Five Star Breaktime Solutions acquires Wilmore Snack Sales

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.”

Better-for-you snacks a key focus

Five Star Breaktime Solutions uses Canteen’s Choice Plus, a labeling program similar to NAMA’s FitPick, to help vending operators and consumers find better-for-you options.

“When it comes to better-for-you, we source offerings that are most popular with consumers and that we know through data sell,” Recher noted. “We also partner with several customers on custom healthy or better-for-you wellness programs based on their specific company goals.”

Five Star also participates in NAMA’s Public Health Commitment, which was formed in 2019 to offer a larger variety of better-for-you options.

As a commitment to Five Star’s core value of community, the company’s foundation, Feeding the Future, will donate $10,000 to Shreveport’s local food bank, the Food Bank of Northwest Louisiana. This donation will help end childhood hunger locally through the Food Bank’s sack pack program.

“As a company that feeds people, giving back in that way is a natural fit. We started Feeding the Future, our 501c3 foundation in 2017. The idea came to us via a partner who wanted to do a cause-related promotion in micro markets. Donating a portion of proceeds to Feeding America’s Sack Pack program which feeds kids in need [those on free and reduced lunch at school] over the weekend and back to school not hungry on Monday,” Recher explained. “We took this idea and ran with it.”

To date, Five Star Breaktime Solutions has donated a little more than $1.25 million to more than 30 local food banks and pantries within its service footprint. The company hosts fundraisers such as golf tournaments and walks/runs, and more than 700 of its employees donate from their paychecks every pay period. To get customers involved, the company also offers a round-up feature on its market kiosks.

“So many of our great vendors are involved in helping us raise funds as well. It’s been a neat experience and has become part of our ‛why.’ Everyone can get behind feeding kids!” Recher added.

Five Star will now begin service to the areas of Monroe, Ruston, Shreveport and Natchitoches in Louisiana along with Longview, Nacogdoches, and Marshall in Texas.