We spend more waking hours at work than we do with our own families. In fact, the average person spends more than 90,000 hours at work over the course of a lifetime. In a tight labor market, employers need to be thinking about every possible avenue to ensure employees remain happy and engaged at work.
Choosing a vending machine service may not seem like it would impact employee engagement, but meal and snack times are important daily activities that affect the overall feel of your workplace. Experts agree that perks and benefits make a difference when it comes to employee productivity and happiness.
With 150 years of combined staff experience, including serving more than 1,000 customers representing more than 4,000 vending machines, we’ve developed a bit of expertise on the subject. Here’s what we consider to be the four important factors in choosing a vending service.
1. Your route driver
Just as employees’ day-to-day experiences impact their overall job satisfaction, your experience with your vending service route driver is a major factor in your experience with a vendor. Your route driver is responsible for keeping machines stocked and serviced, ensuring employees and visitors can enjoy a broad array of offerings. When it comes to a route driver, professionalism, appearance, and consistency matter.
As you’re comparing vending machine companies, ask about whether route drivers are dedicated to serve your location regularly, how satisfied existing customers are with their route drivers, and how much industry experience route drivers have.
2. Variety of offerings
Vending machine services can offer a wide variety of food and beverage options, including:
- Popular snacks and candy
- Canned and bottled cold beverages
- Fresh foods like wraps, sandwiches, and salads
- Frozen foods and ice cream
- Hot beverages like coffee and tea
See all of Florida Fresh Vending’s food and beverage options here.
To determine which vending solutions make the most sense for your business, think about who will be using the vending machines. Will it be employees in the breakroom? Customers or visitors in a waiting room or public area? Some combination of the two?
For employee food and beverage options, it’s also important to consider whether you want to simply offer snack options or enable employees to get a full meal at work. This often depends on how employee breaks are structured as well as the other meal options that are available nearby.
In an effort to promote employee health and wellness, more companies are seeking to offer healthy vending options, like fresh fruit and vegetables, yogurt, and nuts. Try to strike a balance between offering the healthier options you want employees to eat along with the items that are most popular with them.
3. Clean, fully stocked machines in working order
There are three details to consider about the vending machines themselves:
- Are they clean?
- Are they stocked with the variety of items you want?
- Are they consistently working?
All of these are determined by the attentiveness and level of service provided by your vending company. When considering a vendor, ask about frequency of visits by service personnel, how promptly service calls are responded to, whether 24/7 service is available, and what type of vending technology the company provides to keep machines in good working order.
4. Cashless transactions
Almost everyone seems to be moving away from cash-based transactions, opting for the convenience of cards and online payments.
According to data from TSYS and USA Technologies, 77% of consumers now prefer to pay with plastic (debit or credit card) while only 12% prefer cash. And it’s been proven that people spend more in cashless transactions: in a study of vending terminals, they found that going cashless led to top-line sales growth of 35%.
Make sure that the vending service you choose enables cashless payment, and makes it easy to set up. For example, Florida Fresh uses cellular-based tech that doesn’t need to access phone or data lines at your workplace, allowing for easy installation with no impact on data integrity.
As you think about the vending service that’s right for you, be sure to consider your route driver, variety of selections offered, the quality of the machines themselves, as well as the ability to handle cashless transactions. At Florida Fresh, we offer leading vending technology paired with dedicated route drivers and attentive, localized service. Learn more about our vending services and feel free to get in touch.