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from his years with Wonder Bread to break into different markets, really increasing OCS revenues. Triplett brings a different perspective He believes in giving a location what they want, even if it's a high com- mission, which seems like a strategy to drive Pro-Vend out of business. Instead, it has helped it grow. The secret, according to Triplett, is "you have to have the item priced right, and you need to know your retail space," he said. While a higher com- mission and, therefore, a higher price might mean fewer sales, the demands of the location don't offend or bother Triplett. He considers them just part of doing business. This attitude likely comes from his years working at Wonder Bread. He started there in the mid 1980s work- ing in various jobs, including super- visor for cakes, branch manager and account manager for convenience stores and retail stores. Early in his career, it wasn't unusual for big food brands to pay stores for space. Paying commissions to locations is very similar to paying for space, in Triplett's mind. The difference was that large companies looked at the price and sales volume to keep products priced where they needed to be, a practice that he has tried to incorporate into the vending busi- ness today. Pro-Vend currently has a vending management system (VMS). Triplett tracks sales by category using hand- helds and then the information is compiled and analyzed. "I know some operators track it by the specifc item, but that's too much data for me," said Triplett. He looks at it similar to stocks in mutual funds – instead of looking at each individual one, decisions are made using the average. He does this in his vending business by tracking sales in fve cat- egories: drinks, pastry, chips, candy, crackers, gum/mints and tracks those averages routinely. He does use his VMS for its search capabilities, however. "We might run a report on the locations where we still offer products at a certain price point, then we will work to get those prices increased to the level we need." An improved LSS strategy Increasing prices for good margins has been a recent goal for Triplett, especially in the chip/snack cat- egory. Like many vending operators, he offered small and large size bags for his most popular offerings. This, however, took up double the space in the warehouse and trucks. Triplett decided to try just selling large single serving (LSS) and upping the prices. But he used a different approach for each location. For healthcare facilities which were demanding calorie counts be posted near the vending machines, Triplett said he needed just one size snack in order to meet the require- ment. He put in only the LSS snacks at a higher price point and the loca- tion was happy. In other locations, he imported chips that weren't locally available. "I was on vacation to Prince Edward Island and found these chips produced in Canada. I talked to the producer and ordered a pallet," said Triplett. He put the chips in the vend- ing machines for a dollar, explaining to the locations that it was a new chip — therefore a new size and new price. From his time with Wonder Bread, he knew consumers prefer prices like $.99 or $1.97 to $2.03, which kept him from embracing LSS snacks when they frst came out a number of years ago. LSS snacks at that point would have meant prices that exceeded what customers would pay. Now that prices have gone up even on small size snacks, it was easy to switch to LSS when he could start by charging $1 for them and it has been an incredible success. He has found, too, that while spe - cialty chips helped him break through location price sensitivity, he doesn't need to carry the product all the time. Once the location is comfort- able with the new, higher prices, he can start offering traditional favors and brands, but in the LSS packages. "We are now 100 percent LSS, and didn't lose any sales," said Triplett. "And the drivers love it [because it reduces the number of products they need to load into the machine]." Company Profle Pro-Vend, Inc. Founded: 1988 Headquartered: Prince George, VA Owned by: Jerry Triplett, Pam Keener and Michael McNally Routes: 8 Vending, 2 OCS Cashless Provider: USA Tech. Equipment Lines: BUNN, Vendors Exchange, Crane Total Employees: 21 Annual Revenue: Not Revealed 48 Automatic Merchandiser VendingMarketWatch.com April 2016 O P E R A T I O N P R O F I L E Sales Manager Bill Lester next to Chesterfield Coffee & Tea private label coffee including its own private single- serve coffee selection.