Fintech News Desk
Remote Price Change, Part of the Cantaloupe Seed™ Platform, Helps Vending Operators Manage Prices on Multiple Machines from Anywhere
Cantaloupe, Inc. a digital payments and software services company that provides end-to-end technology solutions for the unattended retail market, is transforming the way vending operators manage price changes with its Seed™ platform and Remote Price Change solution.
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Remote Price Change (RPC) saves operators time and money by enabling them to manage prices for products in their machines remotely using Cantaloupe’s Seed software. With RPC, customers can react quickly to supplier price increases and dynamically change prices based on approaching expiration dates and seasonality trends — all remotely. With the addition of the Remote Price Change compatibility report, customers can easily identify legacy machines that may require firmware updates, ePort cashless devices, or board upgrades to enable RPC. And with RPC, fewer staff are required to make and verify price changes.
Seed customers are already reaping the instant benefits of RPC as they automate their operations and better manage their pricing to address multiple challenges at once from inflation, increased supplier costs, and labor shortages.
“We’ve been using Cantaloupe’s RPC for over a year on 1,500 machines,” said Joseph Barnett, branch manager with Refresh Sips & Eats in Mississippi. “Our goal is to deploy RPC on 500 more machines in the next month and 1,000 more by the end of this year. With inflation going up everywhere and prices changing, we are using RPC to make overnight price changes when we need them. Most of our machines are one to two hours away from our headquarters, so the time savings and fuel savings of being able to make price changes remotely is significant. Even with the additional cost of RPC, it’s a win-win for us to have this solution as part of our system.”
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“The Times They Are A-Changin’ (a song made popular by Bob Dylan) has never rung truer than these unprecedented times the world is facing today,” said Ravi Venkatesan, COO of Cantaloupe. “Businesses are experiencing a sharp rise in the cost of goods, with an 8.5 percent increase in just over the last 12 months, according to the U.S. Consumer Price Index (as of March 2022), which are all driving the need for operators in the vending industry to make more frequent price changes on their products. With our Remote Price Change solution, changing those prices across machines has never been easier or more cost effective. We’re excited to see operators take advantage of this easy-to-use tool to preserve their margins and stay profitable in the face of rising costs and labor challenges.”
Prior to implementing RPC within Seed, an operator could incur an average cost of $50 a machine to manually change prices, including the need for a skilled technician and sometimes up to 45 minutes per machine to make those changes. On top of that, operators scheduling techs for each route must account for not only the travel time to each location but also the cost of fuel to get there.
For Sheehan Brothers Vending, which operates in southwest and central Ohio with 23 routes, RPC has been a huge time saver for their route drivers and has increased profits. “We’ve found that RPC is pretty smooth, easy, and straightforward to operate,” said Patrick Sheehan, president of Sheehan Brothers. “Also, the less time our drivers have to worry about anything other than servicing accounts, the better. Taking the responsibility for price changes ourselves makes us more money because we’re getting the increases made faster, and it keeps the driver from working 50 hours a week.”
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