Automatic Merchandiser - 26

TECHNOLOGY

Yoke's tablet kiosk as an affordable,
small-footprint solution designed for
smaller locations.
Yoke

Yoke Payments' tablet kiosk
Seed Markets utilizes the Seed Mobile app to enable faster restocking and
inventorying of micro markets.
365 Retail Markets/USAT

USA Technologies' Seed Markets™
USA Technologies' Seed Markets™, which completed its major partner
integrations earlier this year, is a cloud-based, mobile-enabled platform that allows operators to optimize their micro market management
and combine their vending and micro market routes into one. Seed
Markets fully integrates with major micro market providers 365 Retail
Markets, Yoke Payments, Avanti Markets, Company Kitchen, Three
Square Market and Vendor's Exchange. Adrian Austin, product marketing manager at USA Technologies, said that operators who already use
Seed Pro, USAT's vending and route optimization tool, will experience
many of the same benefits in Seed Markets.
"One of the biggest benefits is that operators can now implement dynamic scheduling at their micro markets, which automatically creates
optimized service routes for operators so they only service markets
when they need to be serviced," Austin explained. "They can avoid the
common headaches that operators face with static scheduling, such
as drivers showing up to locations that don't need service, or locations
that are already completely empty. Now they're going where they need
to go, and they know what to bring."
Seed Markets allows operators to create schedules in one system,
so operators can send one driver on one route to service vending
machines and micro markets together, resulting in greater efficiency,
fewer routes and less cost. Seed Markets also enables operators to
integrate prekitting for vending and micro market accounts into the
same list.
"[Our prekitting] is very accurate - I would say our prekitting accuracy is around 97 percent, so drivers are bringing far less products
back to the warehouse when they complete a route," Austin explained.
Seed Markets was built to treat each segment of a micro market
like its own vending machine, for both prekitting and scheduling. In
the prekitting process, each segment gets its own tote, and drivers
are able to efficiently service each stop using the Seed Mobile app,
an inventorying and servicing app that can be used across vending,
micro market and OCS accounts.
"Service times can be really long for micro markets - it can
traditionally take 30 to 60 minutes for a driver to restock and fully
service a micro market location because there's so many more things
there than a vending machine," he said. "If your cooler is full but
your snack rack is nearly empty, we're sending a driver out to look
only at that snack rack. That's unique to us; I don't know of any
other product that does that."

Automatic Merchandiser

VendingMarketWatch.com

August 2019

Five years ago, Yoke co-founders Michael Johnson
and Benjamin Thomas originally designed their tablet
kiosk as an affordable, small-footprint solution that
would allow operators to effectively and efficiently
serve smaller locations. They launched an updated
version in January, offering hardware upgrades - the
VESA-certified unit can be easily mounted to any
standard wall, tabletop or freestanding iPad stand that
follows the same standard - but the major updates
were on the software side. Customers can now create
accounts to identify themselves at the kiosk and earn
points through purchases, and they can manage their
account through Yoke's smartphone app, which offers
full kiosk capabilities including purchasing.
"Customers can grab a product, scan the barcode
right from the smartphone's camera, add it to the
cart, hit 'buy now' and never go to the kiosk," Johnson
explained. "If there's a line at the kiosk, you don't
have somebody walk away. You can handle a 200- to
400-person lunch rush because everybody has the
ability to put the kiosk in the palm of their hands."
Johnson said that the Yoke point-of-sale easily integrates into operators' back-office platforms, so operators don't need to learn a new system. Another benefit
to operators is scalability, especially for operators
working with smaller micro market locations.
"We are one of the most affordable solutions out
there, and with lower pricing you can buy more equipment, and you can scale faster," he said. "Micro markets were originally designed for 500- to 1,000-person locations. Five years ago, there were a ton of
those, but at this point, most of those locations have
been approached. Where we see growth is from the
endless sea of 200-person and less offices that still
don't know what a micro market is because nobody's
pitched them on it yet."
Yoke's software integrates with TriTeq locks, allowing
operators to keep coolers and cabinets sealed until a
customer makes a purchase on the kiosk or mobile app.
"When that is done on the dashboard, we account for
every time a cooler door or cabinet has been unlocked,
who unlocked it and the duration of time it was open,"
Thomas explained. "So, now we have a time stamp
of that transaction. We have an inventory tracking
component so they can see if their sales match what
the inventory is actually showing."

http://www.VendingMarketWatch.com

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