News

Vagabond Holds First Annual User Conference For Operators

WASHINGTON, DC -- Vagabond held its first annual User Conference here on Aug. 17-18 with Vagabond members from eight states attending the two-day conference. Throughout the event, Vagabond members participated in 13 education sessions that included learning how to maximize their Vagabond VMS usage to maximize profitability and how to incorporate the vīv Commerce platform to increase revenue streams and discussing strategies for broadening their business through effective relationship-building, mar...

August 29, 2018

WASHINGTON, DC -- Vagabond held its first annual User Conference here on Aug. 17-18 with Vagabond members from eight states attending the two-day conference.
 
Throughout the event, Vagabond members participated in 13 education sessions that included learning how to maximize their Vagabond VMS usage to maximize profitability and how to incorporate the vīv Commerce platform to increase revenue streams and discussing strategies for broadening their business through effective relationship-building, marketing and process implementation.
 
Participants ranged from operators new to the industry to those with 35-plus years of experience, from businesses with one route to more than 10. Both sighted and blind operators attended, since Vagabond's vending management system is fully accessible to the visually impaired.
 
Presenters from the Vagabond team included industry leaders Scott Meskin, John Powell, Stephen Shellenbean, Michael Lovett and Juan Jorquera. Each day of the conference focused on specific themes. The first day of the conference asked participants to acknowledge and challenge "myths" that are pervasive in the convenience services industry that hold them back and focused on zeroing in on specific ways to use the Vagabond VMS to boost profits.

Vagabond staff taught participants how to utilize scheduling and routing features to create efficient daily routes to dynamically update par values and manage kitting either in the warehouse or at the curbside as well as how to use reports to ensure optimal merchandising. Generating more revenues while spending less time on their vending operation and more time with their family was the focus of the day.
 
National Automatic Merchandising Association senior vice-president of external affairs Eric Dell and membership director Judy Gawczynski also spoke to participants to highlight the value NAMA provides members through state and federal advocacy, education opportunities and relationship building with others in the industry.
 
The second day of the conference tackled ways for operators to grow their businesses. They included how to take advantage of strong relationships with accounts to add more revenue, learning how the underlying vīv technology works, how to select and optimize appropriate equipment installed, and using vīv marketing collateral and Vagabond resources to advertise operators' brands and services to their accounts.
 
The discussion also explored the ways vīv can increase revenue opportunities by creating partnerships with other third-party suppliers to add revenue streams at accounts -- providing more comprehensive services such as vīv Supplies, vīv Delivery, vīv Markets and other creative ways to take advantage of vīv's low-cost, no-hardware platform.
 
Lastly, Fixturelite cofounder Steve Orlando led a session guiding participants through the keys for success to implementing vīv markets at various types of locations.
 
On top of the educational sessions, participants benefitted from firsthand experiences with many of vīv's real world applications. On the first day of the conference, lunch was provided by a vīv Meals partner that delivered pre-cooked and pre-packaged meals to Vagabond's unattended vīv Market.
 
Dinner was held in a local DC brewery, Right Proper Brewing Co., utilizing the vīv Restaurants solution. vīv Restaurants enabled all attendees to place orders and pay through the vīv app in real time. Servers brought food and drink orders directly to wherever the attendee was in the open-format room through the "find me here" function of the app.
 
Lunch on the second day of the conference was ordered and delivered through vīv Delivery by Alexandria, VA-based Kabob Palace. Throughout the conference, staff and conference attendees "vīved" snacks and drinks from Vagabond's vīv Market located onsite.
 
"It was wonderful to get so many experts in the industry in one room with our members," said Vagabond chief operating officer Bonnie Trush, "Although the education sessions were great, a lot of the benefit attendees experienced came from the networking opportunities they had while sharing meals with each other. A lot of ideas were bounced off of each other."