Technology Puts Small Vendor on Texas Map

The vending industry has always been slow to adopt new technology. But in recent years, a number of forward-thinking operators have investigated the benefits of remote machine monitoring, cashless transaction capability and other new benefits and have begun offering them to customers.

One such pioneer is Golden Brew Beverage, based in Odessa, Texas, a third generation owned and operated vending and OCS company. Under the management of the 23-year-old Kevin Searcy, the 3-route company has made a name for itself using remote machine monitoring and cashless vending in the past two years, and it is riding a growth curve despite the recession.

This past year, Golden Brew Beverage used technology to help win the largest vending account in their market, a 300-bed hospital. The company has proven that a vending operation does not have to be large to utilize state-of-the-art technology.

While the company has taken a leadership role in using technology, its employees still don’t have formal titles. Family members share most management tasks.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Bob and Shirley Swanson started a coffee business in 1978 in Odessa, a city of about 100,000 in West Texas oil country. In 1983, they bought an RC Cola distribution franchise, which included distributing cold beverages to businesses.

The beverage distribution business first expanded into OCS, then into vending, paper goods and cleaning supplies, all operating from one warehouse. The Swansons discontinued the RC Cola distributorship a year and a half later after realizing they needed more beverage variety to meet customer demands.

The Swanson’s daughter, Sherri, and her husband, Robert Searcy, joined the company and eventually assumed management roles. Robert Searcy was committed to personal service, and this commitment helped build the company to one of the largest local refreshment service providers.

In 2007, Robert and Sherri Searcy purchased the business from Sherri’s parents.

The Searcy’s son, Kevin, began working in the warehouse part-time as a youngster. He was mechanically inclined, and as a youngster he was able to fix and install bill validators. He was always interested in technology, and as a teenager in the mid 1990s, he began noticing the evolving technology in vending machines. At the time, glassfront beverage machines were being introduced, along with DEX and MDB technology.

A TECHNOLOGY PIONEER

Cognizant of the benefits of DEX and MDB, Kevin began ordering retrofit kits and fitting older machines with DEX reporting capability, even though it would be a few years before the DEX was put to use. He retrofits many machines with InOne Technology’s audit boxes and vending machine controllers.

Where some vending operators were interested in DEX reporting in order to match meter readings with cash collected, Kevin was more interested in it to better manage inventory. “Cash accountability is nice, but there are other ways to do that,” he said. “There’s not another way to do pre-kitting.”

As he became more active in the family business, Kevin began identifying accounts that would be good locations for beverage bottle machines. Some of the bottled water companies were offering generous product rebates in exchange for using branded vending machine fronts.

In 2006, he came across a remote machine monitoring system at a Spring trade show in Las Vegas. He purchased five cellular modems and installed them at a car dealership. The units worked well, so he purchased three more for another location.

He was able to check the machines’ inventory from his office computer. This allowed him to pre-kit for these two locations, thereby reducing the amount of inventory the driver had to carry on the truck.

One day, an ice cream machine at one of these accounts had a meltdown and failed to send him a malfunction alert. Kevin had not been advised that the remote data device needed a backup battery to continue functioning if the electricity failed. It was a costly mistake, so he began examining other remote monitoring systems.