If you have a lot of vending machines, changing product prices is a huge undertaking. Between time, labor, mileage and gas costs, it’s also expensive. But to protect your bottom line, it’s critical to quickly adjust your prices. The Remote Price Change (RPC) tool within our Seed Pro software offers a powerful solution to streamline pricing management and fight against inflation.
A recent webinar by Cantaloupe, How Remote Price Change Revolutionizes Your Operation, showed how Canteen of Northern California and Sheehan Brothers Vending use RPC in the real world. Here are four takeaways from their experiences with RPC:
1. RPC keeps you on top of pricing and protects your bottom line.
One of the key advantages of RPC is the ability to change prices for your entire fleet of machines in minutes, without visiting a single location. By guaranteeing consistent pricing across all machines, you can avoid customer complaints and reduce sticker shock. This helps to maintain customer satisfaction and loyalty, while simultaneously guarding against inflation eating away at your bottom line.
“First week of October, beginning of Q4, Vistar sends over their invoice. I go through it, I see the price increases, I highlight them … and by Thursday my field was completely adjusted …. We’ve joked around that after switching to Seed and RPC – it’s the year of our bottom line. Top-line sales are fantastic, but the bottom-line is what pays our employees and what allows us to invest in ourselves.” –Shaun Dayton, Canteen Northern California.
2. RPC creates instant ROI.
Implementing Seed Pro and RPC can lead to a fast return on investment. Even if only some of your machines are RPC compatible, the time and cost savings of remotely changing prices outweigh the expense of sending a technician to physically change prices on a single machine. By using RPC, you can prioritize your drivers’ time and energy elsewhere.
“I implemented Seed Pro on March 29th [2023] and we’re already beyond what I thought the ROI would be … didn’t think we’d see ROI yet, and we’re so far beyond that it’s crazy.” –Shaun Dayton, Canteen Northern California.
“We’ve been in business 68 years, and this is going to be a record year in both growth and bottom line. Which is the most important thing that sometimes people don’t pay attention to. It doesn’t matter if you’re bringing in $20,000 annual revenue in an account if it’s costing you more than that. This is the way to be profitable.” –Patrick Sheehan, Sheehan Brothers Vending.
3. RPC reduces labor costs.
For large-scale vendors, changing prices on machines can be a huge pain point. Even when suppliers increased prices once a year, it could take up to six months to complete a price increase on hundreds or thousands of machines. With quarterly price increases currently, it’s nearly impossible to keep up with your bottom line.
“[Hiring someone to change prices on machines] costs more than just compensation. It’s wear and tear on the vehicles, gas prices, it was a really big pain point for us and we didn’t even realize it when we were getting price increases once a year. Now it’s historic increases quarterly. The timing for this [RPC] could not be better for our industry. It’s really been a godsend for us.” –Patrick Sheehan, Sheehan Brothers Vending
4. RPC is a game changer for fresh food machines.
When implementing RPC, it’s good to start small and learn from your experiences before rolling out across all your machines. When Sheehan Brothers Vending moved forward with their rollout, they prioritized fresh food machines. It turned out to be one of the highest returns on investment they’ve had recently.
“We saw a huge benefit for [RPC] on our food machines. Ingredients, packaging, there’s so many elements to making fresh food that can change the price of those items without notice. So, on food machines in vending … it has been a godsend for that.” –Patrick Sheehan, Sheehan Brothers Vending
RPC helps operators protect their bottom line and maximize their ROI, even after just one price increase. By making price changes with the click of a button versus manually changing machine prices and stickers, operators can save big on labor and other business expenses. Embrace the power of RPC and take your vending business to the next level.
Find out how much you could be saving today by using Cantaloupe's RPC Calculator.
