COINADRINK


“An awe-inspiring business I am lucky to lead” T


he new managing director of Coinadrink, Tom Williams, assumed his position following the sad death of his father and


vending stalwart Roger Williams earlier this year. Tom is now several months into his new role and has pledged to continue in his father’s footsteps. In this Q&A, Tom reveals a bit more about the company and how things are progressing


1. Tell me about Coinadrink? 2022 has seen Coinadrink celebrate its 60th year in business. Based in Walsall, West Midlands, we have been providing refreshments solutions to the local area and surrounding counties, developing our services over the years to become the business we are today. We provide fully managed vending services, office coffee solutions, HoReCa solutions, micro markets (we were the first UK company to install one in 2013), water dispensers, fresh food along with a range of online and wholesale business. We are known for our commitment to customer service, longevity


of our staff with our average length of service standing at 15 years currently. We service the B2B sector mainly working within the automotive, manufacturing and logistics sectors. We proudly employ just under 80 staff, and place a huge commitment to our staff as shown by our Investors In People Gold Accreditation.


2. Describe your journey in the company? My journey with Coinadrink started the day I was born, and my dad used to bring me to the office every Saturday morning. I remember as a young child running up and down the corridors with a bag of crisps in hand chatting the heads off anyone I saw. Those early childhood experiences turned into actual work. When I turned 16 and I often helped during school holidays packing Christmas calendars, posting out marketing mailers and helping to book appointments for the sales team. Upon finishing my A-Levels my dad made it abundantly clear to


me that I needed to go out into the big wide world to get some experience, so I got myself a weekend job in retail whilst I was studying retail management in university. It was there I got the opportunity to do a placement year with Toys R Us and I moved to London for the year, getting hands on management experience in an environment nothing like I was used to. That one-year work


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placement turned into eight years of employment where I worked myself up to become store manager for five of those years, opening four new stores in London and having a very successful career. In 2015, I decided retail was no longer for me and it was time to go home and come back into the family business. I took over as sales & marketing manager and inherited a wonderful team of people and over the years recruited more to join. My retail knowledge really helped to develop our micro market division and enabled us to grow that area quickly. Always having the business interests at heart I made a huge effort to get involved in as many areas as I could as well as accompanying my father to Cover Group meetings and business trips across the world. Sadly my appointment as MD was bittersweet and although it was something I always wanted it was never at the expense of my dad passing away. However, my stepmom and I have made a commitment to carry on the success and I have my own beautiful partner and two children to think of now for the future, so I am doing my best to adjust to my new role and am ever so thankful for the wonderful team of people we have at Coinadrink.


3. What has been your inspiration and why? My biggest inspiration has always been my dad, hearing his stories about where he came from, how the business started to where it is now is awe-inspiring and I cannot be more grateful for the business I have been lucky enough to take over. My dad pioneered the vending industry, being instrumental in the development of the AVA and even being one of the main reasons the EVA was born. There isn’t a person I come across that didn’t know my dad and had nothing but kind things to say about him.


4. What are the main challenges you face in vending and how do you tackle them?


I think we face the same challenges as everyone else when it comes to equipment availability, product availability and price increases but we manage that side of things extremely well. Where we have seen others talk about challenges we have thrived and talked about opportunity. It can be too easy to dwell on challenges rather than embrace them and seek the opportunities in any situation. Staffing is a topic always on the table, but we have recruited 23 new staff this year with relative ease, we actually have a waiting list of people wanting to join us. The main challenge for us is keeping up


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