " They have the
warehouse, inventory, locations and
know how to manage and adjust based
on consumer demand. "
Some manufacturing plants, for
example, are operating at higher levels
than they were pre-COVID, some
with mandatory temperature checks
and rules that employees cannot
leave the building during the workday. " There's an opportunity there to
expand SKUs, drop boxed lunches,
palettes of water and supply PPE, "
she said. " What else do your customers need? Can you vend it or sell in
your micro market what they would
normally get from Amazon? "
Operators also stand to benefit
from the pandemic pushing unattended retail further into the mainstream. Walmart, for example, is
testing a self-checkout-only approach
to processing purchases, and Burger

King announced plans for new
restaurants that feature a completely
touchless experience - both inspired
by pandemic precautions.
" Self-checkout is blurring the
lines of unattended retail as many
retailers have pivoted quickly to
provide a faster, safer, more convenient, socially distanced transaction, "
Steiner pointed out. " Vending was
long seen as a choice of last resort but
with micro markets added to the mix
especially, that's no longer the case as
consumers favor self-checkout in the
world of COVID. "
ENABLE CASHLESS AND
TOUCHLESS TRANSACTIONS

Steiner agreed with CPI's
Chuck Reed that COVID has
accelerated cashless. She cited
a USAT study that showed
53% of transactions in 120,000
vending machines were cashless last
December and jumped to 65% by the
end of July.
" Cashless was growing steadily, but
we haven't seen that much of a jump
in such a short time and much can be
attributed to people wanting touchless, " Steiner observed. " In 2021, every
time an operator deploys a machine,
it should have a card reader or they're
missing more than 50% of sales. "
With retailers struggling to reach
consumers with less traffic in their
stores, Steiner recommended that
operators pursue forging alliances
with them.
" Vending machines in airports
sell clothes and beauty products and
electronics, " she instanced. " You
already have access to the customers and locations. Partner with local
retailers and sell their products
in your machines. Pivot a little to
deliver what the consumer wants.
The sky's the limit. If you can vend it,
you can offer it. There's an opportunity to come out of COVID stronger
than we went in. " ■

Automatic Merchandiser

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