Then in 1985, still young and full of
too much energy, Brinton decided to
also pursue a career in law enforce-
ment with the City of Seattle after the
encouragement of some friends. After
10 years, the unpredictability of the
job led him back to vending full time.
Since then, Evergreen Vending has
grown to include 54 routes and 165
employees operating from four dif-
ferent locations throughout Western
Washington and Oregon.
An industry is born
After the challenges of the recession,
Brinton knew his company's future
had to be different. Probably the big-
gest change he made, both for his com-
pany and the industry, was going into
business with another operator on a
self-checkout system that did not use
RFID tags, but allowed users to scan
the existing bar codes on products. Up
until that point, the systems marketed
to the industry had needed RFID tags
affxed to each product which added
labor and physical label costs. Brinton
thought there had to be another way
and placed a few kiosks in locations
for testing in 2009.
"I looked at the results of the base
test and thought 'this might be the
savior of my business'," said Brinton.
In 2010, Brinton hired sales people
for his micro market division and
started adding two to three markets
per week. He now has 600 markets
At the tail end of the recession in 2009, Jim Brinton, president of Evergreen Vending, decided to launch into a new enterprise that would
not only reinvigorate his operation, but the entire industry — micro markets.
December 2015 VendingMarketWatch.com Automatic Merchandiser 13
O P E R A T I O N P R O F I L E