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Vendex North was held on 10^th November 2021, and the team at Vianet attended and exhibited at our first large scale vending show since before Covid-19 restrictions first began. The show held in Leeds attracted a great number of visitors across the vending industry after a long period of lockdowns and restrictions which prevented events from happening. Vianet were greatly anticipating this event after such a long time without physical shows. We are pleased to have caught up with lots of our existing customers as well as new vending operators, contract caterers, service providers and more.

Vendex is a well-recognised exhibition and networking event established in 2003 (Vendex, 2021). The event offers great exposure and opportunities for both exhibitors and visitors to get the latest industry news, products, and services.

Vianet Showcases Products and Services to Vendex Attendees

 

Situated near the entrance at Vendex, we had great visibility and opportunity to showcase our product offerings with live demos, devices, and new product videos. Vianet also launched our new website this week, and it was great to get feedback and shout about this to our visitors at the event to go and check it out.

On the Vianet stand, we offered attendees at the event the opportunity to try out our brand-new, all-in-one contactless payment device, SmartContact Pro. With an exciting opportunity to free vend and win mystery prizes, our SmartContact Pro was installed on a vending machine (Melodia vending machine supplied courtesy of Evoca Group) to give visitors first-hand experience of the new terminal. It was a buzzing atmosphere as visitors were keen to try and win some big prizes we had up for grabs, including £10-£50 Amazon gift cards, wireless chargers and many more.

 

Our Client Manager, Kirsty Kirk said:

“Vendex North was a great success. It was good to see so many operators in attendance, especially after such a long period of remote working. We’re looking forward to sharing more innovation updates with Vianet clients and prospects in the near future.”

 

In addition, throughout the day, there were plenty of opportunities to explore what’s currently out there in the vending industry as a range of businesses across the sector were in attendance such as PepsiCo, Red Bull, NIVO and many more.

Rachel Little, Marketing Manager said:

“This is the first Vendex event I’ve done since starting at Vianet, and it was fantastic to finally be able to showcase what we’ve been busy with in the background over the last two years.

Vianet has had a lot going on during the pandemic with the release of SmartVend and the launch of our new contactless payment solution, so there is a lot for us to be shouting about. It was also great to be able to finally put some faces to names in the vending industry!”

Overall, Vendex North was an important opportunity for Vianet to meet clients and prospects to discuss our exciting product developments and plans going forward.

Don’t worry if you didn’t manage to catch us at Vendex North, as we will be attending Vendex Midlands 2022 in Milton Keynes on 26^th April 2022.

Alternatively, if you’d like to find out more about how our products and services can transform your vending business performance, you can contact us directly through our enquiry form.

The impact the global pandemic had on our lives is one of the reasons why cash is in decline while contactless payment has a continuous growth in popularity. A survey done by VISA Consulting Analytics in partnership with The Strawhecker Group shows that 26% of their respondents expect a decrease in the use of cash post-pandemic. Our own data shows that since the beginning of the year, contactless payment has seen an up to 18% increase in comparison to cash sales on active machines.

But even before the events from 2020, specialists were anticipating that card and contactless payment will take over cash in the future. People’s needs change, their lifestyles change, and society must adapt to that. Nowadays nine out of the top ten card issuers offer contactless cards, and during this year’s first half VISA added 80 million contactless cards.

Contactless payment has several benefits, both for consumers and businesses, that made it become not just a commodity, but an integral part of our lives. It presents certain advantages both for businesses and consumers. Thus, we put together a list including the most relevant benefits to show you why it became essential in our current society:

For Vending operators and businesses:

1. No more cash handling losses.

 

For every transaction, the money goes straight to your bank account through a secure system which will eliminate the risk of miscalculation, cash loss or stealing. Because it uses encrypted data, contactless payment is considered to be the safest way to pay, highly minimising the risk of frauds.

 

2. Saving extra costs and labour time.

 

Without having cash to count, your business avoids extra expenses and your employees don’t have to do the manual work of reconciling cash amounts. This saves your company money and your employees valuable time.

 

3. Competitive differentiation.

 

Card transactions and contactless transactions increased in popularity considerably in the last years, and after the recent events, contactless cards became even more frequently used. A researched done by MasterCard showed that 74% of participants will continue to use contactless payment post pandemic. The previously mentioned survey performed by VISA concluded that 41% of respondents have a contactless card of which 60% use it for at least half of their transactions. Giving your customers the option to pay contactless by having a device implemented will give them another reason to prefer your business over others.

 

4. Speed and efficiency in transactions.

 

This is a benefit for both businesses and consumers. From a company’s point of view, faster transactions mean more clients. Nowadays, people are always on the move, and don’t have time to wait in long queues if they can make do without the product. Long lines are a cause of customer loss. Card payments save the customers from counting their money and waiting for change, thus, transactions are taking less time and those interminable queues become a thing of the past. Plus, contactless payment takes on average 15 seconds less than other card transactions which increases even more the number of transactions that can be done during a day.

 

For your customers:

1. Better security.

 

A stolen card can be easily cancelled and with the possibility to track your transactions, you’re bank may offer added protection of having the fraudulent transaction refunded.

 

2. Convenience.

 

Due to the latest innovations in contactless technology, consumers can now pay just by using their smartphones or even smartwatches through mobile pay apps. 34% of the consumers surveyed by VISA answered that they will use mobile/digital wallet more often in the future. Not only does this make the transactions faster, but it also increases your accounts security because, in order to use either of these devices to pay, a form of identification is required.

 

3. The possibility to track all your transactions.

 

Being able to see all the payments you have made over a certain time period allows you to analyse your buying habits and take according actions. Lately, most apps give you a complete report of your transactions which helps you draw more accurate conclusions.

 

4. It’s a more hygienic way.

 

According to a MasterCard survey, 82% of respondents worldwide consider contactless as the cleaner way to pay. VISA came with a similar result with 60% of participants being more confident in contactless payment to be safer in terms of the spread of COVID-19. This payment method protects both the consumers and the employees from potentially infected surfaces, therefore diminishing the risk of contracting any viruses. This year has shown us how important it is to take into consideration any surface contact such as payment methods in order to protect our health.

 

5. It facilitates the currency exchange.

 

Probably the most stressful aspect of travelling to a foreign country on your holiday is the money exchange. Wasting time at the bank in order to change currency, only to realise a few days later, while doing sightseeing, that you ran out of cash and instead of enjoying the scenery, you have to search for a convenient currency exchange location. With card payment, it adds even more convenience to modern day travelling as you can make payments in any currency, at any time, anywhere.

With cash declining and card and contactless payments rising, make sure to take advantage of all the benefits we have presented to you by implementing Vianet’s contactless payment device to fulfil your customers’ needs and bring a new asset to your business.

For more information regarding our contactless payment device, please have a look on our website page or speak to us today.

The hospitality industry is currently experiencing an unprecedented period of significant cost inflation. Factors such as rising business rates, increasing labour costs, Brexit uncertainty and ever-increasing rents, to name a few, have created a perfect storm that’s ravaging the bottom line of hospitality businesses. Some analysts are even reporting that businesses need to hit a 5% increase in like-for-like sales just to stand still!

In this challenging climate, it’s more important than ever that businesses scrutinise their entire operation to identify ways in which they can mitigate costs. This could be smarter scheduling of staff, reducing energy consumption, or identifying an optimum price point to sell your coffee. The easiest and most robust way is by collecting data, analysing it, tracking performance and then making informed decisions.

Collating real time data from your business gives you a window on how it is performing and highlights areas that need improvement. Some industries, like Formula One, have been implementing this approach for years, fine tuning elements of the car based on statistical analysis of a range of variable factors to shave milliseconds off their lap-time. Hospitality operators need to be more like F1 teams.

It has already started happening and the demand for smarter solutions across vending and coffee machines are expected to double by 2020, with over 3.4m coffee, snack and cold drinks machines predicted to be connected online. Nailing down the right coffee offer is very important for caterers as it boasts a very keen price point with a high profit potential that gives operators a great opportunity to grow revenue – this is where data can help.

How can data be collected from coffee machines? It’s simple, with telemetry devices – a little black box that can be easily inserted into any automatic coffee machine (whether in the showroom, or in the field). Once fitted, they feed real-time information via the Internet of Things to a dashboard that gives operators total transparency across their estate of how machines are performing.

Tech aside, the smart part is what operators do with this information. We have invested considerable time creating a robust platform that renders data into user-friendly graphs to allow businesses to make informed decisions that will improve their performance.

This could be tracking consumption patterns to ensure the machines are situated in the right place and selling the right products at the right price; or limiting machine downtime and increasing sales by improving service efficiency and flagging machine issues before they arise.

In its simplest terms, this would mean that a service engineer will know when a machine is about to break down and proactively arrive with parts they need to bring to fix the potential issue before it happens. Not only will this save your business money by reducing machine downtime and subsequent lost sales but it also saves you money on unnecessary service visits.

Many catering operators have large scale estates and demand forecasting and ordering coffee stock can be a tricky procedure – the last thing you want to do is run out of product during a peak period. If you have been collecting data on coffee sales you can better predict what stock is needed, based on cross referencing previous sales, against variables such as weather and events.

It doesn’t stop with coffee machines. Telemetry devises can be inserted into any piece of equipment, such as cookers and fridges, to track how they are performing across large estates. In the end, it all comes down to giving operators the tools they need to make informed business decisions that can improve their bottom line.