One Stop Vending, Hollywood, Fla., Finds Efficiencies Using Cantaloupe's Wireless Telemetry Solution
One Stop Vending, of Hollywood, Fla., announced that it will deploy Cantaloupe System's Seedª Platform, a wireless remote interaction and data collection system, throughout its entire network of vending machines and will incorporate Seedª in all of its new installations thereafter.
One Stop Vending is a full-line vending operator currently servicing Broward, Dade and Palm Beach counties in South Florida. One Stop initially tested Seedª on two of its vending routes. The Seedª Dynamic Scheduler alone increased One Stop's per-pull cash average by reducing the number of drivers required to service its machines.
"Cantaloupe has helped us take back our business," said Michael Helft, president of One Stop, in a prepared statement. "We have consolidated four routes into two, eliminated unprofitable accounts and have begun to take the responsibility of pulling orders away from drivers by pre-picking at the warehouse. We now have 16 routes, but we believe we will be able to cover our 1,400 machines with as few as nine routes.Ó
Helft continued, ÒEveryone understands that the cost of operating trucks is climbing, but with Seedª, we will know what machines need servicing, what products need restocking and which routes are the best Ñ all before a single truck has left the warehouse. This knowledge is the future of vending and is certainly the future of One Stop Vending in Florida."
Editor's Insight: Slowly but steadily, telemetry systems are emerging into the field. As noted elsewhere in today's VendingMarketWatch, telemetry brings too many benefits to vending for this technology not to become mainstream. The big question for many observers is how long this will take.
According to the Hudson Report, commissioned by the National Automatic Merchandising Association in 1998 to provide a 15-year outlook on the industry, telemetry will be commonplace by 2013. This is a bold claim, to be sure, but don't ignore the fact that the Hudson Report has an excellent track record in most of its predictions.
New benefits often are driven by providing a competitive advantage to early adapters. This report from Cantaloupe Systems indicates that the vending company won the Broward County, Fla. School District, in part due to this technology.
Telemetry allows a customer to view machine activity at their own discretion. In so doing, it eliminates the chance for a dishonest vending operator to provide a customer with a false sales report in order to shortchange the account its commission. 10-25-05 by Elliot Maras