Televend Review Vendex Midlands ; Once again, this year’s edition of Vendex Midlands brought operators and vending solution providers together under the same roof but this time, we detected a slightly different feel to the event…
‘There’s a shift in the industry: end customers are engaging more with smart vending machines and screen-based machines’, Televend’s UK representative Richard Davies said. ‘For operators, this means using the latest technology to serve their customers better and keep their operating costs low as possible.’
One of the common themes running through Vendex Midlands was the industry’s response to the growing consumer demand for a broader range of nutritional products to be available in vending machines.
‘Operators are adopting more solutions, like smart fridges and micro markets to sell more quality, healthy food options’, Richard said. ‘I was happy to see so many different suppliers at Vendex this year. There was high interest in our own solutions, the A49 smart combo machine, and our micro market.
More operators at Vendex using a VMS are confirming the value of collecting real-time telemetry data directly from machines.
‘We’re offering our users one unified system that allows operators to control everything from a single platform. Our solution collects and processes real-time telemetry and payment data. Operators can also remotely change prices and reset their machines, which reduces the need for machine visits and cuts refill costs.’
Conference visitors were also thrilled to see how the software is catching up to the latest buying habits at vending machines. It’s known that machines with basket sales encourage people to spend more money on products. Up until now, operators couldn’t track which items were sold on basket sales, only the total amount that was spent.
Televend had an opportunity to collaborate with Westomatic to showcase their solution to this challenge. ‘You need to collaborate with other providers to solve complex challenges that make operators’ jobs easier’, Richard said. ‘With this collaboration, we were able to provide more accurate data about which specific items are sold during basket sales. This has major implications for tracking sales of individual items capturing the full potential out of your smart machines.’
We’ve seen many terrific innovations and developments from the UK vending industry at this year’s Vendex Midlands, but this is only the beginning.
Stay tuned as the Televend team is heading to Venditalia next, where we’ll be joining other leading operators in the vending world.
Contact the team here and get a first-person view of the innovations ahead
Keep in touch! Subscribe to Planet Vending
Add Comment