Five Star Breaktime Solutions acquires Wilmore Snack Sales

March 14, 2025
In a strategic move to extend into northern Louisiana and eastern Texas, Five Star Breaktime Solutions has acquired Wilmore Snack Sales, a Canteen franchise.

In a strategic move to extend into northern Louisiana and eastern Texas, Five Star Breaktime Solutions has acquired Wilmore Snack Sales, a Canteen franchise. In addition to its operations in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Lafayette and Houma, this acquisition expands Five Star’s in Louisiana and adds a state for service in Texas.

A second-generation, family-owned vending service provider in Shreveport, La., Wilmore Snack Sales has served the region since 1969 and became a Canteen franchisee in the 2000s. Under his leadership, owner Jimmy Wilmore grew the business to 100 micro markets and 2,000 vending machines as well as food service, primarily serving healthcare, manufacturing and telecommunications customers in the market.

Five Star Breaktime Solutions, also a Canteen franchisee, purchased Wilmore to grow its service footprint. The company plans to incorporate Wilmore’s clients and routes into its existing market mix. “Given that Five Star has an existing base of 4,750 markets and over 30,000 vending machines, our overall mix will not change significantly with this addition. It may move the mix of revenue slightly toward vending,” said C.J. Recher, vice president of marketing at Five Star Breaktime Solutions. “We’ll continue to support the current food service business in place.”

"Expanding our geographic footprint is always an exciting opportunity. Jimmy and his family have built a legacy business with deep community ties and lasting relationships. We are grateful to have earned their trust and look forward to continuing to grow this business locally," said Mike McLean, Five Star’s CFO in a release.

The acquisition is a good fit for Five Star for a number of reasons, Recher said. “First and most importantly, it’s about the people. Jimmy Wilmore and Wilmore Snacks are well-established and trusted as an operator in the area. They have a good reputation in the industry, in the community, and strong relationships with customers. Beyond that, as our CFO mentioned, expanding our territory footprint opens up exciting opportunities for us to grow. This happens through local economic development activity creating new business opportunity. From there, we often see opportunities arise from optimizing service and product mix, and more.”

About the Author

Linda Becker | Editor-in-Chief

Linda Becker is editor-in-chief of Automatic Merchandiser and VendingMarketWatch.com. She has more than 20 years of experience in B2B publishing, writing, editing and producing content for magazines, websites, webinars, podcasts, newsletters and eBooks, primarily for manufacturing and process engineering audiences. Since joining Automatic Merchandiser and VendingMarketWatch.com, Linda has developed a new appreciation for the convenience services industry and the essential role it plays. She is dedicated to serving readers by covering the latest news in the vending, office coffee service and micro market industry. She can be reached at 262-203-9924 or [email protected].