Automatic Merchandiser - 37

and of course that's all changed dramatically with the addition of going
into smaller employers."
"I remember seeing Tom hopping
on the plane on the way back, and at
the time, 250 [employees at a location] was the low number to put these
markets in," Dave added. "So, we were
thinking in our small town, we might
have eight or nine markets, and here we
are now hitting 40, so it has changed a
lot. Now, to have a market, you don't
need to have 250 or more [employees]."
Dave said that the addition of
micro markets in larger locations had
such a positive impact on sales that
Acme started transitioning some of its
smaller vending accounts into micro
markets early on.
"We started setting the markets,
and we'd seen the increase in sales -
every market we've put in has at least
doubled in sales - so we thought
it was a no-brainer to take a look at
some of our other locations where
we had vending and put these in," he
said. "At smaller locations, it allows us
to have one machine and one cooler
there, and we'll put in some food items
including salads and fruits."
"It gave the company the chance
to give smaller locations more variety
with less equipment," Michelle added.
Tom said that selling fresh food
through micro markets offered new
opportunities for Acme.
"People are hesitant to buy a sandwich that is behind the glass in a traditional vending machine versus having
that same sandwich in a micro market
cooler that they can open up and reach
into, touch the sandwich and look
at the nutritional data. They're more
likely to purchase that," he said. "A
lot of the [sales] increase that we see
is with the food. So, people are more
likely to buy the food if they can look
at it and touch it. We've been fighting
that psychological problem for many
decades in the vending industry. The
micro markets alleviate that."

The diversification was so successful that Acme was eager to expand
further. Three years ago, the company
purchased two office coffee businesses.
"One of the companies we
purchased was a business that had
been around for a long time," Dave
explained. "We have been updating

equipment and our overall service
with these clients for the last year or
so. Moving forward, we are wanting to expand our OCS business in a
couple of ways."
Dave said that the company hopes
to grow water cooler and OCS business throughout all of its vending and

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August 2020 * VendingMarketWatch.com

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Automatic Merchandiser

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