OPERATION
selling products. The managers analyze the bottom selling units for vending and micro markets on a month
to month basis and change out the
slowest moving products to provide
better variety to the customer. "We're
finally catching up to retail," said Halloran, "we're going to do a much better job moving forward."
Halloran and Calkins have
found their employees very helpful
throughout the technology rollouts.
"We've got a really good team," Halloran said. Trolley House has almost
zero turnover with most drivers
working 5 to 20 years. It offers
drivers full benefits and competitive salaries.
PROFILE:
Staying in touch
with customers
Trolley House has a Website
it uses to communicate with
customers. It presents contest
winners and lots of information
about the different services
Trolley House offers. Next year,
Halloran hopes to add online ordering capabilities and connect
it to social media.
Besides the Website, Trolley House regularly emails its
clients, and employs a customer
service representative to answer
calls. It also does local radio ads
to stay in the clients' awareness.
Adding the cashless component
While Trolley House has always
been an early adopter of technology
it didn't add many cashless payment
options to its machines. "I was never
excited about cashless platforms,"
said Halloran, "until VendScreen."
SUCCESS
STORY
Halloran likes that VendScreen
is built on an upgradable Android
platform, it's interactive, unlike traditional electronic payment options,
and it links back into Trolley House's
back-end management software. It
will even allow Trolley House to
display calorie and nutrition information necessary to meet the pending calorie disclosure rules. "Finally,
there was a value added. I'd be a fool
not to do this," concluded Halloran.
Trolley House is the story of
unlikely partners. Both Halloran and
Calkins are vending industry veterans and forward thinkers who were
able to set aside being competitors
and become co-owners. By embracing
new technologies from management
software to micro markets to new
payment platforms, they've reaped
the benefits with higher profits and
tremendous growth.
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February 2013
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