Currently, vending machines average over $7 billion a year in sales. Moreover, according to the Global Market Insights, Inc, report published in 2019, the vending machine market is predicted to surpass a revenue of over USD 30 billion by 2024 when the worldwide industry shipments are anticipated to register more than 14% gain.
The vending industry isn’t new. For a while now, vending machines have been a convenient and low-cost platform for shrinking an entire store into a refrigerator-size revenue generator. However, the growth of this industry has been slow over the years, due to the maintenance issues and monetary risks.
Nevertheless, the vending machine industry seems to have picked up pace in recent years, owing to the significant change it has seen through using smart and sophisticated technology. Not only are the new and improved vending machines catering to consumer demand, but their cashless payment methods also proved beneficial for owners. But there are many vending machines from the previous era, which are still in use and vending machine owners lack means and technology to make them smarter!
There is still one aspect of the industry that remains unchanged, yet, needs to be tackled for better efficiency; the over dependency on field staff and the expectation that they can fulfil management vision to perfection without technological assistance. At the same time, vending machine owners do not have complete visibility to set processes and monitor them to improve the vending business. Let’s look at the current scenario and why it is in desperate need of change.
The Current Scenario
While there is tremendous potential in the vending business, it won’t do you any good if your vending machine is not able to efficiently cater to your consumer’s requirements. Right from products being out of stock, to payment issues, there are multiple problems that can arise with a vending machine if you don’t pay attention. Today, vending operators perform actions reactively once an issue is brought to their attention. Technology has the power to convert this reactive action into a proactive process and finally into a preventive state!
Currently, the vending business is extremely dependent on operators, who need to cater to and refill multiple machines manually daily. Mentioned below are some of the issues that arise due to this:
Limited Time
As operators need to visit multiple machines daily, they are restricted on time, due to which they are not able to properly evaluate what your machine needs, before determining what to restock. Moreover, due to the limited time, they might end up doing a haphazard job by refilling damaged or expired products as they do not have the time to conduct a proper quality check.
Lack of Data
If there is one thing you need to take utmost care of while maintaining a vending machine is determining what you choose to store. You may have the best model and provide the consumer with interactive technology, however, if you don’t store the products that the consumer is looking for, it’s of no use. If you rely only on operators, making this decision, it is extremely hard as it won’t be data-driven and will be based solely on intuition. Hence, more often than not, you will either end up with overstocked goods that consumers don’t want, or understocked goods which will drive consumers away.
High Chances of Pilferage or Loss
When businesses rely on operators, the changes of pilferage or losing goods is high. As there is no set way followed to track the goods, there is no effective way to either forecast or stop such cases from occurring.
What Business with Vendekin Looks Like
Identifying this gap in the vending business, we have launched an operator app, which takes away dependency from operators and enables machine owners to make decisions that drive profits. With this app, you will be able to track shipments, right from the warehouse until it reaches the consumer.
Moreover, this app will also give you insights to consumer preferences from the machine, which will help you track which goods are popular with the consumers, sale trends based on location and time of the year and average usage. This data will help you to make a data-driven decision to determine what to resupply and how often.
Also, as you will also get an overview of the sales data, companies that own multiple vending machines will be able to determine the most profitable machines and ensure those machines are always well-maintained and well-stocked first.
Basically, using Vendekin’s operator app, organizations will be able to make dynamic, real-time decisions about pricing, logistics, sales, and support by accessing information from autonomous endpoints.
Like any other business, in order to be successful, the vending business needs to continuously grow and adapt to the latest trends. At Vendekin, we hope to continue identifying such gaps and building technology that helps you efficiently manage your vending business by ensuring you are the one in charge!