When he was an operator, Mickal McMath said he always enjoyed talking with other operators at national and regional trade shows. He loved sharing strategies, daily challenges, solutions, best practices and goals with people who understood the industry. Now, as head of customer experience at Gimme, he gets to engage with operators on that same level every day and could not be happier with his role.
An operator’s journey
McMath’s operator journey stretched for decades. His grandfather had a Tom’s Potato Chip route that he started in the late 1940s, and Mickal remembers hauling around Tom’s boxes “stacked 15 high on a hand truck” as a kid. His parents started M&M Sales in 1974, three years before he was born. He was running vacation routes as soon as he could drive and finished college at LSU while running a route in Baton Rouge. After a few detours, he joined his brother Zackary and sister Lauren in the Louisiana-based business in 2005.
At M&M Sales, he was fully immersed in multiple aspects, from sales to operations to technology, which he particularly enjoyed. “My parents were constantly investing in the company, from trucks to technology. I was always involved in helping to streamline our technology, working with card reader companies, working with software companies — lots of IT, helping everybody with their computers and phone systems,” said McMath.
By the time the company was acquired by Five Star Breaktime Solutions in 2022, they were one of the largest independent operators in Louisiana. Mickal went to work for Five Star while his parents, Chuck and Frances McMath “started living their best life,” he said. “I am so proud and inspired by everything they have accomplished.”
Joining the Gimme team
Fast forward to March of 2024, and McMath joined the team at Gimme. “I had a great experience at Five Star, a tremendous company,” McMath said. “As much as I love operations, it wasn’t my passion. I was always drawn back to the idea of working with operators and using out-of-the-box thinking, which is really one of my strengths, to help them make the right technology choices.”
McMath noted that he had plenty of history with Gimme, using their products at M&M Sales and being part of an eight-company group that helped Gimme optimize their VMS. “Knowing the company, understanding and appreciating their technology — that was a plus when the opportunity became available,” he added.
A perfect fit
“Evan Jarecki, CEO and co-founder of Gimme, said he had long identified McMath as a perfect fit for Gimme. “Mickal and his family were long-time Gimme customers, so he knew the products well. He was especially involved in M&M Sales’ successful transition to Gimme VMS. I saw first-hand he could lead an operation through a technically challenging period and knew he could lead again with like-minded operators,” said Jarecki.
“Gimme was born from an operator’s mindset: our Co-Founder Cory Hewett, owned and operated 30 vending machines back in high school. We’ve always been intentional to build our products to best serve operator needs, not with just an engineer’s mind. The only way we can do that is to work with and talk to operators every day,” he added.
In a growth mode
According to McMath, Gimme is in a growth mode. As head of customer experience, his job involves bringing new operators on board and helping operators enhance the performance of the software itself to work best within their operation. “There is a core aspect to every software. The difficult part — and this is what I add to the team because of my experience as an operator — is how do we help operators use the software consistent with best practices that we’ve learned along the way from other operators?”
“One thing I enjoy, with 20 years of experience as an operator, I understand their challenges and pain points. I’m able to make life less stressful for them and that can really have a big impact on a business,” McMath said. “By finding the right solutions, I can help them focus on profitability and growth. I love those ‘Aha!’ moments when you are listening to a customer and then you realize, ‘I know exactly what they need.’”
Pointing to core values
“I learned a long time ago that a good salesman is a better listener than a talker. One of the things that I strive to do is listen to the different issues operators are having and gain a complete understanding of their needs,” explained McMath. “Everything points back to Gimme’s core values because that’s really what it’s all about. It’s not lip service. It’s about empathy. It’s about determination. It’s about problem-solving and an approach that is customer-centric. The software is important, but the most important thing is that the customer gets the product that’s going to work best for them.”
Jarecki pointed out that empathy is natural for Mickal because he’s lived as an operator for two decades. “Determination shows up in his strong participation in industry events and even personally in how he coaches his kids in their daily sports. Also, we couldn’t ask for a better problem-solver.”
Commitment at the highest level
Jarecki said that McMath’s addition is a clear message to operators. “Our entire team, from CEO to new hires, has a deep understanding of the challenges they face in their business — whether it’s related to Gimme’s products or not. When we started Gimme, our office was inside the vending machine and OCS equipment warehouse at Southern Refreshment Services (now Five Star Breaktime Solutions), and we rode on routes with our users almost every day for a year. Every new hire goes through an ‘intense onboarding experience’ where they get up early to ride along with a route driver and spend a day in the warehouse with one of our customers to immediately get a better understanding of who we serve. And, we hire and are advised by operators and experts within the industry as we grow. What other VMS company commits effort at this level?”
For more information on how Gimme can serve your company, visit gimmevending.com. To contact Mickal McMath, head of customer experience, send an email to [email protected].
