February-March 2022 - 6

EDITOR'S NOTE
Last notes on an
extraordinary assignment
Nick Montano
Editor
nmontano
@vendingmarketwatch.com
Follow us at
Facebook/VendingMarket
@VendingMagazine
linkedin.com/
groups/3927197
THIS IS MY LAST COLUMN AS EDITOR OF AUTOMATIC MERchandiser.
For the past year, my assignment has been to try to live up
to the magazine's journalistic standards during a historic inflection
point for the vending and office coffee service industries. I'm fortunate
to have had the opportunity to help guide the magazine and its online
sister brand, VendingMarketWatch.com, through 2021's COVID roller
coaster ride. That responsibility weighed heavily, most days. It was not
only challenging for the industry we covered, but also for B2B publishing
itself. But as it turned out, it was a time of pronounced advancements
for both.
Personally, it was a great honor to help steer the groundbreaking
magazine (originally American Automatic Merchandiser) founded
in 1958 by Ben Ginsberg and Mike Michaels through that period of
prodigious change. The founders both hailed from the bottling industry,
a forerunner to modern full-line vending. Today, AM is the only
independent journal in the convenience services sector that delivers
valuable information to audiences both online and in print.
I got to know Ginsberg later in his life, after he started Vending and
I've enjoyed
informing you,
challenging you,
supporting you,
channeling you
and, occasionally,
irritating you. "
OCS, a bimonthly trade published between 1991 and 2009. He served
as its editor for 18 years. A longtime participant in and observer of the
vending industry, Ginsberg was among the first journalists to identify
the office coffee service business that emerged in the late 1960s. I think
he would have approved of this issue's OCS focus with Seattle's Pot O'
Gold Coffee Service on the cover, BostonbeaN's Kamden Mauser as
Route Driver of the Year and a timely pantry advice piece.
He'd also agree that there probably hasn't been a time in the industry's
modern history when the role of trade media was more important
than now. Last year, we had the hard task of publishing two studies
examining vending and OCS sales performance during the first year
of the pandemic. And we got it right. AM's annual State of the Industry
reports showed sales in the vending and micro market segment
down 45%, while OCS sales plunged more than 75%. After a decade of
steady revenue growth, more than half of the industry's revenues were
erased in a 10-month period. Yet, most operators survived. Initially,
we thought 2020's losses would be a blip on the radar. But the effects
of the pandemic and subsequent supply chain bottlenecks, rising inflation
and labor shortages will likely dawdle for several years. Still, most
operators will survive.
I've enjoyed informing you, challenging you, supporting you, channeling
you and, occasionally, irritating you. Operators have a story to
tell, and we give them a voice. That mission continues. Molly Rogers, a
talented journalist at Endeavor Business Media, the owner of Automatic
Merchandiser and VendingMarketWatch.com, is the new editor.
Rogers officially took over editorial responsibilities on March 1.
6 Automatic Merchandiser * February/March 2022
Editorial
Advisory
Board
Joe Hessling
365 Retail
Markets
Josh
Rosenberg
NAMA Board
Chair
John Reilly
Avanti Markets
Anant Agrawal
Cantaloupe
Systems
USA Technologies
Elyssa Steiner
Cantaloupe
Systems
USA Technologies
Carl Moser
Canteen
Corporate
Chuck Reed
Crane Payment
Innovations (CPI)
Cory Hewett
Gimme
Michael Miller
Mondelēz
International
Paresh Patel
PayRange
Jeff Deitchler
Prairie Fire
Coffee
Jim Carbone
Tradecraft
(retired)
Sandy
Thornton
VendEdge
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February-March 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of February-March 2022
