VENDING IN EDUCATION
A potential growth area for education
Vending has always been in educational settings, but usually as the support act for the main catering operation and perhaps not viewed as a potential area for sales growth.
D
uring the pandemic it stepped up and played a bigger role in keeping supplies available 24/7 when catering outlets were not open and showed its future potential. It also allowed students and staff to get their hands on hygienic
pre-packaged refreshment, with the ability to access and pay for them touch free. The demand for such access isn’t likely to go away too quickly. Laura Barwell, business development manager at VMC has some insight in how the demand for cashless transactions has transformed the educational arena. “In response to the pandemic, we assisted several colleges and universities with the transition to cashless payments. For some this was a simple swap from cash to contactless, but for others it provided an opportunity to think about how vending integrated into their wider operation and how they could make their overall set-up more efficient for the future.” “One client, City of Bristol College, chose to go one step further than just cash free payments by adding our Flex cloud hosted system onto campus. By incorporating all their catering purchase points into the system, including vending, they provided students with a method of payment (via student cards or mobile app) that could be used anywhere on campus. For the site operations team the Flex system also provided a more efficient method of managing subsidies and free school meal vouchers directly to student accounts, and removed the need for cash handling, reducing overall admin.”
“Bringing vending into a campus-wide system like this really helps to encourage sales through impulse and repeat purchasing, and utilising incentives such as loyalty. It also gives students more choice and freedom on where they can spend their money on site.”
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