Tracey Graham of Abercromby Vending spoke to Ian Reynolds-Young about her pride in providing vending maintenance services for the Commonwealth Games 2014 in Glasgow.
If ever the East End of Glasgow finds itself in need of an advocate or an ambassador, it should look no further than local girl Tracey Graham. Through and through the proud Glaswegian, Tracey, together with her brother and Abercromby Vending co-director Thomas Smith, has been thrilled in the past few years to see her native part of the city re-born, thanks to the Commonwealth Games – but she never expected to be a part of the Games’ success…
‘There were four or five vending companies put their names forward to look after the vending machines for the games and we were chosen by the Commonwealth Games Committee’, Tracey said. With three months to go before the Opening Ceremony, her first job was to get make sure that five members of staff received the appropriate accreditations to gain entry to all the venues. If that sounds easy, it wasn’t: security was exceptionally strict, with personal checks and double-checks the order of the day. Headache! Even Sir Chris Hoy was turned away from the stadium that bears his name, for the want of the right pass…
Finally, i’s dotted and t’s crossed, it was ‘Games On’ and Abercromby switched into 24/7 mode. Training began: examples of the machines that had been chosen for the job were installed at the company’s HQ at Arrol Road and soon, a steady flow of professionals – from, for example, Compass and Sodhexo – together with selected volunteers, arrived to learn vending’s ‘musts’ and ‘must nots’.
However, no sooner had the athletes arrived and the venues gone ‘live’, than there was a ‘technical hitch’: many of the volunteers who’d received the training required to replenish a modern machine properly were moved to other duties, only to be replaced by complete vending novices.
(Tracey can laugh about that now. However, at the time…)
Consequently, in eleven days, across a park comprised of 69 machines, there were 51 call outs, none of them down to technical faults. In fact, the AG Barr branded BevMax, BevMax4 and Vendo 550 machines all performed well: the problems were bottle jams caused by sloppy loading – ‘our people were opening machines to find the bottles looking like a spilled bag of chips’ – and coin jams.
‘We reached every call within one hour’, Tracey said, ‘but when we arrived on site to fix a problem, I must say the reaction wasn’t quite what we’d expected! Normally, vending engineers can expect long faces and grumbles when they arrive on site it comes with the job – but around the village and in the venues, our people were greeted with high-fives and then cheered home like champions when a machine was returned into service!’
All in all, the games went smoothly for Abercromby Vending. Although the company was on call at all hours, there was never a call-out after 10pm. Not that a late night summons would have been too much of a problem: ‘We were ideally placed to do the job’, Tracey said. ‘Our place is right in the middle of the games complex, there’s no venue more than 2 miles from our door.’
It’s a fantastic achievement for any company to be asked to participate in a genuine ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ event. But for Abercromby, the experience was even more poignant… ‘It was extra special for Thomas and me, because we’re from the East End ourselves’, Tracey said. ‘We started the company with next to nothing, not too long ago, so to be chosen to represent our industry in our city, in an event of such magnitude, is really humbling. We’re very, very proud to have done our part in making sure Glasgow 2014 was a Great Games, but we’re equally proud to have demonstrated to other folk in our area that, if you’re prepared to work hard, anything is possible. If we can build a business that’s good enough for The Games, so can others who were born and brought up in our neck of the woods.’
The East of Glasgow has never been the most affluent of areas. Now, with the Emirates Stadium, Celtic Park and The Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome within walking distance, local people are set to enjoy a games’ legacy of excellent, accessible facilities in a hugely improved built environments. Equally welcome is the influx of new employment opportunities.
Incidentally, judging by Abercromby Vending’s astounding growth recently, there may be a job or two in the offing there, too…
